Predicaments and Ponderings Blog

August is birthday month in our home. It begins with my son Chase, moves to a grandson, then Tim, me, a daughter-in-law, and ends with Mom. It’s sorta crazy.

There was a time when celebrating a birthday was really fun for me. I loved it when my boys were little. I’d make cut-up cakes in the shapes of trucks, dinosaurs, or rabbits. We’d celebrate with family. It was just fun. But then…

Those sweet and somewhat pesky kiddos grew into men, and well, when they have their own families, cut-up cakes are no longer a priority. My thing is to now call them and sing happy, happy birthday, oh, happy, happy birthday. Happy, happy birthday, oh happppy, happpppy, birthday. It makes them laugh, and when the day comes that I step into heaven, I hope they remember those times I sang to them a thousand times over.

When I was a child, we had a local hardware store that stocked everything from work clothes and tools to great toys of the day. They carried Colorforms. I loved Colorforms. I only had one set as a child, and I really took great care of it. When the vinyl stickers stopped sticking, I’d wash them and pray they’d stick again.

Wait. What? What’s Colorforms? Oh, law. Please tell me you know what Colorforms are? Google it.

Anyway. The hardware store had great toys. They were simple, but loads of fun. We live about an hour from Black Mountain, NC, and it’s always well worth our time to drive there. They have the coolest, old-time Hardware store that carries all those fun toys I had as a child. Yes, even Colorforms. My point is, the toys at the hardware store are not toys you find in Target. So, it’s a blast to browse the aisles and reminisce.

I will say, this is where I shop for those fun things for my grandsons. This year, I found our sweet Sawyer a wooden turtle that you paint for his birthday. It had wheels that, when you pushed it, caused the turtle’s head to bob in and out of the shell. That turtle was awesome, and on top of that, you could paint it any way you wanted. Man, oh, man. What fun. (I know. Try to get your head out of the video games long enough to imagine.)

Imagine. See, that’s the whole thing about the toys in the hardware store. You actually used your imagination. For instance, there was a Slinky. There was a wooden rifle that had a string and a cork attached. You pulled back a little rod and pushed it really fast to pop the cork. The string was only about six or seven inches long, and the force of the air was no more than what would come from blowing your nose, but man, it was a hoot. You could walk around the house, imagining all sorts of things were stalking you, and then POP! Shoot those rascals with a cork. (Oh, come on. When I was a child, kids could play with wooden guns and not actually grow up to shoot someone. We didn’t have CSI on television in those days to strike up our evil side.)

My point is the hardware store always carried toys that made playing a real adventure. I want my grandchildren to experience that too. At Christmas, the hardware store carried the full-size Etch-a-Sketch. I will admit, I could buy that at Target, but it was pint-sized—teeny, tiny, stocking size, and they only had them during Christmas. What a shame. I searched their entire toy section and never found a regular Etch-a-Sketch—Leggos everywhere, weird games, and science toys, but no toys that really touched the imagination. When my older grand opened that Etch-a-Sketch, he just stared. His mom and dad went crazy and couldn’t wait to show him how it worked. Once the grand saw how to work the Etch-a-Sketch, he was on the couch in a whole new world, drawing what was in his IMAGINATION.

Yeah, birthdays aren’t as much fun these days. They come and go and prove that I’ve survived another year, but despite the automation of toys, birthdays allow me to remember. They remind me of a simpler life—one my boys will probably not remember as much, and my grands will never know. Birthdays for me are a long time past when a pasteboard box made a great sled, and a bicycle meant having to actually pedal up a hill using your strength, not flipping a button to a battery. It was roller skates, and roller rinks where kids from tiny to adult whizzed around the concrete floor to the tunes of The Four Seasons, Supremes, Jackson Five, and the Monkees.

I know that God blessed me by allowing me to be a child of the 1950s. He knew I’d love that era, those moments to develop my creativity and grow up to use those memories to fuel stories. Better yet, having those memories and reviving them.

Now that I’ve plowed past 66 and onward toward 70, I don’t expect gifts. I have all I need, but I do expect my children and husband to remember me. A phone call is good. That’s all I need. (Though the Prince gets me flowers, which I gladly accept.)

Anywho, let’s get back on track. The old-time hardware store. When I was a child, Dad would take me to the Lynn Garden Hardware store. I remember he’d push open the heavy glass doors and say, “Look, but don’t touch.” Then he’d let me go straight to the toy section. I did what I was told, looking but never touching. My eyes scanned shelf after shelf of simple, but fun toys. Tops, music boxes, jacks, Old Maid cards—jump ropes, and pogo sticks. You get the drift. Well…maybe you don’t if you’re too young. Though I rarely got to choose a toy to take home, Dad was great to buy one of those giant-sized Hershey bars. We’d sit in his truck (a used Chevy that the previous owner had painted gold, obviously with spray paint. Lovingly called The Golden Goose by his coworkers) and share a square of Hershey Bar. It was a sweet, sweet memory for me.

Memories are fun for the most part, even though sometimes we really have to scrape away the cobwebs to get to them. The simpler life is gone. Automation has taken over, and honestly, tends to keep us up at night. But when I take these moments to dig back into my memory and pull out these sweet thoughts, I can savor them. I tried to give a few of those memories to my boys. I haven’t asked if they remember the cut-up cakes and Slinkys. It’s a hopeful dream that they will recall those moments. But for me, the goal is to bring in a touch of the past—a nod to my childhood, when you had one toy, not a basket full, and a bicycle with a folded piece of cardboard clothes pinned to the back wheel.

As long as I can find an old-time hardware store, I’ll keep bringing this tiny bit of nostalgia into the lives of the grands, just like I did with my boys. By the way, Sawyer turned seven recently. I caved and got him a set of Legos he wanted, but then the hardware store screamed, so I found a boxed car that you had to build with a real motor. Oh, and that wooden turtle.

After Sawyer opened all the presents his friends had given him, I noticed he vanished to the far side of picnic shelter. There he sat, on the floor, pushing that wooden turtle and making the turtle’s head bob in and out of the shell. For me—success. A simple wooden turtle and his imagination.

As we got ready to load up and head home, Sawyer ran over and put his arms around me. “Nana,” he whispered in my ear. “You get the bestest presents.”

And that made it all worthwhile.

*Photos created through Microsoft Copilot AI

Coming Soon

We’re well into the production phase of making this book happen. Kregel Publications is a wonderful publisher. I can write the story, but the people behind me who primp, polish, and spitshine really make the presentation of the book so “reader pleasing.” 

Mark your calendars. Plan to pre-order the book. When you pre-order a book, you are showing the publisher that you support me as a writer—that you believe in me and that you want to see more. This reassures the publisher they made a good decision in contracting my book. That means, they will probably contract another. If you like my work, plan to pre-order the book when it is available. I would be grateful.

And if you are curious about what comes after The Eyes of River...then imagine this.

The flood of 1916 that equaled Hurricane Helene in the mountains of Western North Carolina and Upper East Tennessee. Then couple that with a second storyline about family lost and family found with Hurricane Helene. Walk with Roy and Bess as they lose family and learn to cope, and then meet Sarah and John Mark living through the aftermath of Helene in Erwin, TN. See how their arms stretch across 100 years to interlock fingers and connect family to family. The working title: Come Hell or High Water.

Photo created in Microsoft Copilot AI