An ordinary room that hides a sad secret Only she knows where she has to keep it Sitting against the wall in her spare room In the third drawer holds yesterday’s gloom
So long ago from her past are the letters One would hope that time would make it better Not so, for the drawer has been locked from the start Holding the sadness that’s still locked in her heart
Open the bedroom door, open the dresser drawer Open the window and let the new light in Fear no more tomorrows, fear no more sorrows Tear up the memories that tied you to him
Make new wishes, let light come through your door Tie a bright ribbon around a love that last forever more Look in the mirror and see a new life like never before Make vanish the secrets hidden in that old dresser drawer
Hickory, dickory, dock. The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one, The mouse ran down, Hickory, dickory, dock.
Hickory Dickory Dock” or “Hickety Dickety Dock” is a traditional English nursery rhyme. It was first recorded as “Hickere, Dickere Dock” in “Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book” and published in London in 1744. Later, another version was published in “Mother Goose’s Melody” in 1765 titled “Dickery, Dickery Dock”. At its origin, the nursery rhyme was probably a counting-down song
When you say in a loud voice, I do wish you’d try!
Who seems not to notice the things that you do.
And forever is losing a sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not, lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding, the long day to fill?
Is that what you’re thinking, is that what you see?
Then open your eyes nurse you’re not looking at me.
I’ll tell you who I am as I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, as I eat at your will.
I’m a small child of ten with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters who love one another.
A young boy of Sixteen with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now a lover he’ll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty, my heart gives a leap.
Remembering the vows that I promised to keep.
At Twenty five, now I have young of my own.
Who needs me to guide and a secure happy home.
A man of thirty, I’m young now grown fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me to see I don’t mourn.
At Fifty, once more, babies play ’round my knee,
Again, we know children my loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me, my wife is now dead.
I look at the future and I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing of their own.
And I think of the years and love that I’ve known.
I’m now an old man and nature is cruel.
It’s jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles grace and vigour, depart.
There is now a stone where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcas a young man still dwells,
And now and again my battered heart swells
I remember the joys, I remember the pain.
And I’m loving and living life over again.
I think of the years, all too few gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact that nothing can last.
So open your eyes people, open and see.
Not a cranky old man, look closer and see me!
When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in anAustralian country town, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.Later, when the nurses were going through his meagre possessions,They found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copiesIts quality and content so impressed the staff that copieswere made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.One nurse took her copy to Melbourne. The old man’s sole bequest to posterityhas since appeared in mags for Mental Health. A slide presentation has alsobeen made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.And this old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of thisanonymous poem winging across the Internet.
This picture is done by an Amazing 16-Year-Old Girl Named Shania McDonagh Who Wins National Art Competition With Stunning Hyper-Realistic Pencil Portrait.
The winds of March are wild and strong, They howl and whistle all day long; They pull the hats from tall men’s heads And frighten children in their beds.
They brush the trees, they sweep the ground, I’m glad no seedlings can be found, For March would hurt each leaf and stem— But April-time was made for them!
An American poet specialising in children’s poetry. In 1919, her book of children’s poems, For Days and Days: A Year Round Treasury of Child Verse was published, followed by Treasure Things in 1922.
The coach is at the door at last;
The eager children, mounting fast
And kissing hands, in chorus sing:
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
To house and garden, field and lawn,
The meadow-gates we swang upon,
To pump and stable, tree and swing,
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
And fare you well for evermore,
O ladder at the hayloft door,
O hayloft where the cobwebs cling,
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
Crack goes the whip, and off we go;
The trees and houses smaller grow;
Last, round the woody turn we sing:
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
by Robert Louis Stevensons
When I was six my two older brothers and I lived in a big old farm house. It had a chicken coop filled with chicks and a rooster. We also had two huge pigs, one Irish Setter and a couple of cats. At summer’s end my parents, aunt and uncle and us three kids actually went out in a big wagon with side boards that had clamps holding pitch forks and we gathered up cut down hay from the fields, piled it up in the wagon, brought it to the barn and loaded it up in the second level of the barn up to the rafters.
When the work was done my parents would place a large pile of hay on the ground right under the small open door in the top of the barn. When the day was at end, the wagon was empty, and the grown ups were tired, thirsty, and hungry, they left us to play. Our playing was climbing up the ladder and jumping out the small door and landing on the pile of hay on the ground, repeating this action over and over until it got dark or mom called us in.
The story of Pharisäer kaffee gives you something to talk about over coffee. it’s amusing to think of parishioners in the 1870’s disguising their dark rum-spiked coffee behind whipped cream so their pastor didn’t think they were drinking. This classic German recipe is also pleasantly simple and a delight to drink.
I’d been thinking for some time about doing a blog on pantries of the yesterday’s. I don’t have any pictures of the pantries in the houses I lived in over the years. I don’t have any pictures of the houses I lived in during my childhood, and that’s sad because some of them were great houses. I decided to do a search on Google using the key words, old pantries. I just couldn’t believe the things that came up, lots and lots of restaurants named, The Pantry, The Old Pantry and The Pantry House which I think are all great names. The other thing I pulled up was “Pantry Kitchens” for those less fortunate folks going through some hard times, it was nice to see so many of them around the country.
I wonder how many of you know what an old fashioned pantry really is. Many pictures came up showing a small room with rows and rows of shelves filled with canned food. Now that may very well be what some or even many pantries were like in the 20’s and 30’s but they are not like the pantries in my life. I was born in 1939 and these are my memories of our pantries.
I was in first grade and lived in a big old farm house in Massachusetts and it had a big pantry off the kitchen, or maybe it wasn’t so big but that I was small. It was narrow and long with counters over rows of cabinets and drawers under them and rows of shelves from the ceiling down to the counter tops. A window was at the very end of the room for plenty of light to come in. When you’d open a cabinet door you might see a large bin for holding your potato’s and another smaller bin behind another cabinet door for flour.
I often hid in the pantry staying very quiet so my brothers wouldn’t find me. One time I actually tried to crawl into the potato bin while hiding from them, it didn’t work, I couldn’t fit. Our pantry had long counter tops over the cabinets and mom would put two or three pies on them to cool.
Some had the kitchen sink in them and in one place we lived in Connecticut it had room for our ice box, yes we had an ice box in my day. Most families had electric refrigerators by now but we were some what poor and still could not afford to buy such a luxury item just yet. We were not alone though because in the summers I remember several kids in our neighborhood waiting for the iceman to come and deliver the ice to their homes too. When the truck pulled up to our houses we would run up to the iceman and just stand their with our hands held out like we were trying to cup some water with big smiles on our faces. He knew what we wanted because it was a weekly task and he never seemed to mind it. The task, chipping off pieces of ice for us to gleefully run off crunching on it and cold streams of water running down our faces. He wore a large black rubber cape type article on his back and large claw type tongs to grab and hold tight the big square chunks of ice, then he’d swing it over his back to carry it up to our kitchens. The ice box had a large tray under the ice shelf with a rubber tube connected to a hole in the tray that ran all the way down the back of the refrigerator to the floor resting in a good size pan that had to be emptied out every night by which ever kid was available, usually it was emptied after we got done doing the dishes which included washing, drying, and putting them up on the long shelves in the pantry.
This is what our ice box looked like.
Have you seen old ice boxes in antique shops, some of them are absolutely beautiful and can cost hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. Ours was not like them, it was a plain white box, top part held the block of ice and bottom had three shelves for the food, nothing pretty about it. I’m happy to see that in some new homes the old fashioned pantry is coming back, except not so old fashioned and folks that own these homes don’t really know what they are missing.
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