Tag: life

My New Driver’s License

“Look at me”, I argued – pointing to a very large belly. “I am married, and I am having a baby. Why should I have to have someone sign for me to drive.” He was unsympathetic to the insult.

keys hanging on the wallMy New Driver’s License
By: Ellouise Schoettler

In July, I went to the Motor Vehicle Express Office to renew my Maryland driver’s license Express is just part of the name of this place, not a description of the service, so while I waited in line for an hour, I had time to think about my history in the whole process of being licensed to drive a car.

I got my first driver’s license in 1953 by taking driver’s education during my junior year at Central High School in Charlotte, NC. A breeze —

Four years later, when it was time to renew my driver’s license, I was a married woman, and Jim and I were living in Baltimore. Two weeks before my 20th birthday, I was pregnant with our first child. Continue reading “My New Driver’s License”

Picking Blackberries: How to Develop Personal Storytelling

We all have such stories that are recalled by a specific incident, by seeing an old toy at a flea market, by tasting a certain food or passing a place from our past. These kinds of stories keep us in touch with our roots and allow our descendants to understand a little of how we-and they-came to be who we are today.

Picking Blackberries: How to Develop Personal Tales
By: Granny Sue

Picking blackberries this summer brought back a flood of memories,

a bowl of freshly picked blackberries

especially of days spent in the berry patch as a young mother, picking berries with my four older sons. We spent a lot of time picking

berries-they were a mainstay of our diet because I canned them for winter cobblers, made them into jam for topping pancakes, toast, and biscuits or for sweetening oatmeal, or canned blackberry juice to mix with the juice from the Concord grapes. Sometimes, when the berries were exceptionally plentiful, I made blackberry wine too, which I mixed with elderberry wine to make a clear red wine with a nice bite.

Our farm had many berry patches in the old overgrown pastures, and we found even bigger and better berries along the logging roads on White Rose Ridge, a few miles away. We didn’t worry too much about snakes, although we kept our eyes open for them. We didn’t worry about scratches and pricks on our arms either, and it usually looked like we had been in a catfight after a week of berry picking.

Continue reading “Picking Blackberries: How to Develop Personal Storytelling”