The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads!

[HairOfTheDog]

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

Journey to the Cross-roads
The Two Towers Edition

Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)

Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.

[Wneighbor]

On the other hand, you should at least remove your bellybutton rings before service.

BWAAAHA HA HA HA HA!!!

I do well to remember to get up, get dressed, brush teeth, brush hair, put on shoes, find keys and go out the door. Adding removal of belly button ring would have to be done in the pickup on the way there... if I remembered it.

Oh, and I tend to make it to church week after week after week in jeans and T-shirts. Everybody always makes a big deal out of it when I'm up and awake enough that I wear a dress. Which gives me all the more reason to avoid putting on a dress for church, it bugs me when they go on about it.

[Wneighbor]

Taking the cue from getting my grama that book. And the fact that I rather don't mind journaling. I have been writing stuff down for my grandkids ever since Abby was born.

My favorite technological advancement? The Electric Blanket!

So, what's everybody else's favorite tech advancement?

[Wneighbor]

Her whole demeanor was like a performance, to draw attention to herself. I didn't hardly pay any attention to her, other than notice her hair which you couldn't miss.

I think you might have had one of my ex-mothers-in-law there. Last time I saw her she had purple hair that was about an inch long. She was in missions on a reservation in New Mexico. Different. Definitely different.

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, for my lifetime it would have to be computers.... Second most life-changing would be cable television. When I was a kid, because we were in the country, we had two channels that came in fuzzy and sometimes unwatchable if the weather was bad.

I wish I could think of something as goofy as pre-colored margerine. I am sure there is something like that, that would surprise a younger, but I can't think what!

[Overtaxed]

Water heater, washing machine.

[Wneighbor]

Water heater, washing machine.

MMMmmmm. I like those choices! I didn't have a washer for the 4 years prior to moving here. That sucked. And in the country, occasionally, we'd run out of propane in the middle of the winter and that cold water was worse than not having the fires lit.

[Overtaxed]

When the power goes out for days, I miss the hot water the most. And I just can't see me scrubbing clothes on a washboard.

[Wneighbor]

You know, I've only had cable TV about 3 months of my entire life. Like you we only got 2 channels when I was a kid. However, in all the adult time there have been lots of channels available without cable. (of course not as many as WITH)

[HairOfTheDog]

I put together a family history book from interviewing my grandmother, and collecting a lot of old diaries and letters and things that she had from her parents and earlier. She had written a 'biography' as a high-school project, and kept it. Great stuff and dates that she wouldn't have remembered otherwise, and those stories reminded her of other stories while she read it. I listened and typed furiously into my computer all those stories while she talked, about her first washing machine, and how when they sold the farm and moved west in the late '50s, she refused to sell her washing machine bacause it took so long to get it. She loved it so much she made grandpa rent a trailer they could pull to bring that with them.

Her parents had a journal about coming over from Norway, and how they sold everything to get the money to come from Norway except my great-grandfather's tools, which he brought over so he could find a job as a carpenter. We still have that toolbox in the family, and we now know the rest of the story.

[Wneighbor]

Since we went to Grama's 2 or 3 times a week anyway I just carried my laundry to her house and did it there while we visited or did her errands. So, that was workable - but not good. You know how sometimes the kid comes home late in the evening and says "oh yeah, mom I need my white band shirt washed and ironed for tomorrow!" And we were 20+ miles from Grama's house.

[HairOfTheDog]

I was without a washing machine for much of my college time, and we would take bags and bags to the laundromat on saturday mornings.

[Overtaxed]

Yeah, I did that during college and a few years after too. I hate laundromats.

[HairOfTheDog]

You know what is funny about grandma is she never really valued the clothes dryer. She still liked to hang stuff out to dry if it wasn't raining because the clothes would be 'crisper'. "except towels. towels get crisp enough to take your skin off!

[Wneighbor]

Those are awesome stories! I love doing stuff like that with my Grama. I always figure the stories are boring to most people but they are wonderful to me! I love my grandparent's first date. His work was driving a truck. It was a 1924 Ford. The year was 1931, great depression. He drove her up to the top of the highest hill overlooking the river bottom, pushed the car off, jumped in and they rolled down the side of the "mountain." The spot is right outside of the town where they lived and I grew up. About a mile from Grama's house. Myranda and I pass it when we got home from here. Grama says it was the scariest thing that ever happened to her. LOL must have been their version of a roller coaster.

[Overtaxed]

I like the smell of clothes that are line dried so I agree with grandma there.

[Wneighbor]

OMG! in college you're supposed to sleep on Saturday mornings!!!!

[Wneighbor]

I'm with her. I don't use my dryer except in the winter if things would never dry on the line. All the time I did without a washer my dryer worked fine though.

[HairOfTheDog]

My grandma was a great when the power went out when I was visiting the beach house, and we knew it could be out for days. She was 85, and I thought it would be a hardship. I asked her if she wanted me to take her down to Mom's where they had power still. She said... "I lived without power for over 30 years in Minnesota!" And proceeded to make coffee and eggs on the woodstove and get along just fine!

And she would tell me stories. She was one of 11 children then, and she said "It was cold in Minnesota in the winter, and there wasn't much to do at night when it got dark, so we ended up with a lot of children" HA!

[Wneighbor]

I think we lost 2J and Jen talking about all this old stuff. Steve probably came in. Jen is shaking her head NO - NO this can't be happening. They're being like my grandmother!

[HairOfTheDog]

;~D