Memory Lane

This post might not interest anyone but me. Because I am taking a little stroll down memory lane. Some memories that I had really forgotten about. So it was fun for me to remember a much simpler time of being a kid and enjoying life. This past weekend I journeyed to my hometown to go visit my parents. This is always a welcomed sight when I drive into town.

Blountstown, Florida

This was taken as I was just getting into town on Hwy 20. Not much to look at, but I couldn't get too carried away taking pictures while driving. (oops...) So I went on through town and headed out to my parents. As I turned on the road my parents live on, I noticed a strange piece of equipment out in my father's field. Turns out Big Mike has got a new big toy.

My lovely father has gotten the farming bug after his cotton crop last year. So he has decided to get rid of his cows and clear the cow pasture to make more room for crops. That's my father, he always has to have something to do and piddle with. My mother, however, isn't as enthusiastic about his newest endeavor. I got to go watch her throw a Cathy-fit on my father. I was quite amused by the whole thing.

My mother doesn't want her house to be able to be seen from the road and she thought daddy was taking down too many trees. So in typical fashion she marched up to where daddy was working and informed him that he better not cut down too many trees, which of course my father responded to in typical Mike fashion with a shrug of his shoulders. I think his nonresponse infuriates my mother more. I love it. (and I might have egged my mother on to go get onto him, but I'm not fully admitting to that!)

He's making a lot of progress of getting out the trash trees before they come and get the merchantable ones. The area behind my parents house where all of this is going down used to be a thick forest of pine trees and live oaks. Walking through the cleared field made me remember things about this area that I had long forgotten. Like there used to be a road that ran through the property in the woods that hasn't been there for a long time. My brother and I used to spend countless hours back in those woods playing. It wasn't until I stumbled upon this pile that I remembered a special hang out of ours.

It may look like a bunch of junk but at one time it was part of a "treehouse" of sorts. It's what remains of a few ladders and some other metal that we had attached to an old blown over live oak that took a fall during Hurricane Kate in 1985. It was a huge tree that looked something like this, but on a much bigger scale.

Brad and I had ladders going up to different limbs and metal rails that went from branch to branch. We even had a vine swing that we would swing on. I found this and quickly remembered why it was there

It is what remains of a dumbbell from an old weight set that we used to have. Brad had that out at the treehouse so he could "work out" back in the day. (we were in elementary school, so he was doing some major working out. ha!) While this stuff means nothing to any of you reading this, it brought back a flood of memories of lazy summer days and things my brother and I would come up with to occupy ourselves. Mainly because my mother would lock us out of the house and demand that we play outside ;-)

Moving on in our journey I can across one of my father's creations that he made.

My mother ran a baby's breath farm on this field way back in the day. And this creation was my father's solution to planting the flowers. Those trays held the seedlings and there were seats attached to the back so you could sit close to the ground and lean over and plant the flowers while the tractor pulled you across the field. Funny story about this contraption was that one year we were all out in the field planting flowers and our springer spaniel, Heather was with us. She then decided to give birth to her litter of puppies right there in the field. So she would run along beside the tractor, plop down, have a puppy and keep going. As we passed the puppies, we would scoop them up and place them in the trays. Poor Heather never had a litter of puppies the normal way. Her first litter she was so freaked out about what was happening, that she jumped in my mother's lap and tried to have the puppy right there in her lap! And her puppies were always mutts. Half springer spaniel and half german shorthair pointer. They were gorgeous if you can imagine. Those two breeds shouldn't be mixed!  

After this, I walked to where the original cow pasture has always been. My father is notorious for never throwing anything away, because "he might can use it one day" and if his flower planting contraption shows, he can make anything out of some scrap metal. One thing that never got used after being discarded was this:

At one time this was attached to a combine and it is used to cut wheat. I don't ever remember daddy growing wheat there at the house, but he must have if it was out in the cow pasture. It was placed in the cow pasture never to be moved again. If you can tell a few trees have grown up below it in the years since it was placed there.

Yeah...100 points to Mike if he can get that thing out of the field now!

Speaking of childhood memories, I found this going through some boxes.

I can't believe I still have the birth certificate to my first Cabbage Patch Kid doll. I'm sure any other girls who grew up in the 80's can remember the craze that was the Cabbage Patch Kid. I think my mom had to fight some ladies off in Woolsworth to acquire this doll for me. HA! And my doll went by Tobie. Manfred was a little too weird to name a baby doll.

I also found this random piece of Ashley history:

Look a little bit closer and you will see why I kept this old FSU registration guide.

There I am in the green sweater concentrating really hard by the looks of my mouth. Ha! Why I kept this I don't know. But it has been kept safe and secure since 2004, so I guess I will keep it around for a few more years :-) Going through some of my old boxes of stuff, I realized I am a major pack rat. I found all kinds of napkins from restaurants that I assume had some significance back in the day, old movie stubs, rodeo tickets, concert tickets, notes passed around in class, old school papers. Name it, I kept it. One of my favorite things I came across was this picture. Maybe I am just being extra sentimental about old David these days ;-)

That's David and me back in August of 2000. This was his last night in Blountstown before he left for the Citadel in Charleston. Just looking at this picture also makes me cringe. That haircut I had. Wow. I can't pull off short hair, but I tried! During that time, I was working at a pharmacy in Panama City and was driving back and forth to work and thought having short hair would be quicker and easier than long hair, so I could save some time getting ready in the morning. That line of thinking got me a hideous haircut! 

Ok, I've probably bored you all to death with my random reminiscences! Thanks for indulging me!