Front Porch Sittin'

I grew up picking green beans at my Gramma and Grandpa's house in the country. Nearly every weekend during the summer, my parents would take my brother and me up to the farm to pick, snap, and can buckets and buckets of green beans. My grandparents didn't have any air conditioning, so we would either snap beans in the cool basement or on the front porch swing in front of fans. This was my childhood, and at the time, I didn't enjoy it one bit. Stooping down for hours and hours picking green beans was literally back breaking work and it was so so hot! At the time, I did not feel this was a good way to spend Saturdays. But now, looking back at those memories, I would do anything to pick and snap green beans with Gramma and Grandpa again...especially Grandpa, he had a quirky talent of snapping a bean with just two fingers.

Today in my own garden I picked a "mess" of beans. A mess of beans, in Hoosier language, is enough beans to cover one dinner and it normally consists of green beans, sausage, onions, and potatoes covered with pepper. It's a simple, easy to make meal, and when I eat it, I go back in time when I can hear the rattle of the old pressure cooker on Gramma's stove and hear stories told by Grandpa about his "soldier" days with the National Guard.

My sweet Grandpa, named Wid, known by almost every farmer in Indiana for his gift of gab, far fetched stories, and flirtatious way with the ladies, passed away at the ripe old age of 93 on April Fool's Day this year. God definitely has a wonderful sense of humor taking my Grandpa, the funniest guy I've ever known, on the funniest day of the year. This week Grandpa's oldest sister, my Great Aunt Rhee, decided to join him up in heaven. She was 99 years old. I loved my Aunt Rhee even though I didn't get to see her very often. She was so sweet and special and always had the best smile. Their middle sister, my dear Great Aunt Lou, passed away six years ago, she was also in her 90s.

I know that Grandpa, Lou, and Rhee are in a much better place now, but my heart is a bit heavy today. All three of them are gone and it's officially the end of a huge part of our family tree. The life wisdom of that generation, all the experiences they lived through, all their memories are now just found on the pages of family photo albums and history books. How will future generations live without all their knowledge and leadership? It's definitely a new page for our family, but I'm so very thankful that I got to have so much snappin', porch sittin' fun with my Grandpa. And I definitely will be thinking of him tonight as I'm eating my "mess" of green beans.

Thanks for reading my Country Squawk,

Kelly