You Have to Use Your Imagination

You Have to Use Your Imagination

Imagination is a wonderful thing. With imagination, you can see things that really aren’t there. With imagination this morning, I can take a trip of about a hundred miles and a hundred years and, there I am at Etta Bend, my mother’s childhood home. I can see the farm as it was a century ago. […]

The Hundred Year Old Barn

The Hundred Year Old Barn

The Hundred Year Old Barn A Fable By Blanche Day Manos The hundred year-old barn was home to a cow, a rooster, some hens, and a mule who pulled a plow. The days they spent in working; each one did his best, and when the sun sank from the sky, the animals needed rest. But, […]

A Trip Back

A Trip Back

I’m actually writing this Tuesday evening. I’ll publish it Wednesday morning, August 5. It’s really quiet here now and it’s very nearly lonely. It’s at such times that I take a trip  back in memory, to a time a hundred or more years ago. In my mind, I go  to the small community of Etta […]

Just a Hint of Snow

Just a Hint of Snow

Trees, yard, deck are dusted with snow this morning. Just a bit. It looked pretty as it fell last night, but it wasn’t nearly the inches of snow other places got. I remember walking home from the school bus when I was a child. The bus let my brother and me out at the start […]

When Grandma Bohannon Came to Etta Bend

When Grandma Bohannon Came to Etta Bend

The Heritage of Etta Bend and Remembering Etta Bend are books of the stories of my mother’s childhood on a thriving Oklahoma farm in the last century. My cousin Carolyn Cochran Karinen drew the cover pictures for both books. Then, as now, everyone was glad to see signs of spring and know that the long […]

When the Weather Turns On You

When the Weather Turns On You

Remember the children’s story about the sun and the cold wind and the bet they had? An old man was trudging down the road in the wintertime and the wind, boisterous and braggy, bet the sun that he could blow the old man’s coat off whereas the sun didn’t have that power. So, he blew […]