Hello to you all,

I am grateful for the folks who have read my new blog and a kind person who responded. It is a lonely life in my tiny cell, and being able to communicate with you means so much to me. My cellie is not much company, as you might guess. Since he has no life on the outside, any conversation has to be about this place - and he has to be right always. Sometimes, just to keep my sanity, I will agree with him on a particular topic that I know he's dead wrong on. He will pause and realize I'm agreeing with him. So what does he do? He'll change gears and contradict himself, just so he can disagree with me. And so my days go.

Now let's go back to my memories from the late 1960's up to 1975, which was a grand time to be living in America. Rock 'n' Roll was in its prime and still king, while westerns ruled the TV.

My grandparents' farm was a magnificent couple of hundred acres of fields and rolling hills, beautiful massive oak and pine trees, and several flowing creeks running through this landscape that was nestled among other passed-down from generation to generation farms in the eastern part of Chesterfield County, Virginia. Surprisingly, it was only a stone's throw from the city of Richmond. Today, one would probably have to drive fifty to sixty miles into the country from Richmond to find such farms. But as late as the 1960's and into the middle 1970's, it would only be about a ten minute drive down to the south of Richmond on Jefferson Davis Highway to be among the farms and open country. Not long after the end of the Vietnam War, a population explosion evolved in the area. The older generations seemed to all die off, leaving the farms to their children. Almost all of the children that I knew in the area sold off to real estate developers, and subdivisions of homes sprang up quicker than the spring corn that once graced the same open fields.

In the early 1960's, my parents rented a small, quaint little house on a street called Merrywood Road, which was halfway between Richmond and my grandparents' farm. Grandma did not have a driver's license, so Grandpa would drive her over to our house to care for me and my baby sister while my parents were working. I can plainly remember as if it were yesterday eagerly waiting for her to come over to stay with us. Every morning before she arrived, I would take my crayons and color small pieces of paper, then carefully hide them around the house. Behind the refrigerator and the sofa, in the cabinets - you name it, I hid the small pieces of paper there. And then, no sooner would my Mom leave for work then I would grab my Grandma's pinky or her pointer finger with my small child's hand and lead her around the house to find the hidden pieces of paper - almost always taking her directly to the spot where I had hidden them. Like the very good grandmother she was, she played right along and looked surprised when we found one piece after another. Sometimes, when situations get too tough and unbearable in here, I'll reach out into the air and grab her finger once again for comfort and strength.

During this time, before she would leave with Grandpa at the end of the day, she would cook supper for us. If there was something on my plate that I didn't want to eat, maybe squash or some vegetable that young kids don't like to eat, I would begin to cry because my parents would make me eat it. Grandma and Grandpa would stand at the back door acting as if they were preparing to leave. Grandma would look at me and say "If you eat your vegetables, I'll stay longer." I would stop my fake crying long enough for her to take her coat off, but then I would refuse to eat my veggies. Of course, this would lead her to put her coat back on and head toward the door. Then I would proceed with my fake crying again, and she would take off her coat again. She and I had a human yo-yo game going.

As time went by, and I grew up on their farm, any time I did something wrong Grandma would never punish me or say anything. However, on the way home with my parents, Mom would confront me on what I had done wrong during my stay with Grandma and Grandpa. Here I thought I had gotten away with something. But grandparents can be tricky. Perhaps it was payback time for the human yo-yo games.

Thanks for sharing this with me. I will send more along soon.