Barbara and Kathy said about the same thing > My family were from Pennsylvania, German, Irish and Scotch, but mostly > German. My mother always served applesauce with pork and I do that today. > And with > mashed potatoes and sauerkraut it is even better. I am glad you discovered > how > delicious it is. Dear Barbara and Kathy, Thanks for pointing out the obvious to me. Just because Mother never served applesauce with pork, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes doesn't mean that a whole bunch of other people didn't. My recent experience surprises me in that I hadn't discovered before how tasty applesauce was with pork, et al. vee

Dear Folks, Early this evening my phone rang and he cheerfully announced that he was John who was calling me. I had to think for a minute. Was it my brother John who lives in Texas? Was it possibly John who mows my lawn. No, he had to explain that he was John from next door. In an instant I knew what he meant. John is the father of my next door neighbor Ken. Well that perked up my ears and he immediately told me that he and his wife Pattie wanted to bring me over a Mother's Day dinner. Well, you can't argue with that! :-) In a few minutes both of them came over loaded with lots of goodies. First was a large paper plate filled sky high with baked beans, macaroni salad, 2 grilled large spicy hot dogs and two hamburgers. I estimated that the one plate will make six dinners for me to put into my freezer. Along with the plate was a paper bag holding two hot dog buns and two Kaiser hamburger buns. Don't worry, I'll freeze them and enjoy them. In addition was a foil-wrapped package with two nice chunks of Italian or Polish sausage. But the final piece de resistance was the dessert. It was a large serving of moist strawberry cake topped with vanilla icing. Oh my goodness, they had brought me enough food for me to enjoy for a week! What made it all so special is that I've never been a mother and of course I've never been a grandmother or a great-grandmother. My own mother has been gone for over thirty years and since then I've joined in Mother's Day celebrations of my sister Norma and my niece Deb. But this Mother's Day felt like my own Mother's Day celebration. Just for me, a non-mother. How nice that felt! vee

Vee, My family were from Pennsylvania, German, Irish and Scotch, but mostly German. My mother always served applesauce with pork and I do that today. And with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut it is even better. I am glad you discovered how delicious it is. Now, I must unsubscribe to "Folks". We will be on the road to Lewiston for the next few weeks. I'll be back soon. Barbara Moll

Dear Folks, I'm embarrassed to even post this immodest message but I guess I'm compelled to at this hour. It has to do with the editing I've doing on the stories I want to include in my eventual book. A number of the stories are those that I wrote years ago and frankly I had forgotten about some of them. But now as I re-read them I'm so impressed with my style back then and the lyrical quality of a number of them. It's been only about eight years since I wrote the first of them, but where did all of that come from? I only know that I still remember being so passionate about the subject and reveling in the memories of them. But more than that, I so want to share all of them with you again in book form. No, I'm not trying to peddle my book. I only want to share bits and pieces of my life with you again that you can sit down and read at your leisure. Frankly, I'm looking forward to reading my "life story" in book form myself. I think that eventually I'll figure out what my whole life has been all about. vee

Dear Folks, I know that a couple of months ago I moaned and groaned to you that my TV was bugging me. It had to do with my favorite classical music channel that plays wonderful music without any commercials or any commentator's voice regarding the music about to be played. It was so perfect for me to listen to as I read my murder mystery books and so perfect when I went back to my computer to work on editing my stories. But the one thing that bugged me was the written commentary on the screen about the composer or the artist or the orchestra. My current eye glasses didn't allow me to read such fine print and I could only guess who any of them were. That's when I got up the courage to ask my next door neighbor Ken if he would move my TV closer to my easy chair so that I could read everything. He was only too glad to do it. For only a day or two I was in heaven. I could read more clearly the commentary but it didn't take long before I realized that I still couldn't read every word in the fine print. However, what I kept reading bugged me more than before. Let's say that the composer was unknown to me and I was interested in his history/biography. But no matter how long I listened and watched, I still didn't have a clue who he is/was or what time frame he lived in. For the most part the commentary was about the orchestra that was playing the music and all of the conductors who had ever been associated with it. I could go on and on (which I've already done) but I want someone to move my TV back where it originally was. I know that I still can't make out the fine print but at least I won't have to put up with trivia that I have no interest in. Note: BTW, at this moment in my office I'm hearing the beginning passionate passages of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Dit dit dit DAH! vee

Dear Folks, For the past couple of days I've been having an exciting exchange with one of our listmembers on the subject of classical music. She has many degrees in the field of music and she's been trying to teach me the difference between a minor chord and a major chord. Frankly, she stirred up a lot of interest on my part. In the midst of our talking about the subject, when niece Deb came over yesterday afternoon she told me a cute joke that fit in with the subject of music. Question: What do you get when you throw a piano into a mine shaft? Answer: A Flat Miner! When I shared that joke with Mary Ellen, she came back with a couple of her own answers: And, I suppose if that mine shaft is in the deep south, it's De Flat Miner! Then there's "Gee, flat miner!" And, "See, flat miner!' See what you started? I found that hilarious and just the thought of it right now, it still makes me smile. I just had to share that with you. vee

Dear Folks, I told you that I had been given a nice container of homemade applesauce and when I tasted it, it was delicious. But ever since then, I've been in a quandary. I don't eat desserts and I don't bake up any applesauce cakes. So it has been sitting in my refrigerator waiting for me to enjoy. I had looked through hundreds of recipes calling for applesauce and the closest I came to anything I might particularly enjoy was all the recipes that called for applesauce to be cooked with pork chops or the like. That's when I got daring. A while ago I had cooked up a nice pot of pork and sauerkraut and I still have some in my freezer. I usually have a simple dinner of pork, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes--the best! But I kept thinking about pork and applesauce and that's when I got the idea of having my usual dinner but also serving a sauce dish filled with applesauce. Wow, I really gilded the lily with that idea! I was amazed at how well the taste of applesauce blended in with the pork, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. I wouldn't have guessed that in 100 years!! vee

Vee - you wrote: >" It was like talking to your best girlfriend." This is something I feel most women want, whether or not they are married, young or old(er). Call it a gal thing ;-) Evelyn

Dear Folks, Among the stories about my memories of WWII, I described what it was like to go through air raid drills and the precise instructions about what to do in case the sirens started to sound. Our family was prepared and we followed the regulations to the nth degree. We had our windows covered with blackout drapes, we turned all of the lights out and we huddled in a closet underneath the staircase that led to the second floor of our house in case bombs would fall. But all the while I remembered that Daddy received phone calls prior to the sirens to alert him to the air raid drill that was going to be held. The reason that he had been forewarned was that he was general superintendent of Pittsburgh Metallurgical Corp. that ran their blast furnaces night and day to get out the necessary makings for steel production for the War Effort. But here's what puzzles me. I clearly remember the necessity of blackout curtains in our houses in order to disguise the fact that there was a city below in case of German enemy planes flying overhead looking for a large city to bomb. But what in the world could you do if you were in charge of blast furnaces that lit up the sky on a daily basis? Certainly you couldn't throw blackout curtains over the chimneys and if there would be one thing the enemy would be searching for was to bomb a factory of that sort. As closely as I listened to my parents talking about such things in the evening, I still don't have a clue how you could possibly blackout a fiery blast furnace. Still puzzled. vee

Dear Folks, This a message that Evelyn tried to send to the list but for some strange reason it never got there. Hello all Lately I've been listening to old time radio show tapes from our public library. They include Fibber MaGee and Molly, Phil Harris, Ozzie and Harriet. It was on the latter one that I learned a history lesson. At the end of one of their shows they say - "The war is over but our government needs our tins, to send food to our soldiers in Europe and the Pacific; to send medical supplies for our wounded soldiers and to put civilian goods back on the market. The need is great and the supply is limited. It will take some time before we can get normal shipments to such places as the Dutch East Indies and Malaysia. So for the time being our most valuable tin mines are the American kitchens. Lets make sure to properly prepare our tin cans for salvage; the labels removed, the tin washed thoroughly in accordance with local requirements." I don't know the date of this broadcast, but the continued saving of tin cans was news to me. Wasn't even aware of such announcements, though some of you may have. Evelyn, always learning (Vee here) Well, I have to admit that I don't recall that we continued to save tin cans after the war either. Therefore, I guess it's news to me too. vee

Dear Folks, This afternoon my niece Deb came a-knocking on my door. How great! We hadn't seen each other in several months. One of her first comments was to tell me how much better I looked since the last time she had seen me. My face had filled out and it didn't have such a drawn look to it. We sat down in our favorite chairs at the kitchen table and I filled her in regarding yesterday's doctor appointment. When I told her that the doctor was recommending a Life-Alert "bracelet," Deb was pleased as punch. She told me how she was, how her kids are and how her grandkids are and we got caught up on a lot of things in our personal lives. We got to talking about computers and she wanted to get into her Yahoo personal site while she was here. No problem. I led the way to my office with my handy-dandy walker and on the way I told her that the walker is the love of my life. The minute I got the words out and realized what I had said, I laughed my head off. I asked her if that's what they mean when they say, "You know you're getting old when . . ." Oh how pathetic! The love of my life is a walker! :-) After an hour or so she had to leave and we gave each other a BIG hug. We had such a nice one-on-one talk, the kind we've had many times in the past. It was like talking to your best girlfriend. vee

Let's all put this in our prayers for Vee. Charles ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vee L. Housman" <housman@adelphia.net> To: <NYNIAGAR-FOLKS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 9:02 PM Subject: [FOLKS] Doctor's VA appointment & Life Alert > Dear Folks, > > This afternoon I had my usual doctor's appointment at the VA and Doctor > Janet (nurse practioner) and I had a nice pleasant conversation. I > confessed all my aches and pains to her but it wasn't anything she hadn't > heard from me before. She really knows my medical background and we've > never beat around the bush with each other. > > She remarked at how fit I looked and I let her know that I was getting > along really good considering the shape I'm in. I also let her know that > I hadn't fallen down in months now. That was really good news. > > It was then that she asked me if I had considered Life Alert. That's the > system where you wear an electronic device around your neck and in case > you fall down or have some sort of emergency, you can just press the > button and get help. In answer to her questions I said yes, BUT. What > had always turned me off was that I would have to hang a clunky button > around my neck just in case. Her response was that now they have the > button on a band that you can wear around your wrist like a wrist watch. > > WHAT?? I hadn't heard about that and in an instant I knew that I could > handle that with no problem. Would the VA issue me the whole Life Alert > system? She felt that they would and she put an order/prescription in for > me. > > I was so thrilled with the thought that my eyes teared up. For months now > I've made certain that in the evening I tuck a bulky cordless phone into > my pants pocket just in case I wouldn't be able to reach any of my other > two phones to call my neighbors or call 911. > > If the VA were to issue me the Life Alert system complete with a "wrist > watch" button, it would take so much off my mind. Do I dare hope?? > vee >

Dear Folks, Every once in awhile I remember many episodes of the cartoon TV program, The Simpsons. When I first watched it, I was appalled with the boy Bart's attitude toward school and his familiar comment, "Eat my shorts!" I felt that the show was definitely not a role model for kids who watched cartoons on TV. However, the more I watched it the more I realized that it wasn't written for kids at all. It was written for adults only. Once I realized that, the more I could sit back and enjoy all of the adult innuendos behind their lines. They were outrageous without spelling out the meaning of them. Regarding the character "Side Show Bob," I loved him even though he wasn't a very nice person. But it was a long time before I realized who was doing his voice. It was David Ogden Stiers, the famous Major Charles Emmerson Winchester, III, of M*A*S*H. Oh what a perfect choice! He was perfect for the role what with his imperious attitude and his impecable vocabulary. Regarding Homer Simpson, he barely had a clue about anything of value at all. Like DAH! But there were a few episodes where it sunk into his head that his wife Marge needed a bit of tenderness and understanding. Overall, it was an entertaining program as long as you could put up with Bart and Homer. I eventually was able to. vee

Dear Folks, For the most part of my day I continued to edit the stories I wrote regarding my memories of WWII. For some reason or another I remembered Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the meaning it had during the war. The symphony starts out powerfully and ominously with a dit-dit-dit-DAH, dit-dit-dit-DAH. During the war years it was pointed out to us the significance of those few chords. They were the Morse Code signal for the letter "V." V for Victory. In the faint recesses of my mind I seem to recall that the Nazis in Germany hated that symphony. They knew the signifcance of it in the 1940s. They knew that it was a secret message to all our allies that no matter how the war was going at the moment, we had Beethoven (a German) behind us. Now mind you, Beethoven wrote that symphony in 1808 with no thought of WWII, but his symphony is now remembered by those of us who lived through the war and heard it frequently over the radio. It boistered our spirits. V for Victory. vee

Dear Folks, This afternoon I had my usual doctor's appointment at the VA and Doctor Janet (nurse practioner) and I had a nice pleasant conversation. I confessed all my aches and pains to her but it wasn't anything she hadn't heard from me before. She really knows my medical background and we've never beat around the bush with each other. She remarked at how fit I looked and I let her know that I was getting along really good considering the shape I'm in. I also let her know that I hadn't fallen down in months now. That was really good news. It was then that she asked me if I had considered Life Alert. That's the system where you wear an electronic device around your neck and in case you fall down or have some sort of emergency, you can just press the button and get help. In answer to her questions I said yes, BUT. What had always turned me off was that I would have to hang a clunky button around my neck just in case. Her response was that now they have the button on a band that you can wear around your wrist like a wrist watch. WHAT?? I hadn't heard about that and in an instant I knew that I could handle that with no problem. Would the VA issue me the whole Life Alert system? She felt that they would and she put an order/prescription in for me. I was so thrilled with the thought that my eyes teared up. For months now I've made certain that in the evening I tuck a bulky cordless phone into my pants pocket just in case I wouldn't be able to reach any of my other two phones to call my neighbors or call 911. If the VA were to issue me the Life Alert system complete with a "wrist watch" button, it would take so much off my mind. Do I dare hope?? vee

Dear Folks, Today was Wednesday, the day to take out my trash to the curb, and as usual my neighbor Dawn and her daughter Heather showed up to take care of it. Also as usual Dawn keeps me up to date on her soap opera family. Heather stands on the sidelines and only pipes up on rare occasions to give her own personal version of the story that her mother is telling me. I always listen to Heather and when I hear her softly say something that has to do with the story, I ask her to repeat what she said so that I can hear her. During the conversation between the three of us, I realized that in order for Heather to defend her actions that her mother knew all about, her only response was "It wasn't my fault." As they were leaving and Dawn hugged me closely again, I told Dawn that I shouldn't use such an expression before her young 16-year-old-daughter, but I said it anyway in a very clear voice toward Heather. "BALDERDASH!" Dawn laughed her head off but also said that Heather didn't have a clue what that word meant. I didn't doubt that for a moment. She may try to figure out the meaning of it in her own mind but unless she looked it up in her dictionary, I had a feeling that she would have been dissappointed. All that it means is "nonesence!" vee

Dear Folks, I guess I'm still going back over my civilian memories of the Vietnam war when I wrote the following this evening. These are memories that I still can't shake. vee Another Vietnam/Coca-Cola Memory May 4, 2005 Another memory that was brought to my mind this evening was a number of letters that had crossed my desk that I had to figure out how to handle. They were letters sent from soldiers in Vietnam who were complaining bitterly that when they popped open a can of Coca-Cola, it was completely empty. Even upon inspection of the cardboard case of Coke, there were no watermarks that would indicate leakage. Therefore on several occasions the soldiers accused the company of being on the side of the Communists and trying to sabotage the morale of the troops by shipping empty cans of Coca-Cola. I was clueless how that could ever happen and I showed the letters to the canning plant manager. He didn't have a clue about it either and after a conference or two with the Atlanta office, it was decided that on occasion the seams on the aluminum cans hadn't been properly welded shut. Therefore there was a tiny invisible pinhole in them and when the cans were shipped overseas and exposed to the high heat generated in the large containers they were being shipped in, the carbonation of the Coke expanded and the Coke seeped out the minuscule hole and when it hit the hot air it immediately evaporated. As a result, the cans were empty when the troops received them. It was up to me to compose a letter of explanation to each and every letter we had received. Trust me, it took every bit of diplomacy I had in me to try to make up for the anger I read in their letters. But what galled me the most is when I had to tell them that The Coca-Cola Company was shipping a complimentary gift of one six pack of canned Coca-Cola to each of them. ONE six-pack?? How could that ever appease them? I swear that the home office of Coca-Cola in Atlanta barely had a clue what was happening in Vietnam regarding shipments of Coca-Cola there. I also believe they didn't have a clue about how the lumpers (those who loaded up the containers with pallets of Coke) felt whenever any of them had to walk into the containers that had just returned back from Vietnam. By that time the public was aware that displaced Vietnamese civilians were using the empty containers and making them their homes. However, the North Vietnamese solders were suspicious of every empty container that they came upon and riddled them with bullets. As a result it seems that on several occasions the containers were shipped back to the United States and when the lumpers walked in to load up the container again, they were confronted with decaying bodies. I hope you realize that I'm not trying to tell you horror stories about the Vietnam War. It's only from my personal point of view as a civilian secretary who was swept up in a lot of it behind my desk.

Dear Folks, Over the past few days I've been remembering how it was when I was a secretary with The Coca-Cola Company during the Vietnam War years. This is what I wrote this evening. vee The Vietnam War and Coca-Cola May 3, 2005 In early 1966 in San Francisco I was job hunting and responded to an ad for a secretary with The Coca-Cola Company. I was soon called in for an interview and I was hired on the spot. Mr. Welch, my boss, had explained what was required of me and what his position was at the time. He had been enjoying his job as the company's west coast military representative and in that capacity he would visit the military bases in the west to make certain that everyone was happy with the Coca-Cola they were receiving that they sold in their commissaries, their cafeterias and their base exchanges. What he really loved about his job was that he got play a lot of golf with the commanding officers and was on a first-name basis with a few admirals. He told me that the company had started to receive large orders from the military for canned Coca-Cola soft drinks for shipment to Vietnam from the west coast. As a result, he needed me to handle the orders, notify the canning plant of them and after everything was shipped, I needed to bill the military. The job started off smoothly enough but within a very short period of time, we were flooded with orders of a huge magnitude and I was swamped. It didn't take long for us to realize we needed to have an office in the canning plant in San Leandro across the Bay so that we could work more closely with them. From our office in San Leandro things became more hectic for me and also for the canning plant. The orders were sent by AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange Service) and each order had specific instructions as to how many cases per month were expected to be shipped and the cut-off date that they had to be unloaded on the dock at the port of Oakland for loading aboard a specific civilian container ship. That's when I really got caught in the middle of all of it. The AAFES office at the Oakland port kept a close eye on our shipping schedule and I was the liaison between AAFES and our company. My contact there was Joan and she was a bear to deal with. Not only did the order have to be shipped as scheduled, she needed to know how many pallets of Coca-Cola would be shipped, what the weight of each pallet and what the cubic measurements were of each pallet. In addition I had to advise the canning plant what to stencil on each and every case according to AAFES strict requirements. After I had made all of the calculations, I then had to type up bills of lading for each and every truckload that left the plant that included all of the pertinent information that was required. When it got to the point where I was processing over a million cases per month that involved many, many truckloads going to the dock, I found myself having to lug home every night the very heavy calculator I had to use to make my calculations so that I could continue to calculate everything before the next day. After the last truckload left our loading docks, I had only a minute to breathe a sigh of relief. I knew what was coming next. I had to bill AAFES for the entire order and run off the required number of invoices. When we first started out we had only a Ditto machine to run off the copies but it didn't take us long to realize that we needed the latest model of copy machines which were crude at best during the late 1960s. It took longer for me to run off the copies than it did for me to type up the invoices in the first place. In the middle of all the hectic activity, which was beginning to smooth out, the next thing we knew, the union workers at the plant went on strike. When I told AAFES that we couldn't make delivery of the orders because our production line had been shut down, Joan wouldn't accept that as an excuse whatsoever. We'd have to find another canning plant that could make the shipments. Oh great! We had many bottling companies on the west coast but very few canning plants. I got on the phone and talked to the canning plant manager in Seattle, Washington, and the one in Phoenix, Arizona. After much back and forth letter writing and written instructions, the two plants started to make shipments to the nearest west coast ports. In the meantime I was still up to my eyeballs in typing up bills of lading for the other plants, carrying home my calculator every night and it got to the point where the company agreed to hire another secretary for our two-man office-Mr. Welch and me. That's when Sandy was hired and took some pressure off me. Nonetheless, on a daily basis Mr. Welch and others of the management team had to cross the ugly picket line. When I got to my office one morning, I was faced with a large broken window in the office and glass shattered all over my desk, the floor and everywhere else. Of course I had to clean it all up. How I ever stayed sane over those years I don't know, but Joan was having the same problems with AAFES. They were putting the screws to her to get the shipments out and not only did she have to put the screws on The Coca-Cola Company but also on Pepsi, 7-Up, Dr. Pepper, Granny Goose potato chips and heaven only knows what else was being ordered for shipment to Vietnam. Although we both screamed at each other over the phone, we knew we were in the same boat and on the few occasions that we met socially at a cocktail party or dinner, we couldn't wait to share our woes with each other. I guess you could say that we were actually friendly enemies in the same boat. I still have memories about those years, but now that almost forty years have gone by my stomach is no longer tied up in knots the way it was then. I can now sit back and remember the excitement of those hectic years. It's now an important of my past and it's time I told a bit of it.

Dear Folks, The battle still continues between me, my mice and my ants. But for the last three days I've noticed a decrease in mouse droppings and especially ants who tend to just saunter across my counter top. A few days ago I had it up to here with cleaning up after the mice and squashing the ants. The realization that my counter top was probably far from sterile even after I had taken a hot soapy dish rag to it, made me do something more drastic. I got out one of the clean rags from my rag bag, soaked it with Lysol disinfectant and cleaning solution and cleaned off every surface of my counter top. I must admit that by the time I had finished, the rag was dirty. I really didn't expect that. The second day I did the same and the rag still came up dirty. And the same thing happened this evening--a dirty rag. However, since I began my Lysol attack, I've barely seen an ant and there has been a definite decrease in mouse droppings on my counter top. Whether the Lysol turned them both off, I haven't come to a definite conclusion but I do know one thing. My counter top is still probably dirty to some extent and until my rag comes up clean, I won't be satisfied. Even after that, I'll go back and tackle it again with Lysol. And to think that I was one who preached sanitation in the kitchen! vee

Dear Folks, Today the thought of my putting to good use my frozen 1/2 cup of milk and 1/2 egg, consumed me. I have a CD that has over one million recipes on it. BTW, don't be fooled with that number. More than 3/4 are duplicates. Nonetheless I've picked up some good recipes from it and it does have a search engine. At first I started out searching on recipes that called for milk and one egg as ingredients. Well it didn't take me long to realize that I'd never find a recipe that closely defined so I changed it to milk and eggs. I spent most of the afternoon going through recipe after recipe and I must admit I did come up with a couple of ideas. After I finally had made mental note of how I could make good use of my frozen milk and egg, a thought occurred to me. I was assuming that when I thawed them out, they'd be good as new. But there was something nagging me in the back of my mind. I seemed to remember that I tried to freeze milk many years ago and when it was thawed it had separated. Tonight I decided that I better thaw out the milk/egg mixture and sure as shooting, the milk had separated. Now I don't know how that might affect a recipe but when I weighed the chances I may be taking against the value of only 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 large egg, well every thought of thriftiness left me and it's now only history--down the drain. Oh I feel so good that I had made such a monumental decision! :-) vee