"Up" and "Down" Eggs - January 1, 1953

January 1, 1953 - "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman" column publised in The Collinsville News. 

You can imagine my surprise when I read the following column written by my grandmother in 1953 (over 60 years ago) when I was about 2 ½ years old - what an attitude!    

“Kathleen, my small granddaughter, says she gets to pick the “up” eggs.  When she saw I was puzzled by “up and down” eggs she explained that, since she could not reach the high nests, she would gather the ones in the lower nests,  while we picked the others.

How wise and happy she is without even realizing it!  How few of us are willing to do the “down” work-- willingly?  How resentful are we of those who have the “up” nests as though the higher nests or eggs were any better than those lower down. 

And thereby is today’s thought.

 What is the only difference between “high” and “low”?  Physical stature in Kathleen’s case;  mental and spiritual capacity and all our cases.  It is up to us whether we think “high” or “low” and whether we are willing to do our part. . . . . .

. . . .First, let us be self reliant enough to reach up, to look up, and yet at the same time, feel responsibility where we are at our own place, with our own talents and our own growth at our present level.  Kathleen is – even at her level.  She is thrifty, too, holding all the eggs she gathers securely in both hands and placing them carefully in the bucket so as not to break any.  She has the courage to try, the individual eagerness to beg to go along and help; and the supreme faith that while she is doing a perfect job now,  someday she will be a “big girl” who can reach into the very “top” nests, do her part, and receive even greater responsibility and reward.

When we finish,  she insists on helping to carry the heavy bucket of eggs to the house—she insists carrying her part of the load.

And, so I ask you today:  "Are you willing to carry your part of the load?" 

A Busy Day on the Morrow Home Place - Harvesting the Garden

August 16, 1945 -

Well, we finally picked the last of the green beans;  big beans, little beans, some ready to be shelled, others barely set on vines; we knew there was still another picking, and since we like to feel that we have tended to all unfinished business, early one morning while the dew was like a young rain, we gathered our last half a bushel. 

I did not take them to the canning center, for, while there were not many of them, I knew they would take double time for preparation as they were wormy, bug-chewed and would need to be sorted for canning.  Maybe I’m too fussy but I don’t like to put into a jar what wouldn’t look good on a guest’s plate and a bean pod with a big, or even small wormy hole in it, isn’t appetizing.

After all our late planting and too much rain, our garden hasn’t been this disappointing as it was an early spring when time came and passed to plant potatoes and beans.  For a time we discussed eating the half-bushel of seed potatoes we had bought, but the ground finally became mealy enough that we could plant, so we put them in without consulting the Moon, although it’s the latest we’ve ever known of anyone planting spring potatoes.

Now we have harvested eight bushels of as nice a crop we’ve ever had except the time we had twenty-five bushels from a half bushel of seed potatoes.  This will make us enough for all winter if they keep and the boys are not here to eat them.  We got ours dug just about that time other people were planting their little potatoes for the fall garden, but we shall we replant our ground to late roasting ears and turnips.

Now that we near the end of our efforts we’ll wonder if “The Boy” and “Willyum” will be here this winter to help eat out eighty-six quarts of green beans.    We know that “Willyum” is already somewhere in the Pacific, and grieves our hearts beyond measure to think that the boys who survived the European conflict must now enter the the Asiatic struggle. 

Our job was not an easy one, but neither is that of the boys so far from home amid the noise and din of battle or striving to bring order out of the dirt and chaos that Europe.  As we work, wet to the waist, or with sweat streaming into our eyes, or our backs nearly broken, chigger-bitten and bee-stung, we can appreciate in a very small way the terrible heat and constant strife with bugs and reptiles, the impenetrable jungle of the Pacific and when we come to the house with full baskets we can give thanks but we still have a cool, clean house where we can spend the rest of the day canning, cooking, eating, reading and resting, were no bombs have fallen and no destruction has disrupted the regularity of our lives. 

So if you should pass and see me sitting out under the silver maple tree in the rustic bench drinking a bottle of pop, don’t think that is our usual way of living—maybe I just finished a big ironing or canning and cooling myself before putting away the clothes or the jars.  Or if you see “The Husband” sitting in the rocker, on the porch, enjoying a nice drink, don’t misjudge him, for maybe he’s just finished digging the potatoes are barning a load of hay; then, of an evening after our supper, rejoice with us as you pass and see me in the hammock, “The Husband” nearby and his rocker, Spot sprawled comfortably out on the grass, -- it is the climax of a busy day. 

Hope Springs Eternal - April 10, 1947

A short time ago, in January, the earth seemed dead, the land was in the steel grip of winter.  We saw dry leaves, lifeless brown grass, bare wild stalks, leavless skeleton of trees, a few robins and meadow larks but once again the mirable of Srping has come and the exepnctant earth prolaims the Glory of God.  We knew that seeming reign of death was only temporty, that nature was not defeated; that underneath the deal grass were jonquils and tulips and spring beatuies, that there was hidden life,  libe dormant, waiting, hopeful.

The locust and pear trees only withdrew life from exposed parts and wrapped them thorooughtly to protect them from bitter cold, soon to unfold into sweet scented blossoms.  Each hidden bit of life remained waiting in millions fo seeds, buds, bulbs, roots and stems, chrysalis and cacook, n egg ofinsets, and animals sleeping in their dens.  Each waiting bit of life was supplied with food carefullys tored in or around it ready to sustain it till leaf and roots could give fresh food.  We little realize what a mysterious process is that which we call growth.  Only living things grow.  Life everywhere has a power of its own, a purose that guides it and will not be defiled; as human being, we are far above all othr living things, not only in perfection of the human body, but because we are being, not behaving with blind instinct, but with free intelligence. 
Life on eaqrth reaches its climas in personality; which,at its highest, rises above the physical.  Even as the warm rays of the sun reach down, touch the leaves and buds and animales, lift of the dead elements of the earty, so the power of the God of life and love reaches down and, touching the human soul, lifts it up to the highest spiritual life if we only permit ourselves to be lifted up. 

The actual column was published in The Collinsville News, Collinsville, Ok  April 10, 1947.

Boy Scout Cannon Vogel and troop members complete the Morrow Home Place Smokehouse rennovation project

Cannon Vogel and other members of the Scout troop based in Owasso, finished phase one of the smokehouse rennovation project. 

Cannon is working on his Eagle designation and chose the Morrow Home Place smokehouse as a project.  He and the Troop 93, based in Owasso, OK,  have emptied and cleaned out the old smokehouse and found many antique items.  There were careful to log and preserve those items for future cataloging and display. 

They cut a section of the original wooden shingled roof and set it aside to be preserved and used it as an example of how wooden shingles were originally attached to the roof structure.  Vogel located a source of wooden shingles and he and his team re-created the original wood shingle roof on the old structure.

The Scouts took care to preserve the original structure and only replace materials with "like" materials in order to follow the historic preservation direction to "preserve and protect" the orginal structure. 

       Original Smokehouse roof              

Cannon is the son of Mitzi and Rick Vogal and is Kip Robinson, is the Troop 93 Troopmaster. .