Celia Yeary and Some Wonderful Memories

Today we welcome Celia Yeary, with her new release Texas Promise. Celia is doing some reminiscing about growing up and visiting her grandparents. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope you will too! Celia would love some comments too!

Over the Hill and Through the Woods, to Granny’s House I Go…    for Pink Fuzzy slippers

During my growing-up years in the fifties, my family drove about 200 miles at least once a month to visit my daddy’s parents—my Granny and Papa. They lived on a self-sufficient farm in a one-road town with one store. I loved going to visit there, even though they had no running water and barely had electricity. My grandparents had no material possessions to give us, but they had a wagon load of love and fun stuff to do.

In addition to the fun part—that would include swinging in the porch swing and eating homemade ice cream, walking down the dirt road barefoot with my uncle with a piece of string and bits of raw bacon to fish for crawdads, and finding a ripe watermelon in the garden, smashing it on the ground, squatting, and eating it with our bare hands—the farm also held a few frightening aspects.

One was the smokehouse. It was made of red tiles cemented together to form a windowless  building about 10x10 feet. The door stayed closed most of the time, but sometimes it stood open. Once, my little sister and I crept in there, walked under the hams and sides of beef hanging from the rafters, and the wind pushed the door almost closed. A tiny sliver of light came through the door, making the meats hanging from the rafters resemble people—or so we thought—and soon we frightened ourselves silly by voicing such a thing. We came out of the smokehouse as fast as we could, and from then on, I wouldn’t even walk close to the building.

Having no running water meant a well for water and an outhouse for the toilet. Ooooh, I hated that outhouse. We all did, and when we were little girls, we hid behind a tree or shrub, squatted, and peed. But that’s all. Anything else and you HAD to go to the outhouse. The adult warnings were enough to give me bad dreams. “Now, there might be a snake in the outhouse, so take a stick and bang around the walls to scare him away.” But what if a snake was down that hole? Ewww, I shudder with the memory. 

Every house had a dirt cellar. Papa built shelves down there around three sides, and Granny stored her filled canning jars down there. The steps were made of packed dirt, as was the floor. A kerosene lantern always stood ready to light, if the door needed to be closed and tied down. Three long benches sat along the walls. The musty smell was so pungent, I can still smell it to this day. One time when we were visiting, a horrific spring storm came up, scaring the adults to death. They woke all of us up, slipped our shoes on our feet, and wrapped each of us girls in a blanket and covered our heads. Daddy carried me, Papa carried my little sister, and my older sister, mother, and Granny ran. The wind and rain was so fierce my daddy and Papa could hardly open the door, but when they did, we scrambled down as fast as we could. Then they slammed the door shut and tied it down with the thick rope attached to a stake in the floor. It was pitch black, and so close, and I could hardly breathe. Plus, we were all soaked. From then on, I was terrified of that cellar, but you know? Kids like to be scared sometimes. So, when Granny went down there to get a jar of peaches or okra and tomatoes, I’d go, tiptoeing behind her, holding on to her apron, looking around at the eerie place and the spiders on the wall.

The old house sat about two feet off the ground on concrete blocks. The dog stayed under there a lot, because he had dug out little hollows in the dirt that stayed cool. Granny told us not to crawl under the house—as if any of us were contemplating such a stupid thing—because snakes lived there. We asked how Scotty could sleep under there with the snakes, but her answer was he just could. He was a dog. So the cousins, my sister, and I would lie on our stomachs at the edge of the house and peer under, hoping to see a snake. Once we chose the boy cousin to egg on to crawl under the house. We called him scaredy-cat and sissy-pants and dared, double dared him to crawl under at least five feet. He succumbed to our bullying and did. We lined up on our stomachs and waited for a rattlesnake to poke his head out and bite him, but after waiting a long time by our estimation, we got tired and went in the house for molasses cookies. His daddy had to go out and tell him it was all right to come out now. All his girl cousins were in the house.

****

My newest release is TEXAS PROMISE: Book One-The Cameron Sisters.

BLURB:

 After two years, Jo Cameron King’s life as a widow abruptly ends when her husband returns home to Austin. Unable to understand her angry and bitter husband, she accepts a call to travel to the New Mexico Territory to meet her dying birth father whom she knows nothing about. Her plan to escape her husband goes awry when he demands to travel with her.

Dalton King, believing lies his Texas Ranger partner tells him about Jo, seethes with hatred toward his wife. Now he must protect Jo from his partner’s twisted mind, while sorting out the truth. Jo’s bravery and loyalty convince him she’s innocent. But can they regain the love and respect they once shared?

Click here for the buy page and an excerpt.

http://stores.desertbreezepublishing.com/-strse-109/Celia-Yeary-Texas-Promise/Detail.bok    

I’ve enjoyed visiting the Pink Fuzzy Slippers girls and telling you a story. If you want another, I have a bunch of them. What child doesn’t?

Thank you all—love—

 Celia Yeary-Romance...and a little bit 'o Texas  
http://www.celiayeary.blogspot.com
http://www.celiayeary.com
New Releases
Texas Promise-eBook-Desert Breeze Publishing
Making the Turn-print & eBook-Wings ePress

 

On behalf of the Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers  I thank you Celia. Warm, wonderful, memories, we love them. They bring us back to our own childhoods. Those good memories of cookies, apple pie and apron strings, they're the best!