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Aunt Norie’s sewing room

By Eleanor Mckee - | Dec 25, 2007

I often ask, “How far back can you remember? What is your earliest memory?”

Looking back, enjoying, reliving those memories, they are the stories we can tell our grandchildren.

I was visiting with two elderly gentlemen the other day while waiting in the doctor’s office, talking about the days that were, the weather; always a good topic. Those days not too long ago, many of us remember when there were no weather forecasters. Think about that for a moment: We just could not function without them now; where would we be? In the olden days, I guess we just stayed prepared for anything. My dad used to say, “If you don’t like the weather today, wait 30 minutes and it can change.” And very often it did – and sometimes drastically.

Back to those memories. I grew up north of Topeka and west of Holton. There were no hills, not real ones. I must have been about 4 when I saw the biggest hill ever.

There was no traffic, so dad had been able to stop his Model T Ford at the top of this hill to show us kids. “Oh look at this hill. Do you think we can make it down this hill?” Then slowly, oh so very, very slowly, that shiny black car creaking and groaning, down, down, we came. Oh what a thrill, I remember it still.

Then of course we had to get back up that hill. Another thrill was the chug, chug, chug of the little Ford climbing up that long hill. “Are we going to make it, are we going to make it?”

We were often in Topeka, and there were hills of course – but oh not like this one. No, this particular hill became our special hill.

Oh the excitement when we learned we had to go to Kansas City, for special equipment or supplies and we would come upon the hill again. Why this hill even had sideboards on its sides. We kids would get excited “are we there yet,” “how much farther dad?”

Many years later I would learn the name of that hill. Right : it was Tongie’s Hubble Hill.

Here we are going off into a new year. May it be a very blessed year for all of us : 2008 and may it be great !

See you then.

Write to Aunt Norie at P.O. Box 265, Tonganoxie 66086.