The thunder started last night with a few rumbles. The rain came later in spurts. By the time I went to bed it had stopped for the meanwhile. The morning is damp and dark with a bit of a mist. My plans to get the deck summer ready are thwarted. I will get a few plants and animal food, but I’ll do house chores instead of outside chores. It is time to put in the door screens which I dread as the storm door windows are really heavy. I go backwards one step at a time down the cellar stairs. May God be with me.

Henry update: I switched dog door flaps and removed the frosted one for the clear one. Henry now goes in and out the dog door. Henry is a peculiar dog.

When I was a kid, the milk man came every week. I could hear the rattling of the bottles in the wire carrier as he walked from his truck to the backyard. At first he put them on the top step then later we had a container for them. We had bottles of white milk and one bottle of chocolate milk delivered. We mixed the chocolate with the white. The chocolate went fast. The backup was Nestle’s Quik.

My grandparents lived down the street from the First National grocery store. My grandmother did the shopping. I don’t think my grandfather ever saw the inside of a grocery store. He had his roles, and she had hers. My grandmother always dressed up to go anywhere. She wore her day dress, stockings, not nylon, and clunky black shoes. She never learned to drive so she walked to the store. She took her basket with her, the sort you hauled behind you. She went shopping a couple of times a week.

Even through margarine was cheaper, we had butter. My mother told us how during the war they had to use lard because butter was rationed. The lard came with a packet of something yellow you added to it to make the lard look like butter. It tasted awful. That was why she always bought butter.

In Ghana I had to make do. I could buy butter in tins, in cans, but it was expensive so I used margarine, also in tins. It had a weird yellow color. For special meals, like for holidays, I splurged and bought butter. It lasted a long time in the tin. I never buy margarine now.

This entry was posted on June 22, 2024 at 11:54 am and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.