A Simple Country Life

Even though I am only 33 I look back over my life and think of how great things were as a child . Life was so simple back then and not just because I didn’t have the responsibility of bills and kids it all just seems better to me. Growing up in rural West Virginia even in the 80’s the decade of excess life was quite plain . Weekends were spent with my Grandparents and not at a mall . I loved going to my Dads parents they had a huge farm and we had acres and acres to play on. Every morning we ate Grandmas home made pancakes ,fresh sausage and bacon from hogs right off the farm . In the summer time we spent the days picking berries, grapes and peaches for the best jelly you could ever eat . We picked vegetables and couldn’t wait to have them for dinner southern style green beans , fresh corn , fried green tomatoes and fried yellow squash.To me this was the food of kings . Hardly any of the food we ate was store bought my Grandma, Mom and Aunts all cooked from scratch We looked forward to helping in the garden or even stacking wood this was what we now call quality family time. We ate a home cooked meal together every night. Fast food was a real treat not a staple in our diet.                                                

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On hot summer days we had two treats we could look forward to at my Mom parents if we had all been good my Great Grandfather would give us all a dime or quarter  to go to the local store and we combined our money to get one pop and candy bar that we all shared with out any complaint . Or we got to make homemade ice cream. Each kid took a turn cranking the handle till you felt like your arm would fall all. It was well worth it in the end to get a big bowl of it with fresh berries on top. We rode our bikes all over town just waiting on the sun to set so we could catch a big jar of lightning bugs. We dug in the dirt to see who could get the biggest earth worm or to make mud pies ( and yes we even tried to eat them once or twice) . We had no computers or cell phones to call or text our friends . We had no video games to entertain us for hours on end . We had the other kids in our neighborhood and imagination .