Tag: life

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Family Pictures: A Kid in a Candy Store

My youngest child, Ansley, behind the counter at the Haynes Grocery and Meats candy case in the 1990s

Throughout my life, the Haynes Grocery candy case was a treat. As a child, whenever I stayed with my dad’s parents in Waycross, Georgia where I was born, they would always walk me down to the grocery to get a piece of candy from the large oak and glass case that sat on the counter. If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see a wood and glass case that drew every child from all around for a sweet treat. Parents would have to pick up their children to let them get a good look, and sometimes they would pull out the containers for kids to get a better look, as you can see above. Ansley is carefully considering what kind she would like. I can’t remember what she chose, but I do remember my choice was almost always plain M&Ms. And I remember the joy of seeing my own daughter choosing candy from that case. (You could get an ice cold bottled Coca Cola, too, and we would put salted peanuts in ours to make it better).

The store has held wide appeal for generations, and unfortunately, though the building is still there, my cousin Lucy could not continue on with the store once her parents died, so it closed and stayed in a state of disrepair for some time. Her father, my great uncle Laverne, ran the store with his wife Lucille, who died when Lucy was a young child. Laverne was the butcher, and everyone got their meats from the Haynes Grocery and Meats. I’m not sure whether Lucy has sold the store yet, but I know everyone wanted that candy case. I also don’t know who the highest bidder was or where the candy case is today, but it sure made a lot of eyes light up in its day. Once a kid in a candy store, ALWAYS a kid in a candy store.

There are two photos of the Haynes Grocery Store below, dating way back to the early 1920s/1930s era, and the one beneath it was taken in the 1990s. I look at that photo today and remember so vividly the way there and back from my grandparents’ house: out the door of the grocery, go left. Turn left at the corner, and walk down the dirt road on Creswell Street to the last house on the left before the road intersects. And if you looped the block, Great Granny Haynes’ house was on Prescott Street. And that was how fast I could get to candy back in the summers of my youth in a dirt road railroad town in the Deep South, where to this day I still don’t know how they never had central heating and air. I can still see the curtains billowing in the moonlight, hear the fan in the window and the horn of the train as it rattled down the tracks.

And every single time, I still choose the plain M&Ms.

An Abecedarian Candy Case

What to choose from the candy case? Let’s see…..

Almond Joy

Baby Ruth

Charleston Chew

Dubble Bubble

Fun Dip

Gumdrops

Hershey Bars

(I loved just looking at all the choices…..)

Jellybeans

Kit Kat

Lemonheads

M&Ms

Now and Laters? Necco Wafers?

Oh Henry!

Pixie Stix

(Quite the mix, but not so hard to pick!)

Reese’s Cups

Sugar Babies

Tootsie Pops

Unicorn Pops

Victory Bars

Whoppers

Xtreme Sour Warheads

York Peppermint Patties

Zero Bar

so many choices…..but I always picked

…..the plain M&Ms

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Family Pictures

I’m sorting family pictures this month, making piles of who gets what from the Haynes family photo albums. After Dad died last June, we found tubs and shoeboxes and plastic bins and entire furniture drawers filled with ephemera, memorabilia, sentiments, and photos. And just about everything else. Photos are all over the place in the house, but it’s work that has to be done. And I’m likely among the last generation of humans who will ever do this sort of thing now that pictures are mostly digital. I wish all of this were reduced to one simple thumb drive, but the upside is that I’m walking down memory lane and have found a theme for the month of June: family pictures. Perhaps the easiest way to let go of old photos – and lingering grief – is to give them their proper moment in the spotlight and then share with others who can decide whether to keep or discard them. I have already tossed many, but the remaining ones had some reason to land in the truck to bring home on our last trip south.

Today, I am sharing a few photos of my mother when she was a young girl. I’m using the acrostic form to capture the spirit of Miriam Ruth Jones Haynes. She was a spitfire as a child, and when she became a pastor’s wife, she was a slightly more polite spitfire. She and my father were high school sweethearts, and when she went off to Florida State University, she missed him so much that she went home to see him and the rest is history. She quit college to join him in Macon, Georgia at Mercer University as he finished his degree and went on to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. I get my love of the outdoors from her. I wish I’d gotten a whole lot more of her, but here we are…..

Miriam

Made most of her own clothes on her sewing machine

Including her wedding dress and prom dresses

Ran around on a mule named Festus with her cousin Billy

Ivory and ebony musician extraordinaire

Avid fisherman, fly fishing in rivers

Marksman, too : believed she was Annie Oakley

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Family Pictures

My mother’s father, James Earl Jones, holding a family picture, – Christmas 1988

I’m sorting family pictures this month, making piles of who-might-want-what from the Haynes family photo albums. After Dad died, my brother and I discovered tubs and shoeboxes and plastic bins and entire furniture drawers filled with ephemera, memorabilia, sentiments, and photos. And just about everything else (he never threw anything away). Ken and my sister-in-law Jennifer have done the daddy lion’s share of the work of sifting and sorting and all the things that go with closing down a life or two, so these tasks of what remains that can be done from my home five hours north are gratifying and fulfilling to be able to contribute.

Photos were all over the place in the house, but figuring out what to do with them is no small task. I should be more grateful: I’m likely among the last generation of humans who will ever do this sort of thing now that pictures are mostly digital. I wish all of these snapshots were reduced to one simple thumb drive, but the upside is that I’m walking down memory lane and have found a theme for the month of June (and the rest of 2026, in a way): family pictures. Perhaps the easiest way to let go of old photos is to give them their proper moment in the spotlight and then share with others who can decide what fits into their lives to carry forward, and whether to keep or discard them. I have already tossed many, but the remaining ones landed in our truckbed to bring home on our most recent trip south.

If you’re a blog reader who has ever dreamed of taking pen to paper and writing, or if you’re a reader with a blog of your own and would like to join me in sorting your own family photos and sharing your stories, I invite you to come along and see what we can all unearth from the annals of time as we welcome the month of June. There’s really nothing quite like family photos to spark memories that inspire stories and writing.

So to start, I’ve created a system that I hope will help me simplify and sort. Below are the blog logos and themes I plan to use for the remainder of this year using family photos to drive poems and stories. I’m using them to designate piles to sort my photos and begin writing. Under each logo is a caption with the category I’ll use as I sort……I invite you to use the same system and share your photos and stories, too, allowing the memories to drive the writing and the writing to preserve all our family stories and traditions.

Memory Lane Nonet

come walk with me down memory lane

resurrect family members

relive all the best moments

bring the past back to life

then pick up the pen

write the stories

release them

to the

world

Our Own Family, Dogs Included
Extended Family and Ancestors
Travels and Adventures
Travels and Adventures in The Great Outdoors
Celebrating Retirement
Hobbies/Sports/Art/Pastimes
Reading/Books
Gratitudes and Blessings and Family Gatherings
Christmas Travels and Family Visits
Christmases at Home

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VerseLove Day 13 – Haibun of Clarity

Our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for VerseLove is Ann Burg of New York, who inspires us to write haibun poetry. Haibun is a form that includes a prose passage to set the stage for a haiku, which immediately follows the prose. You can read her full prompt here. I reflected on a scene from Saturday morning as we ate breakfast.

The Head and The Feet

Saturday morning breakfast at the Country Kitchen on Pine Mountain we were waiting on our eggs and grits when I saw him shuffle past our table. A young and impatient mother with a crying child pitching a fit was stuck behind the elderly gentleman in in the aisle, clearly frustrated at his slow speed, in his ill-fitting sweatpants with black socks and orthopedic sandals. He veered right n the direction of the restroom and she squeezed left to her table, kid still screaming. My husband’s back was to the action as I gave the play-by-play. Notice him, I urged, when he comes back by. I thought it ironic that his orthopedic sandals looked like hiking sandals. Life can be cruel like that sometimes, but eggs arrive to scramble hard truths. I was taking a bite when my husband asked, Is that a veteran’s hat? We should buy his breakfast. And the next minute, this husband of mine – just like his mother would have done – excuses himself to walk by the man’s table to get a better look. And then I saw them talking. Why did tears fill my eyes? Why, here at this table, over eggs and bacon, coffee and grits and buttered biscuits with muscadine preserves, was I crying as I watched my husband place his hand on the shoulder of the old man and his wife as he thanked him for his service. I escaped to the gift shop to collect myself, wipe away the tears, before my husband returned with the scoop – as his mother would have done: it’s a veteran’s hat. He’s 78, was a sergeant in the Army, and he has four kids who are all currently serving in the military. His wife told me he has cancer, and when he finished chemo and his gray hair came back dark. And he always smiles. So we finished our last bites and I felt the tears welling again, excused myself to the restroom, and was almost fine until the old man walked by and place his hand on my husband’s shoulder in gesture of figuring out who’d treated them to breakfast. And I realized what we’d always said of ourselves when we walk into a place: I look down for snakes, he looks up for bees ~ and though we see things differently, we don’t miss what’s important.

I looked down, old feet

my husband looked up, saw him ~

a soldier marching

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Verse Love Day 11: The Loves

Our host today is former high school English teacher, Kate Sjostrom , a teacher educator at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Writer in Residence at the Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. 

You can read Kate’s full prompt here as she inspires us to write about emotions in concrete and abstract terms.

Brown and white bird with spotted chest singing on tree branch
A Wood Thrush sings while perched on a branch in a green forest.

Elation Over the Song of the Wood Thrush

it’s 6:38 a.m. when I hear it

we’ve just taken the boys out

to do their morning business

when a familiar note plays

from the branch-pew of a tree

on Pine Mountain

like a retro diner Jukebox favorite

a song to stir the heart

not call-like,

not chatty or operatic

definitely not theatric

(like that one lady in church,

thinks she can sing)

still, this voice offers hymn

praise to its maker and in

that way they are alike

this voice isn’t

wearing colorful Gucci garments –

picture instead

a simple watercolor painting of

dark, milk, and white chocolates

splotched with dots

and caramel feathers

the star voice of the woods

and doesn’t even know it

doesn’t show off or sing louder

like I would do with a voice

like that ~ why would I

ever say anything?

I’d sing it all, asking where the

tomatoes are in the grocery store

and what is my balance

at the bank and I’d be the

talk of the town for all the

wrong reasons ~ folks

would say I’ve gone off

the deep end

……but if I were a bird

I’d hope to be a Wood Thrush

the best voice in the choir

so humble

so unassuming

so musical

turning heads

with elation just to listen

and even sour Simon

Cowell would look up

and smile, knowing

there’s the talent

and press the Golden Buzzer

but with my Wood Thrush ways

I’d shun the competition

not needing his endorsement

I’d crap on his head

my own golden buzzer

on my way to another branch

still singing

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VerseLove Day 9: Home/Hogar

Bryan Ripley Crandall, our host today for Day 9 of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, lives in Stratford, Connecticut, where he directs the Connecticut Writing Project and is Professor of English Education at Fairfield University. He co-hosts National Writing Project’s The Write Time. 

Bryan explains his process and directions for writing, which you can read more about here.

He shares his process and the directions by inspiring us to write about our homes and places we’ve lived. I’m not thinking past today – I’m thinking future.

Person driving a vehicle on a curved road next to a lake with snow-capped mountains and pine trees
Driving through stunning mountains alongside a clear blue lake on a sunny day

My Open Road Retirement Home

a teardrop

a fifth-wheel

a bumper pull

no tent

no yurt

no fort in a tree

a camper van ~

Class A, B, or C

anywhere I can take to the road

most any RV will do for me

but with this old back and

collapsible knees

no tearjerkers for me, please

a full tank of gas

a State Park Pass

dogs by my side, ready to ride

(husband can come, too, if he’d like)

pens to write and books to read

and that is all I’ll ever need

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Making Cookies with the Kindred Spirits

If you don’t have a book club in your life, go find you one – or better yet, start one – that likes to read across a variety of genres, gather and discuss books, and be so inspired by them that there is that one little thing or two that makes you want to do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do, see, taste, or experience. People who say that books can change your life aren’t joking; my father always said that if your book isn’t changing your life, it’s time to change your book. His words were never more true than yesterday, on what was his first heavenly birthday.

That’s one of the reasons that in the Kindred Spirits Book Club, we squeeze every drop of life from every book by allowing it to take us to new places. I think back to that first book we read together in January 2025, The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend, and one of our group members noticed that one of the characters was always serving hot tea. We found a local tea room and paid them a visit one Saturday morning. One year later, we’re still going strong, seeking the full adventure that’s ours to claim as we find it between the pages.

Our last book of 2025 was The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan, and one group member noticed that the chef in the book was always talking about her cookery books. It inspired us to want to take some sort of food class – a charcuterie board class, a cooking class, or some type of cake or cookie decorating class. We found the answer right in our own small town. A retired teacher created a cookie business as her next chapter and now travels the surrounding area with her own personally-designed cookie decorating kit, setting up in homes and giving groups the opportunity to create together.

L-R: Janette, me, Joy, Jennifer, Chris Tyree, and Jill (we were missing: Martina)

We called our friend Chris Tyree of Cookies by Chrissoula, and we set Friday, February 13 as our cookie decorating party, complete with a chili dinner and the fun of togetherness – in pajamas, sweats, and slippers. We laughed, we concentrated on cookie details, and commiserated over the woes of the world. If a cookie broke, we learned how to glue it back together with icing – discoveries that become metaphors for all the broken places in our own lives. Just slap some sugary sweetness in between the jagged edges and put it back together and keep going. In a world of tension and deadlines, frustrations and disappointments, we counted our blessings and considered the icing on our cookies, so to speak.

books and friends steer swift

currents, keep us anchored as

we share adventures

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Symptoms

he’s not contagious

(according to his feelings)

he’s just taking meds

We’ve managed to avoid the germs – up until now. My husband came home with some symptoms – a headache, eye pressure, and a scratchy throat. We’re knee deep in Chick Fil A Chicken Soup for supper – and an ample supply of DayQuil and NyQuil to treat the symptoms– and we’ll call it an early-to-bed night for sure. Birthday plans (he’s turning a landmark year) for Saturday are hanging by a thread, and we’ll see how he feels tomorrow…..

and so I tell him: if he’s right about easily-treated symptoms not related to a specific sickness such as Covid, Flu A, or RSV, he’ll be up and ready for an adventure first thing Saturday morning!

I’ve never considered that a named illness could be parsed out as circumstantial symptoms, and I see this in the men in my life who refuse to slow down and acknowledge that they are sick. It brings back a few regrets with my father, who was not forthcoming about any of his medical issues that piled up (Colon Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Pulmonary Fibrosis, SVT heart condition to name four of his co-morbidities). When my aunt and uncle were visiting, they forced his hand to go to the doctor for a Covid test when he was experiencing every sign of having it. He emerged from the exam room and informed my aunt that he had “a mild case of Covid,” downplaying things as he always did and refusing to stay home and keep his distance from others. I’ve never been able to control my mouth, and that was one time I got particularly mad and popped off, “Yes, I hear those can lead to mild cases of death.”

And things between us, already agitated with my tendency to tell the truth, as he properly diagnosed me, were never the same.

Onward.

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December 3 a.m. List Poem

If anyone ever thought I was slow to forgive, they might be right. But it happens, eventually, and I suppose that is what matters. First, I have to do the work of the mind and heart ~ relive the moments, do the playbook thing where I see all the coulda, shoulda, wouldas ~ and figure out where things stand going forward. Next, I have to pray it out. It may take awhile, but eventually, forgiveness happens. I’m convinced that every single forgiveness is on the heels of some kind of grief – grief over loss of something or someone, whether it’s trust or love or life itself. That’s just the kind of thinking I do when I see a light come on at 2:47 a.m. and hear the flush of a toilet. Because toilets make me think of all the crap, and the flush makes me think of forgiveness. Today’s poem as part of The Stafford Challenge is a list poem of things forgiven along the way.

A 3 a.m. Forgiveness List Poem Because I Couldn’t Sleep

*for those dishes she’d have wanted me to have

*for that jewelry box haunting

*for that remorseless tractor

*for that church drama walkout

*for the abandonment

*for all that vamoosing and skedaddling with so much business left undone

*for that texting tailgating fender bender boy the day of the truck

*for that tuition promise unfulfilled

*for the black mold problem

*for not speaking up

*for weight, always weight, even before hello

*for that prideful stubbornness of not admitting

*for that underbus-throwing beanspilling to the aunt and uncle

*for that secret to the grave incident she pulled

*for that showerhead lock-changing liar

*for that ignorant political post and not just asking

*for number one and fifteen

*for the last of the milk

*for San Antonio and The Alamo

*for that near miss with the Mash tent

*for that phone bill

*for that Christmas of the candle throwing

*for general sheepishness

*for that stupid Longhorn sweet potato

*for that unforewarned dinner party

*for her impersonation at the jail

*for the absurdity of the Vacation Bible School casket

*for that sunrise tattoo suspicion

*for the credit card driveway

*for telling the mortician her gray nails were a perfect fit for her

*for spray painting the bumper

*for wrecking both our cars at once

*for driving across a Costa Rican raging river

*for dancing like a drunk fool to the live band on the porch of Mullet Bay

*for that ridiculous Porsche to impress that classless redhead

*for all the denial

*for seven storage rooms since 2016

*for seven storage rooms, period

*for every last damn thing in those storage rooms

*for going down that road with the Running Ws

*for staying on the boat

*for buying flowers

*for not buying flowers

*for acting like he knew all about that wooden wine box

*for writing scarce and highly-sought after and rare as hen’s teeth in the front cover of every silverfish-infested book and brandishing them as gold

*for preaching instead of coming to my graduation

*for “you need to clean the john” and saying he’d clean the cobwebs

*for leaving us at Disney World

*for that Moonie on Bourbon Street with the candy

*for asking if this was Oxford a in a pitch black Subway train in England

*for no pictures

*for no Hospice when it was long overdue

*for asking if she’d brushed her teeth when it was clear she hadn’t, and then I had to forgive myself too for considering all the places I could have put his toothbrush before he used it again

*for showing up to preach in a leather vest like he knew how to be some kind of motorcycle gangster on the death of a friend

*for the rain off the roof in a styrofoam cup

*for nearly killing Mom with a jack-knifed trailer

*for feeding her steak when she couldn’t swallow

*for the many promises he wouldn’t leave her and the neighbors finding her fallen off the steps in the yard

*for that pair of discovery sunglasses he mistook for revelation

*for acting like that stinger was a lie when it was a proven truth

*for Aaron’s sick wife in the church foyer and the twin sister I don’t have

*for those obscene squirrel pups that could have cost him his reputation

*for not forgiving what should have been

*for forgiving too soon what should not have been

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A Finished Hardscape

We’ve needed for about 2 years to redesign our front hardscape bed when the river rocks we’d put down many years ago began looking dated and worn. Instead of taking them up, we left them as the base, killed the weeds, and laid new landscape fabric over the top of the lackluster layer. We began the process a month or so ago, knowing that pacing would be important for us at our ages. Still, we wanted to do it ourselves because we’ve always enjoyed creating a vision and making it happen – – together!

We started with bright white rock (which will turn a light gray in about 6 months), curving one edge of the rock to prepare for the next layer. We also wanted to use black rock and possibly some pine straw as a way to blend some landscape into the hardscape – pine straw not really being the first choice, but a budgetary consideration and trade-off for the black rock I really wanted to be able to include in the overall design. It’s a lot like building a house – – you have to make some sacrifices to realize some gains. We added a barn scene Christmas flag and moved the American flag to the Purple Martin pole while we clean out their house, and added a faux boulder to the mix. A few solar pathway lights, a couple of my late mother’s birdbaths, and a pre-lit Christmas wreath with a sparkly red bow completed the design we’d needed to update for a handful of years. We pulled out the elephant ears and the jasmine that was everywhere, even climbing onto the roof.

Our goal was to create a low-maintenance garden look that doesn’t require a lot of weeding or fluffing. Our budget was to not break the bank. But with rocks being $12 a bag and covering the space of the bag itself times 2, we were only within budget for the white rock section. Added plants will only happen minimally henceforth, and only in pots so that we can keep the pruning and weeding under control and raise the pots if we can’t bend.

The finished hardscape

We’re satisfied with the finished look, and more than happy that the front bed work will carry us to the next decade….and now, once we’ve let our backs recover for the winter, there’ll be the beds in the back of the house that will need some attention come springtime. For the first time in my life, I see why senior citizens choose condominium living complete with groundskeeping fees. It’s tempting. Very, very tempting.

—–for now our sore backs

keep reminding us that we’re

not twenty years old…….