I remember "oleo". I was born during the depression and was a kid during WWII. We bought this mixture at the store. It consisted of a pound of lard(?) and a button that contained yellow stuff (must have been food coloring). My job was to mix the two together to make it look like butter. (no butter during the war) Then we called it oleo. Anyone else remember this? We had a refigerator but also had an ice box for "extras". We loved it in the summer when the ice man came and we could get bits of ice off of his wagon.. We got presents twice a year - birthday and Christmas. Nothing in between. Not like today's kids. Christmas was a religious holiday for us. We had an advent wreath which marked the weeks until the baby Jesus came. The nativity was put up early in December with every one arranged except the baby Jesus. If we were good all day we got to put straw in the manger so He would have a soft bed when He arrived on Christmas eve night. Jesus always left us a book Christmas morning. I still have a few a these books that I received. We had one exciting trip during the holidays. The whole family got dressed up and off we'd go. It seemed like it took forever although it was only 25 miles. A large, upscale department store in a near by city had wonderful window displays that moved and were pure magic. Santa was there too to hold us on his lap and listen to our wish list. There was a special store within the store for "kids only". Parents had to wait out side. For a dollar you could get four gifts for your family. It took us forever to pick just the right presents!Then we got to eat out - a rare treat for us. On Christmas eve we went to mid-night mass and then fell sound asleep even though we had planned to stay awake to see Santa have our milk and cookies. Most of our gifts were clothes but our parents always made sure we got a few toys. My mom always made cinnamon apples for Christmas. Does anyone know how to make these? She cooked a syrup of water, sugar and red hots (and maybe something else?) and put peeled whole apples in this syrup and cooked the apples. They came out a pretty red color and had a cinnamon taste. She served them cold on a lettuce leaf on a salad plate. Wish I knew how to make them. Any ideas? You can tell I am not a very good cook. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Julie" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 1:04 PM Subject: [VASHENAN] Catching up on things > my grandfather called margarine, Oleo - he was born in Wisconsin, and grew > up in Iowa, and eventually moved to Chicago. > > > > > --------------------------------- > Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! > Search. > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message

I was too young to remember "The War", but I remember playing my three brothers when the doctor came, carrying a little black bag with a baby in it for my mother. We had to stay outside for some reason. The baby was a girl and is today my best friend, though we used to tussle over who got to squeeze the color dot through the white "oleo". I remember the summer day when my sister and I were playing with Laurie, the older girl next door, and her brother Stanley came up the hill from Newman's Five and Dime store with a small brown bag. He opened it and introduced us to a new treat called bubble gum. Wow! What a novelty! My older brothers remembered bubble gum from before the war, but it had become a casualty of sugar rationing, and my sister and I had never tried it before. I must have been about five years old. A boy named Bill's backyard and ours abutted each other through the block, and his dad had come home from the war with a neat gizmo that had been part of his army gear. It was a shovel, but if you twisted this ring near the shovel blade, the blade would swing down and the gizmo turned into a hoe. I'm sure it had a name, but it escapes me after 60 years, more or less. Anyway, we kids thought it was cool, and we dug up Bill's backyard, putting foxholes here and there so that we could play soldiers and hurl dirt clod hand grenades at each other. We didn't have any toy guns, but fingers pointed in the right direction could drop a playmate in his or her tracks, though more likely such action brought forth the exchange, "I got you!" followed by, "No you didn't, you missed!" Of course, we all went home covered in the red Roanoke County dirt. We couldn't dig up our backyard because Dad planted a large garden there every spring, and we ate from its bounty all year. I do so miss the real tomatoes he grew and Mother canned for later use, both as tomatoes and juice. My mouth waters just at the thought of the hot summer days when my sister and I would take a salt shaker and head to the rows of tomato plants and the big fire-engine red globes that were so deliciously warmed by the sun. There was a word that was used during The War that aptly applies to today's so-called "tomatoes". Ersatz. Remember? For those too young to remember the term, it means: bogus, phony, synthetic... fake. Like the phony, rock-hard, pale, tasteless and juiceless tomatoes on the store shelves today. I've almost given them up altogether. We five kids were so fortunate to have parents who loved us enough to put all that extra effort into feeding us. Dad was a brakeman on the N&W, and worked the garden when on the home end of his run to Winston-Salem, NC. All the neighbors supported each other, too. Mrs. Jones had wax cherry trees (Mother canned some of the luscious fruit as "Queen Anne cherries", and we enjoyed them all winter), the Dysarts had grape vines (juice and jelly) and red and black raspberry bushes (fresh berry cobblers and jam), and shared them with us. When Dad bought bushels of apples, several of the neighbor ladies and mother's sister Myrtle would come to help peel and core and slice them the night before the cooking. Bright and early the next morning the fifty-gallon copper "kittle" went over the fire in the yard, after Mother cleaned it out with soda and salt and the garden hose. Apples went in, all the way to the top of the "kittle", along with cold water from the hose. Once the apples started cooking down, the spices were added, and all day long (it seemed), someone had to stand and stir the concoction with a long handled (to keep the hot applebutter from popping out onto the person stirring) L-shaped wooden paddle so that it didn't scorch or stick to the bottom. Finally, Mother would bring out half-gallon and quart jars, and fill and seal them while the applebutter was bubbling hot. She would then set them on newspapers she had set on the back porch to cool a while before taking them down the basement steps to store them on deep shelves beneath the stairs. Of course, some went to the ladies who helped prepare the apples. I can taste it right now, with butter melting on hot homemade shortning bread that Mother used to make. Ah, precious memories... Carolyn HALE BRUCE, DAR, IBSSG, VBGS Co-author, Rebel King, Hammer of the Scots Rebel King, The Har'ships and Rebel King, Bannok Burn See all the books we publish at: www.bruceandbruceinc.com (Angus MacKilt shirts, too!)