The Reindeer Keeper

When growing up out in the country it was quite exciting when any of the adults dressed in their finest clothes for special occasions which could have been anything from a funeral to a night out at the movies to going to church. Every Saturday evening my brother and I got to go to the local theatre with our grandparents and every Saturday night my grandmother wore her fancy hat with netting in the front, her good coat and white gloves. My grandfather who worked his farm all week dressed in his suit with a tie and his gentleman's hat on his head. They never looked out of place. That's the way all the adults dressed. My father was a member of a civic organization. Their annual Installation of Officers was held every June. I think I looked forward to it just as much as my mother because I got to watch her get ready. During the day she'd put Dippity Do in her hair and then wrap it up tightly in small curls held in place by bobby pins. She'd be sure to feed us earlier th

Hot June days like the ones we are now experiencing bring me back to what seemed to be even hotter days when growing up in the country and watching the hay wagons being brought in from the fields. I didn't understand at that age how very hot it was for the men handling the bales-the very picky bales of hay that scratched your skin and left you itching for quite awhile. My grandfather's farm included rambling hay fields.When a wagon was brought over the plank bridge and up the hill and over the rock bed where a small stream flowed until the summer sun dried it up, my cousins and I would get excited. We'd run to meet the wagon and try to wedge our way up onto it somewhere between the bales and ride all the way to the barn. We never realized how picky those bales were until we jumped off as the work of getting the bales out of the wagon and up into the silo began. I've never seen such hard work but it did get rewarded. My grandmother and her daughters cooked all morn

Summer is a time for many things enjoyed best while the days are hazy and hot. Of course when you're young summer also means a very, very long vacation which allows even more time to enjoy those special, frozen delights meant to be savored and licked and finally bitten into and then when swallowed, felt all the way down to your stomach,freezing your insides for a second while outside the temperature is soaring and the crickets are yacking and the bees are buzzing. There was a small neighborhood store we loved to frequent when at all possible, especially from June through August. That was because right inside the door to the left sat one of those white enamel, horizontal-shaped freezers-the kind where you'd pull on a latch and when you lifted the top, all the frost from inside would roll right out in your face, cooling you off for a second or two. When the mist cleared, the fun began for inside that frozen oasis all nudged beside each other were what seemed to be-to us kids a

Quite possibly one of the best things about this time of the year is that it is time for homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie! It amazes me how you can take total opposites-one so bitter and one so sweet, wrap them up in some pie dough, add some sugar, and out from the oven a short time later comes a most heavenly tasting, gooey, piping-hot blend that has, at times, forced me to sit down with a fork and just keep eating pieces one right after another. This pie even works for those who might not like strawberries or those who might not like rhubarb because for some reason by mixing them together one enhances the other. Gone is the bitterness of the rhubarb. Instead the rhubarb seems to add just a bit more flavor to the strawberries making the wait for the pie to bake a bit hard to take! My mother had a strawberry patch that ran along the side of our home in her rock garden out in the country. The problem with a strawberry patch is that many times most of the strawberries never make it in