Home Sweet Home

     I was born in Charleston, West Virginia but my home was about 50 miles away in a little coal mining town named Ameagle which stands for American Eagle Colliery.  My home was like all the rest, a little white and green wooden house.  Just inside our back fence by a dirt road we had a new coal house which was loaded in the winter months with coal for our heatrola and our cooking stove.  In the spring my Mother would open the door and the two windows and make up a large bucket of lye soap and water and scrub out all the coal dust.  She let the door stand open to let the spring breezes dry it out.

     Then she would put calico lace curtains up at the windows.  She would carry out all my toys, and I had a few because my Grandma worked and I was the first baby and was spoiled and doted on by my whole family.  My playhouse for the spring, summer and fall, was the most vivid memory of my country home and I loved it.  Among my toys I had a green card table with 4 chairs, a complete set of china dishes with red roses on them.  There was a teapot, cups and saucers, dinner plates, a casserole dish with a ladle and lid, a gravy boat and a butter dish with a lid.  I had a blue doll carriage, a Ricky Ricardo baby doll, a Mary Heartline doll, a majorette, and other dolls I didn't play with as much.  I had a cupboard for my dishes, and a little play stove and pots and pans.  I use to pull off little beads from some of the flowers for peas, and I would use water from our water barrel in the teapot and little cups.  I even had a little washing machine and it had balloon rollers turned by a handle to wring water out of my baby doll's clothes.  My friends and cousins would come over and we'd play all day in our little storybook playhouse.

     My Mom was very loving and such a kind and gentle person.  She passed away at 55 from heart disease, which I also have and my Grandpa and my uncle both died in their 40's with the same thing.  I was 35 at the time.  I am 64 now and I am so lucky to have such warm and wonderful memories of my Mom.  We became good friends as well as I grew up and hardly a day passed without me calling her and discussing the menu for dinner and to talk about the kids.  My husband and Mom both handled all the finances of the family and they would talk for a long time about things.  She grew to really like Jack and she loved my twin boys and my little girl.  She loved animals and children, but never was very crazy about adults.  She said you couldn't trust them.

     My Mom was a coal miner's daughter and married my father when she was 17.  He was in the Navy during WWII and when he came home, he too worked in the mines.  I lived a childhood that any child today would be envious of.  I lived in the coal mining town until I was eight and the mines closed down.  We moved to Huntington, which was about 100 miles away.

     The little town is a forest now and the days of childhood are far behind me.  But my memories bring back those wonderful experiences of childhood and so begins my legacy to my own 3 children, and my 7 grandchildren who mean the world to me.  I will post to this blog as often as I have time to meander and capture once more the wonderful memories of growing up a country girl who traveled much as time went by and gathered up many new memories along life's road.  You are invited to come along for the journey and I hope to bring a smile to your face and stir up your own memories of days gone by but not forgotten in the autumn of my years.