The above classic A&J comic strip was based on a true story. So where do I get my ideas? Rhymes with “woes.” In all fairness, machine oil is one of those items that is so common it can hide in plain sight, like toothpicks in a grocery store.
Oil Can Harried
By Jimmy Johnson
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199 responses to “Oil Can Harried”
Anyone remember the picture of janis in their first drafty old apartment?
herb in sj-
herb in sj-
Many of us wish we did!
Good morning, Villagers. I do print out specially good or meaningful pics or even have them printed on the Internet. I have several cheap, reusable frames scattered around my room and sitting area and change them out frequently. They develop layers of photos that are fun to go through when I change things out. All my pics of me are taken by others. I am not a “selfie” type. I particularly love the ones taken by The Man In My Life.
You are lucky to have those, GR6. Almost all of our old family pictures were lost to a hurricane. The ironic part was they were at my brother’s house on the gulf so that he could scan and archive all of them. Nobody predicted the storm surge to surpass 11 feet and wash away his home that had previously withstood two other hurricanes and a tornado.
Bryan: I am sorry that happened to your family. This reinforces my desire never to live on the Coast.
A number of years ago, after my paternal grandmother passed, the family homestead was purchased by one of my uncles. We later learned that his wife, who we always suspected was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, had found and disposed of several boxes of family pictures going back to the early 1900’s. I had to physically restrain one of my female cousins when our aunt explained that she “didn’t think anyone would want them”.
So if you have such photos, make arrangements for them to be handled as part of your estate, the same way you would any other family heirlooms.
I have only read Ghost’s comment but my memory hackles went up at a great-aunt who is unfortunately still alive at over 100. There was an antique chest at my great grandmother’s home that held family records, letters, photos, memorabilia that went back several generations. We were only allowed to see in it with my aunt for brief times, it was special.
The custodial aunt had a stroke, mom and I rushed to hospital and house where I scrubbed and cleaned nonstop for about 18 hours. At 2 a.m. I told mom, “Let me throw the trunk in the van for safety.” I had premonition. Mom said premonition was ridiculous.
Great aunt drove nonstop from Florida in her big white Cadillac for 18 hours and when we returned to house at daylight I found the empty trunk and all contents smoldering in ashes in back yard.
Love, Jackie Monies
NOW I have read everyone’s comments and I concur! Well said all.
Seriously I lay in bed last night thinking about ancestors first or middle names. We had Aunt Tennessee, Aunt Cincinnati, my stepdad was Denver, lots of states and towns and rivers and Indian names, historic names, Washington’s and Jefferson’s and Jefferson Davis’ and presidents and generals.
I love visiting old cemeteries, I even like looking at them as we drive past and seeing the unusual shapes in the old monuments. At fall festivals we walk through the re-enactors who tell the stories of the dead interred.
Strange, as I plan to be cremated and there will be no monument. But youngest daughter plans to keep some ashes and inter them with her family (and the dogs’ ashes)
Somehow that seemed relevant to today’s A & J.
Love, Jackie Monies
Jackie, my crazy mother has already purchased my burial plot, so I guess I will let them bury me there (next to her, natch) I might as well do one thing she wants me to. It’s better than getting married and having kids IMHO
Not sure about that, Lily. One is temporary, the other permanent.
My mom keeps telling me I can be buried in the plot where my step-dad’s family reposes.
I keep saying I didn’t have anything much to say to them in life.
Were I to be buried I would want to be with family or friends I loved or at least good conversationalists. “Our Town” had a big impact on me as a child. Thornton Wilder was someone I idolized back then.
Love, Jackie mONIES
Jackie, I plan on being somewhere else than that graveyard. I don’t pretend to know whether my mother will be there or not
An interesting aspect of cremation, which I’d never considered until speaking with a cousin recently: She plans to be cremated and partially interred in one state, beside her husband; in a second state, beside her mother; and in a third state, beside her father.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think this could drive future genealogists nuts when they research cemetery records?
A tiny detail of my life plot I may have omitted. My mom was dating her cousin, she married a pilot from NC who was killed. She remarried, to the cousin whom she’d sent a Dear John letter. She never had another child.
I am doubly related to all my relatives on my maternal side to many degrees, as they began marrying the same families in the 1700’s, packed them into a wagon train for Louisiana shortly after the Revolutionary War. Arrived in LA by 1805 and stayed in same geographic area for 150 years marrying the same families!
I found the NC bunch did the exact same thing, stayed in same tight area and married same families over and over!
People whose ancestors kept moving got new DNA injections, those that didn’t have too much in common!
Love, Jackie Monies
I had already thought about that aspect of cremation. You can do exactly what your cousin proposes and I had thought about similar. Ditto, the daughter who plans to put our ashes in her mausoleum.
I have an aunt plus cousins who plan to scatter all family who wish in the pond in their property. I suggested they might put up a marker for future genealogists alongside the pond.
One thing I learned about burying cremated ashes is “NO DIY!” We had to have cemetery open a small grave and have a liner placed in open ground to place our little coffin. No boxes, bags or shoveling it into grave. Not that was ever our intent but apparently people do all of that or just sprinkle them on top.
Apparently there is a problem in Alabama of people running out during the victory celebrations on football field and dumping ashes? I read article and saw photos. Same problem exists at Disney World.
Love, Jackie Monies
Most of my ancestors are buried in and around Fredericksburg. When I was small, we used to go out and clean the tombstones as apart of family reunions, before I got canny enough to start avoiding them. Schoolwork, y’know
I know I’ve waay late commenting, but letters have gone by the wayside as well. I’ve just given back to my friends and family letters they wrote to me when we were in college that I kept over 30 years. They are as good as a journal for them. Wish they had kept my letters.
Recently my Mom handed me a bundle of small envelopes. They were the cards from the floral arrangements sent to my father’s funeral. I don’t scrapbook nor have any other idea what to do with them, but it seems wrong to just discard them. Ideas, Jackie?
Ghost: scan them and put them on disc? Doesn’t take up much room
My father kept the letters his mother sent him while he was stationed in Germany during his military service. For years they stored in a box in a closet in our basement. I knew they were there but never gave them a cursory look. I finally went looking for them when I started are family history project but somewhere along the line they must have been thrown out. I’m still mad at myself for not taking better care of them earlier.
Okee dokee…then I need to get rid of a couple of links..
Same guy comes in every week to weigh the eggs and count ‘cracks.” When he came in, Ian hollered out “James Dean”….I replied…The Eagles….both my d/a sister-in-law, and the Corp. ‘gopher’ both ‘swear’ that it was David Bowie….I new then and there I could have won a bet…but, being the humble winner that I am….I ‘wallered”, in my self indulgence of somewhat of a music enthusiast and decided not to take their money….
GR 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAK5Ids7l5g
We have a box of letters sent from my wife’s family to family back home while they were missionaries. For eight years they lived and worked in Liberia, west Africa. There are a couple of small file boxes with all the air-mail stationary, hand-written letters documenting all the happenings and general life in Liberia in the late sixties and early seventies. My wife also has a box of all the letters I sent her over the years. I haven’t done so well in recent years. It seems that letter writing is quickly becoming a lost art. Also, though it’s easier and easier to communicate we are losing much of our personal histories. It isn’t that easy to collect emails into a file box for later generations. What happens when the digital format changes, or if/when we have a global catastrophe and we lose the technology? Not having the pictures, or letters, or paper books would be a substantial loss.
25 of 148. How boring.
A distant cousin of mine still has some letters that my cousin in the Confederate Army wrote home.