Going to School

If I am calculating right, I started first grade in 1959. I have some very distinct memories of my first year of elementary school. Each room had a low wall unit of Cubby-holes where we placed our books, book bags, and belongings. I don't remember any stealing going on back then. We did misplace things like mittens or sweaters but no one really worried about stealing. We carried book bags. I wonder when back packs came along? Just so you know what a book bag looked like here is a photo of one from the early 1970's. Ours were not so cute. I remember carrying a similar one to this only it was a red plaid.

We had a Cloak Room where I hung my brown corduroy car coat with the barrel buttons. In that Cloak room I would remove my corduroy pants from under my dress. In winter we were allowed to wear pants on the bus but we had to remove them and be properly dressed little girls for the classroom. I remember the little wooden school desks that would give you splinters if you weren't careful. The reason? We were wearing dresses! So bare little legs would suffer if you slide the wrong way. That would get you a trip to the school nurse! Such were the everyday concerns of school life.

Oh! And our Dick and Jane Readers! Such lovely boring little books! "Come Dick. Come Jane. Come and Go! Let's find Spot."  Oh, but I thought they were great. But maybe the best thing about the 1950's was that it didn't take a lot to keep our attention. Obviously. What other explanation is there for Captain Kangaroo and later on Mr. Rogers. I think I looked alot like Jane here, but the hair color.

I still love the smell of Crayola crayons. There was nothing like a new box of pointy unused smelly crayons! I loved cutting out shapes from construction paper but I remember the blunt little scissors were impossible. Safe but impossible. I am glad that I got to be a part of the 1950's, because things didn't stay the way they were very long. I guess I still long for that kind of sweet and innocent simple living.

Chinkypins

By the time the song "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" was written in 1946 most of the American Chestnut trees were dead and chestnuts were hard to find. My grandmother told me of roasting them when she was young. However, we did had a cousin to the Chestnut who survived, the proper name is Chinquapin. Or as we called it Chinkypins. The nuts were very similar to the chestnut but smaller. When my first daughter was born and her eyes turned from newborn deep blue to dark brown my daddy called them her "chinkypin eyes". Little dark chestnut eyes. And her first child has the same eyes.

The Chestnut blight hit in 1904 and most died by the late 30's. Can you imagine 4 billion dying in the Eastern part of the U.S.? Anyway the remains of that dead one was a most beautiful weathered sliver grey. The rough bark was long gone and it was polished smooth by time's sandpaper. I loved it. At some point I remember seeing a red headed woodpecker nesting in a hollow high up near the broken top. I felt better knowing it was sheltering
her babies.
 

Anyway, because the chinkypin burrs were so prickly my daddy would watch for the burrs to open and do the honors and collect them for me. I can still see his mischievous grin when he would hold out his hand full of the little nuts for me. He is gone now too.

Can I just say that time changes all things, and old things pass away, and we have to look back with love at what we now can only remember. I would hate to find out that the old Chestnut tree is completely gone now. I had rather just remember it as it was.




Here is an amazing photo of HUGE chestnut trees while they were still growing and used for lumber in North Carolina. Ours was not this large!

As a child I was free to wander the woods, pastures, and the mountain top that my family owns. In memories now return to the mountain. I find escape in those mental images that I still hold so dear.

In My Mind's Eye 

I see summer's golden light descend
Sweet purest touch-- makes dark shadows bend

Amidst the trees and filtering leaves I see
Such lovely sights, sets my heart free

Climbing high in crunchy leaves and moist ground litter

Led by chattering squirrels and birds a' twitter

See! Jack-in-the-pulpit and False Solomon's Seal
Old Sliver Chestnut, though long dead, to time it won't kneel

Colors playing on stream's small glassy pond

Through each green leaf and frilly frond

Trees ornate with fungal fairy ledges
Damp spots thick with clumps of wild sedges

Long days spent in exploring with delight
Changing daylight angles predict the coming of night

And as evening light softens like downy feather
Lying down on the bounty of sweet summer weather

Shadows drawing peace out of my moody heart

Playing tunes of joy there, the Creator's part

What a loving gesture-- just for my joy 

He has designed such delights as an alluring ploy

Now cooling earth creates the foggy mist

Drinking drops from above - the ground is kissed

As shadows deepen, I will explore more later

My mind's green woodland home, nothing I cherish greater

Sweet Talk

When one door of happiness closes, another will open; but often stand and regretfully look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which is opening behind us.

Cathedrals take many forms and the best are the ones that God Himself created.

No journey should be so demanding that there isn't time to take a break and cool your heels.

Pith Helmets and Kitchen Kisses

One of my favorite photos of my daddy is of him in his gardening clothes, in bib overalls with a short sleeved shirt and a french style pith helmet! The photo had to be taken in about 1951, before I was born, but he had my sister who looks about 5 years old in the garden with him and they are together holding a push plow. I wish I had a scanner to give you a peek.

My daddy was happy in the garden. Not that he wasn't happy in our home. He was always kissing my Mama in the kitchen. As a little girl I would wiggle between them because I was sure that the best place to be was in the middle of that kind of love, in the middle of kitchen kisses!

  

Now about that pith helmet: I have no idea where he and my uncle Max got them but we have photos of them gardening together both dressed similarly and in those exotic hats. Daddy's pith helmet was like this photo but a light sage green and made of a rather hard fiberboard like material. When I was quite tiny, a very fun thing to do was to sit in that hat and roll around till the button on top inverted. My little toddler tushy then was small enough to fit and it was a great fun! And I don't remember him ever rebuking me or stopping me. I guess that was just too cute for him to be mad at me but I imagine that pith helmet was usually placed in an out of my reach location. Every spring my uncle Max brought the fine Ford tractor he bought when he returned from WWII and turned the whole garden and then daddy did the laying out of rows with a push plow and he loved nothing better than to garden. Toward the end of his life I think he grew enough to fed 10 families every year and he was always sharing the produce with neighbors and friends.

One of my favorite garden memories was sneaking to the garden and eating Tommy Toes (cherry tomatoes) straight from the vine! I was so thrilled when a few years back tomatoes began to be sold attached to some of the vine because the scent of the vines is such a part of the overall experience to me. When I was older and could sneak a handful of sugar I would go to the rhubarb plants and break one off and it eat it raw, dipping it in sugar. I never liked it cooked rhubarb but I sure loved it that way as a child.

Every little girl's first love is her daddy. He had the sweetest smile and to me he looked like Clark Gable. He was a wonderful, good, and loving man. He was the best man I knew and then I met my husband who is so much like him in many ways!

I have a memory of a summer picnic under a grove of black walnut trees up on the mountain above our house and garden. Just a daddy and his girl picnic. I think I may have been between 7 to 9 years old. I made sandwiches but quartered them so they were small. The reasoning behind that was because our dessert was cakes made in my Easy Bake Oven. We sat on a blanket on the grass and drank sweet tea from a Mason Jar. Well... my precious daddy is in Heaven now, but I know him so well and I just can't help but think that someday he'll plan a picnic for us.

Profile Photos

There is nothing like sitting in a rocking chair!

Snow in Colorado

We just got a 20-24 inch snowfall here. The wind whipped up great drifts so measuring is not precise. Having lived for over 25 years in Colorado I should be used to the snow. This is nothing. For more than 15 years we lived at 8,500 feet in elevation in a very rural area although my husband commuted daily to the Denver Metro area. The first year in Conifer there were four different snows with 3 to 4 feet at a time! I thought there was no way we could survive there for long but I had the energy of youthfulness, and promise of the invincibility that comes with it as well. It was a great place to raise our children and so much better I believe for them than a city school. Maybe that is my own prejudice since I was raised in rural North Carolina.

The farmhouse my grandfather built in 1917 still stands although it is empty, moldy and crumbling. Back in Western North Carolina, no one dares tear down their old home places. They stand greying and crumbling, loved from a distance. And I love that about the culture back there. The best thing about my grandparent's farmhouse was the front porch. It's porch stood about 5 feet about the yard, tall enough to survey the whole of the valley before you when you were only 4 or 5. It was equipped with two great old oak porch rockers and an old fashioned swing that hung on chains. What child wouldn't love the adventure of all that! The swing could be an airplane or a speeding car at a moment's notice. The rockers were so sturdy and when you got them rocking fast and wildly they were the farm dogs greatest fear. No sleeping dog stayed on that porch with a combination of children and rocking chairs! Tails be gone!!!

As a child I don't remember much traffic on the road in front of the house. It is not that way today. I often wonder what a passerby thinks when they see the old house. Little do they know what treasured memories linger in my head. Deep from the recesses of it I hear the sound of the slamming  screen door even now. That is a comforting sound not heard with the ears but with the heart.

Well, I will close for now and sit for a while looking out at the snow and let those inner sights and sounds do their magic.

Hi there!
My name is Pam Kilpatrick.
Pamela was a popular name for baby girls in the 1950's and 1960's and it means... Sweet like Honey. So there you go! That tells you something about me. Thus name Sweet Honey Buzz.

I am presently sitting in my home office along the front range of Colorado as the snow falls like heavy goose feathers and my mind is flitting over some things I hope to accomplish in the days to come. I long for sun and flowers, what proper Pamela "honey girl" wouldn't?  But for now I'll be content with a mug of steaming honey laced spice tea. It warms my hands and my heart. That being said, here is my initial thoughts.

Words focused out from deep in the heart ~
Sharing and friendship, I hope you'll be a part!

Summer long gone into winter's blast~
Penning peaceful musings, here to last.

Moments of cyber rambling to you from me
What fun an exchange I hope to see!

Awaiting the spring and desiring the sunny,
Sky and blooms again, as sweet as honey!