
Grandma and Daddy Sam
Let me tell you Grandma and Daddy Sam were old fashioned "picture-book" grandparents. Grandmothers today color their hair, work out at health spas, wear color coordinated "sweats," and often manage to appear little different from their grandchildren's parents. My Grandma wore dresses of dark colored cotton or crepe, with sleeves that were always below the elbow regardless of the weather. Her hemline was several inches below the knee and was never responsive to whims of fas

100+ Years of Life
“When my mother grew lettuce in her garden, my older sister and I would run down whenever it bloomed and picked off a leaf--one for each of us. Then, we would take some sugar, roll it up in the leaf, and suck on it. It was the sweetest thing; still to this day I love to eat lettuce with sugar.” Since candy was a treat that children did not often receive in the household, Nutter prided herself in the simple delicacies she and her siblings would find around the house. One of

Rites of Passage
Since we never had the occasion to experience the real perils, we found it necessary to place ourselves, occasionally, in some sort of risk or imagined danger. How else could we feel, firsthand, the delicious thrill of controlled, elective terror. Of course the youngest children could test their courage at "Frankenstein" and "Wolfman" movies. As we watched the action on screen through fingers held ready to completely cover our eyes, we demonsntrated our bravery by describi

Number Please
Because I grew up in a small Indiana farming town, content that progress should pass it by, I grew up with an institution that not many of my contemporaires enjoyed, and that succeeding generations would not comprehend. When we picked up the telephone in Warren, Indiana, we did not hear a dial tone. We heard the voice of Ella Blair, also known as "Central." She would say, "Number Please," and we would reply with a number, never any larger than three digits. "One Seven," we