SHORT SUBJECTS ON MY MIND....

By Olivene Godfrey

KRISPY KREME-- I heard last night on the T.V. news that the Krispy Kreme company was losing sales due to the emphasis on healthy diets. While I only occasionally indulge myself by buying those delectable doughnuts, Krispy Kreme beings back sentimental memories for me. When my late husband, Ralph, and I were courting, I lived in Chattanooga and he lived in Dalton, GA and he came up to see me several nights a week. We would often stop at the Krispy Kreme store in Chattanooga back in the late 1940s and buy a big bag of glazed doughnuts that tasted like bites from heaven. Since we were both young and slender, we could eat anything and never gain an ounce. As Archie and Edith Bunker used to sing, "Ah, those were the days...."

ESP.... This past week, I had one of my very few ESP episodes in my entire life. A longtime friend, Lois Odom, who lives in Chattanooga, and who used to live next door to me when our families lived in East Ridge,TN many years ago. We have stayed in touch over the years via telephone calls and letters. I hadn't heard from her in several months and she was in my thoughts on Sunday. I told son Barry I was going to call her when I thought she would be home. As I was thinking about calling her the phone rang and it was Lois! We chatted awhile and got caught up on family news.

A few days ago, I called my aunt, Willodean Cook, who lives on Missionary Ridge, near Chattanooga, who wasn't feeling well.
She is a widow now and misses her husband very much. She lives near the nursing home where my aunt, Helen Rollins, lives and who celebrated her 100th birthday Some of you may have read the column when I wrote about Aunt Helen's party. Willodean said that Aunt Helen is almost blind and deaf and doesn't have a lot to say when Willodean visits her. Aunt Helen and I stayed in touch via letters and visits for my entire adult life until a couple of years ago when she could no longer see well enough to write. She sent me cards on my birthday every year and also greeting cards throughout the year. She is a wonderful, good person who is greatly loved by the entire family.

TREE PLANT....WE have had a Weeping Fig tree plant in our dining room near a window and the humidifier we use when the humidity is low for about two years and it has thrived and grown a lot.
Lately, when the humidity has been high we turned off the machine in the house and the plant has looked droopy. Barry decided the plant needed a larger pot and re-potted it and sat the plant on the patio. From the research I have done on the plant, it is grown in the tropics and thrives on humid, hot weather so it should do well on the patio with the heat we have been having lately.

My song writer friend, Julia Bowers, and I have often discusses the question, "Is writing a blessing or a curse?" I think sometimes we both think it may indeed be a nurse. Often, I wake in the wee hours of the morning and my mind starts racing with writing ideas and I compose writing pieces in my mind, and can't rest until I have put them on paper. The last time I talked to Julia on the phone, she sang a sad country song for me and it brought tears to my eyes. Julia and I are the same age and both have health problems but I think we will be writing as long as we can hold a pen or type.

See you next week....

PLANTING SOMETHING IN SPRING BRINGS REWARDS AND JOY....

By Olivene Godfrey

I love Spring with its new greenery and flowers in bloom and warm weather despite allergy attacks at this time of year.

For years, my late husband, Ralph, had small, but bountiful, vegetable gardens at the edge of our yard near a wooded area where the soil was rich and good for growing veggies. Ralph's tomatoes were beautiful and tasty and perfect for slicing. His tomato plants produced more than we could eat so we gave a way a lot of them. Ralph also grew good crops of squash, okra, green beans, cucumbers and more. Some years he planted potatoes and corn and one year tried growing watermelons but that didn't turn out too well. He enjoyed working in the garden until he got ill. Even then, the first year he wasn't able to plant the garden himself, he gave son Barry instructions of how to plant a garden and that was his last garden.

Now the trees near the garden spot are so large they shade the garden spot and it doesn't get enough sun to grow a garden.
This year, our second spring without Ralph, Barry planted two tomatoes plants in a large container which he put on the patio in a sunny spot so he can keep a close watch on them. If the two plants produce a lot of tomatoes, we will once again give some away for the enjoyment of our friends.

For years, I had a flower bed near the house. At that time, my mother, who died in 2000, lived a few miles from our house. In the spring, I would pick her up one pretty day and we would do to a nursery that has healthy pretty bedding plants and hanging baskets of flowers. We were like kids in a toy store as we browsed in the greenhouse. When we left the nursery, my car and trunk would be filled with plants and baskets. As soon as possible when I returned home, I would plant the flowers in the flower bed that had been tilled by Barry or Ralph.
I had to work on my knees in the soil but I thoroughly enjoyed it and watching the small flowers and baskets of flowers grow brought me much pleasure.

One year, after the flowers in the bed had died. I filled several large paper bags with seeds. The next spring, I sent seeds to relatives in Georgia and Florida and they had pretty gardens that year from my seeds. As I grew older, and arthritis began to plague me, I could no longer have a flower bed. Now, I have pots of plants on the patio which we bring into the garage in the winter. This past Mother's day Barry gave me a pretty basket of white impatiens. (He also took me out to lunch at the Piccadilly Cafeteria in Chattanooga which I enjoyed very much.

Barry rescued a pitiful looking impatiens plant that had refused to die last fall. He has been putting Miracle Grow on the plant and it is perking up.

I have three pots of what Mother and I called the "purple plant"
because of its rich purple leaves. In the sunshine, the plants also produce a tiny pink flower. Mother had given me a cutting and from that, I have three large pots of what I now know is commonly called Purple Heart and the scientific name is Setreased purperpurea. It survives the winters in the garage after being trimmed down a lot. Ralph's sister, Agnes Nichols, who lived in Florida for many years, says that the Purple Heart lived in her yard there. Barry told me this week that he saw pots of the Purple Heart on sale at a K Mart store in nearby Dalton, GA. I have never seen the plant in a gardening center or nursery and had never heard of it until Mother gave me a cutting from one of her plants.

I have a large asparagus fern that I started from seeds 26 years ago and it gets huge every summer on the patio. It has red berries on it during the winters in the garage and pretty tiny white blossoms in the summer.

My Christmas cactus is about 20 years old and is a huge plant that is spectacular when in full bloom around Thanksgiving.

It is rewarding and joyful to watch something grow and thrive under our fingertips.

See you next week.

ALIBIS & GRUDGES....

By Olivene Godfrey

It is comforting to the ego to be able to alibi our failures. All of us do it from time to time. Sometimes it seems to help temporarily. But, alibis prevent us from facing the truth about ourselves which can prove costly in the long run. Alibis keep us from going to work and trying to correct our mistakes, eliminating our weaknesses and developing our talents.

It's easy to react to failure by rebelling, blaming others and circumstances beyond our control. Sometimes we nurse grudges
and resentments and continue to live in fear that something even worse might happen to us. Or, we just blame our failures on bad luck.

When faced with tragedy or a painful failure there is only one thing we can do, and that's to start rebuilding our lives as best as we can. A number of writers have penned many words regarding the necessity of trying to extract good from all of our failures-- to literally turn our failures into successes.
To achieve this state, one should take a personal inventory of every problem and failure and honestly search for conditions and causes that brought failure.

When you start to act confident, you will eventually become confident. You can't continually act like a confident person without developing real confidence. I suppose all of us are sometimes awed by dominating personalities. These positive-
asserters can often silence us and cause us to retreat. But, beneath the exterior of every person who may appear hardboiled is often to be found a sensitive, over generous nature. I've found the best way to be accepted by these people as an equal is to show them you aren't afraid of them.

To gain confidence, it is vital to plan one's life and follow the plan. The person who knows where he is going gains self confidence in the doing and eventually overcomes all feelings of inferiority.

ABOUT THOSE GRUDGES--Most of us know people who have held onto a grudge against another person for many years. The person who feels bitter about someone, no matter how justified he may think he is, punishes himself far more than the other person.
The person who lives with a grudge keeps the bitterness alive within himself, and often it affects his health, physically and mentally, an destroys his happiness.

Someone once said that bitterness feeds on bitterness, that once you remove your bitterness from your mind and heart, the bitter feelings another person may hold against you have nothing left to feed upon and must eventually wither and die. You are the sum total of what you feel about persons an things. It is how you choose to feel about whatever you think which will determine what you do with your life.

See you next week.

SLEEP PATTERNS & MEMORIES OF FAMILY FARM....

By Olivene Godfrey

We've all read and heard about mothers who think chicken soup can solve their children's problems. My mother, it seemed to me as a youngster, seemed to think potato soup, which I detested, and Pepto Bismol, which I tolerated, would relieve my anxieties ranging from stage fright before a piano recital to a quarrel with a boy friend.

When my son was a child, he would often say that I thought all of his problems could be solved by taking a hot bath and going to sleep. Well, feeling clean and rested certainly should make one more comfortable in his misery.

And on the subject of sleep, sleeping too much can cause just as many problems as not sleeping enough. according to a University of California, San Diego, study of 100 adults' sleeping habits. They found the perfect amount of sleep to be between seven and eight hours a night. I have found this to be true for me. If I lose too much sleep, I feel physically ill and have problems just functioning.

GRANDPARENTS FARM REMEMBERED-- I think I was fortunate to have had grandparents who lived on a farm which was located in Pelham Valley in Middle Tennessee where I was born in a Methodist parsonage. A year later, my parents left Pelham and settled in Chattanooga, TN where I grew up. Every summer I'd spend several weeks with my paternal grandparents and my two aunts who lived with them. My parents and sisters and I also visited the farm often throughout the years. All eight of my grandparents’ children were born in the old house and I loved to sneak in the parlor which was rarely used except for very special guests. I remember at night hearing the clock struck eight and my grandfather started getting ready to retire. He went to bed then regardless of who was visiting the farm.

As a child one of the things I could always be certain of was that my grandmother would have a rather elaborate glass dish filled with honey on the long dining table at her house.
My grandparents spoiled me outrageously when I would visit.
and I always ate from a certain plate I'd admired. Then there came the day when my grandparents and aunts seemed nervous before dinner. Finally, they told me that my favorite plate had been broken. I think they took it harder than I did.

Being a "city girl” I enjoyed churning and gathering eggs and playing in the hay loft, all things my son and many others today have no knowledge of. Of course, I imagine if I'd lived on the farm and had to perform chores they wouldn't have been as enjoyable.


We often visited relatives who lived near the farm. One of my favorite places to visit was the farm owned by my Aunt Clara and Uncle Henry White and their three sons, Alton, Fred and Ralph, and daughter, Laura Ann, who was one of my favorite cousins and a playmate. I remember that Aunt Clara was always cheerful with her eyes just dancing as she laughed and joked with us. Sometimes we would eat a meal with them at a wooden table with benches on each side of it. And, I remember the delicious food and fun we had then.

Laura Ann and I still stay in touch via letters and phone calls. Her parents and brothers are all gone now but she is a strong woman and stays busy with her house, yard and a vegetable garden each year on the old home place.

See you next week.

ANNIVERSARY STIRS MEMORIES....

By Olivene Godfrey

Fifty-seven years ago today, May 1, my late husband, Ralph, and I were married in a little chapel in Dalton, GA. The church was packed with relatives and friends who had come from far and wide to attend our wedding. The weather that day was warm and sunny, and I remembered the old saying, "Happy is the bride the sun shines on.... as I dressed for the most important date of my 19 years.

Ralph's father, and mine, were Methodist preachers. So, my daddy gave me away and said a special prayer during the ceremony, and Ralph's daddy married us. We had expected that some of our friends would "decorate" Ralph's car during the ceremony so Ralph's daddy who had a brand new 1947 Chevy said we could borrow it for our honeymoon. We had packed our bags and put them in the new car's trunk before the wedding. And, we thought we were very clever when we prepared to leave in the new Chevy only to discover that someone had let the air out of one of the Chevy's tires. After a brief wait, we headed south on Old Highway 41 and a caravan of our friends followed us for several miles, blowing their car horns.

After stopping at a nice restaurant for supper, we drove to the old Henry Grady Hotel in Atlanta. At that time the hotel was quite elegant and we had reservations for three days. During our trip, we enjoyed a movie at the beautiful Fox Theater, window shopped, browsed through stores and ate our meals in nice restaurants.

This morning when I got up, I remembered that this was May 1 and I got out a bag of my treasured mementoes and found the Henry Grady Hotel bill for $16.50 dollars for three days. Add to that our meals and other expenses and it came to a princely sum in 1947, for a young couple who weren't wealthy and were just starting out in the world.

During our 55 years together, Ralph and I had our ups and downs but our love for each other always sustained us. On our 50th, seven years ago, Ralph's health was failing but he was still mentally alert. And a week or so before our anniversary, Ralph gave me some money and said, "Buy a gold chain for our anniversary and thanks for putting up with me all these years.
With tears in my eyes, I replied, "Thanks. And you haven't been too bad to put up with and you had to put up with me, too."
We both grinned and shared a quick kiss.

Our son, Barry, took us out to dinner on our Golden Anniversary and I wore the gold chain with my wedding ring on it as I can't wear rings any longer because of my arthritis in my hands.

I have worn the chain often and I think of Ralph each time I put it on, especially since he died August 20, 2002, leaving a large emptiness in my life. But, I try to remember the good times we had together and Barry and I talk about Ralph often and he lives on in our hearts.