The Baby is on the Way

One Day in January
By
Jo
My story begins in 1971; it was a cold winter day. The house my family rented was in a holler with a creek bed for a road and a path beside it to use when the creek had water in it. We had no electricity, we had a kitchen stove that burned wood for cooking and another room had a fireplace to warm the house. Our nearest neighbor lived about a mile away.
I am ten years old, and have a two year old sister and one year old brother, and mom was nine months pregnant.
The day began like any morning, we got up and built a fire in the kitchen stove, fixed breakfast which wasn’t easy, you had to make biscuits from scratch, slice the bacon etc. I was mighty hungry by the time breakfast was done, My step dad James left for work after breakfast and Mom said she wasn’t feeling well. She was going to lie down for awhile for me to watch the babies.
Mom slept most of the day when she finally got up and we started dinner she still wasn’t feeling well and when James got home late that evening she told him she was in labor, We didn’t have a car so he walked to his brothers house about five miles away to borrow his car.
Meanwhile Mom realized the baby was coming then and James wasn’t going to make it back in time and we needed to get ready. She told me to boil some water on the stove. I didn’t know what for so I filled all the pots in the kitchen ,and then got some clean bed sheets ready , Mom said to go and get the neighbor's wife to come and stay with her till James got back. Now this was a problem, you see it was dark outside and I had lied to Mom and I wasn’t in a habit doing that and it was on my conscience. I believed the devil came out after dark to wait for sinners.
I needed to go a mile through the woods to get to the neighbors and I was afraid to since it was almost midnight but mom was depending on me so I got up my courage and stepped out in that cold dark night and started through the woods. There was a full moon to light the path as I began to noticed the shadows moving around me. I knew the devil was coming and he was going to get me(You see I had snuck into some moonshine a few weeks earlier and mom had asked if I been in it. I looked her in the eye and said no).
I started to run ,the cold night air made my chest hurt and I thought I’d never make it to the neighbors house. When I got there I knocked and knocked on the door and finally the man came to the door. I told him what was happening and could his wife come and stay with mom. He said no. She said she would but he still wouldn’t let her , so I ran back home .Mom said the baby was coming now I would have to help her so I talked to her and told her stories to get her mind off the pain. I also told her the truth about the lie I told her and was good to get that off my conscience, well finally that baby popped out and the cord was wrapped around his neck.Mom said to unwrap it but I wouldn’t touch it because it was slimy so she reach down and did it herself. By then the fire was dying down and it was getting cold so I covered up the baby. Mom said to go back to the neighbors and try to get help again. I wasn’t scared this time because I told Mom the truth.
I got to the neighbors and banged on the door. They wasn’t answering so I started hollering and they finally came to the door. I spoke to the lady this time and she told her husband she was going back with me this time and she called a ambulance. We got back to the my house and after awhile James got back with the car with his brother but it was too late (he had started watching a John Wayne movie and forgot about the time ). While they was thinking about what to do next, the neighbor’s husband shows up with the ambulance driver carrying the stretcher because the road was too rough to drive the ambulance. The driver didn’t know what to do about mom and the baby so James decides to try to get a retired midwife who lived a few miles away to come and cut the cord. She came and done what she needed to do and told me I was brave and had done a good job. All ended well that night and I got to name the baby. It was a boy and I named him Tony Andrew.

My Pet Rooster

Story of
My Pet Rooster
4/12/2006
JO
When I was about nine years old my family lived on a farm at East Fork. I didn’t go to school on a regular schedule so Ms Williams from the Board of Education would bring me books to read. One of the books was “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. I’d read it and thought I would play some pranks on my parents so I told a few tales to the point that they did not believe anything I had to say, but soon after I would learn my lesson. I had a pet rooster I raised from a chick. I could hold the rooster and it would follow me around everywhere I went. It was reddish brown with shimmering blue and black, green tail feathers. I thought it was the prettiest rooster I had ever seen. So one Sunday morning while the family was still asleep, I went outside to feed and play with my rooster. There was a fox coming toward it so I grabbed the rooster and hollered at the fox to git but it was not afraid of me. So I started running as fast as my skinny legs would go, around the house hollering "Help there’s a fox after me and my rooster." As my legs were about to give out on me, my step-dad came out to tell me to hush that hollering. He saw I wasn’t telling a tale this time and noticed the fox was acting strangely(it had rabies). He started to throw rocks at the fox and told me to put down that #!%*#! rooster, but I wouldn’t. He told me to get in the house, so I ran in the house with my rooster and collapsed on the couch with a stitch in my side. Mom was waiting on me and scolded me good. I didn’t get a whipping but I learned my lesson. I never told tales again and my poor rooster met his demise a few days later. I don’t know what happened, but all there was left of him was those shimmering tail feathers.
The End

Pet Stories

KING AND THE EARRING

Around Christmas time, my only child Tara, came to me and asked if I, "would have her a baby brother or sister for Christmas. "I came up with the incredible idea to get her a puppy instead. We went to London Flea Market and bought a toy poodle. She named the little tiny dog, King. King brings Tara a lot of happiness. She always has someone to play with. In some ways they fight like brother and sister. He will go in her room and scatter toys and make the biggest mess everywhere, or so she says, "he’s the one that done it. "If she is asleep on the couch, he will jump up there and lick her face to wake her up. He can really get on her nerves.
King is now seven months and Tara is seven years old and they are still a lot of company for each other and they still fight off and on. Wednesday morning Tara was getting ready for school and when she pulled off her pajama top, her brand new earring that she paid for with her own money, flew out of her ear and hit the floor. King saw it fall and before we could grab it, he grabbed it up in his mouth and took off running. We finally caught the dog and he was chewing on it. We tried to hold him down to get it out of his mouth but when we held his head back to get it out, he swallowed it. Tara was disgusted with him.
Tara asked, “What do we do now?”I told her that she had to wait until he passed it and then she could get it back. She said “No way, not for no earring." I said I wouldn’t either. She must have changed her mind because this morning when she took King out to use the bathroom, she came back in and said “He didn’t pass it today, but maybe it will be in the next load”. I thought to myself, how gross! I would of never done that and I didn’t think she would either but the earrings she had in, I made her pay for them out of her own money. She said, “I have to get them back I gave a lot of money for them.” I have bought Tara a lot of earrings that were expensive and she kept losing them, This time, I made her buy that pair and as you can see she is more cautious with her things when it comes out of her own money.
Stay tuned to find out if Tara found the earrings
Submitted by Melissa

A Quiz on King And The Earring
By Beverly and Wendy
Why did Tara get a dog for Christmas?
What kind of dog was it?
Where did they buy the dog?
What did she name the dog?
What was the main idea of this story?
What did the dog swallow in the story?
Who bought the earrings?
How are they going to get the earring back?
What has Tara learned from this experience?
How would you want this story to end?
Another story about King

Never Bite The Hand That Feeds You
My daughter has a dog and it is the meanest little pup I have ever seen. It bites my daughter all the time. Well, he is my daughter's pet but guess who feeds and takes care of him, ME. One day the dog was chewing on something he wasn’t supposed to and when I went to take it away from him, he tried to bite me. I said “Never Bite The Hand That Feeds You”.

Bruce, Linda, Ole Jack and Me

As far as back as I can remember, Mom would take me and my brother to Mammy's. We would stay there while Mom went to work. Mammy is my mom's mother. Bruce is Mammy's son and is one year younger than me. Linda is my first cousin and one year older than me. Linda and her three sisters would stay up Mammy's, since Linda was around our age. Bruce, Linda, and me were buddies.

I think it was the summer I turned eight; our favorite place to play was behind the barn. There was these huge rocks we could climb, slide off of then right into the mud. What fun; until the cows came back off the hill and one old mean bull Jack we called him Ole Jack; Lord he was the meanest bull ever.He would stomp and snort and take after you something fierce.
We could always outrun him. Jack had only one eye; the other got poked out by a stick somehow or other. Once we were behind the barn playing our most favorite game war; now that’s when you soak corncobs in a bucket of rain water for a day then you throw them at each other. If you don’t duck soon enough, them wet soggy things would pert near take your head off and leave a big red pump knot on it.
Bruce came up with the idea that he would throw some old hard horse biscuits; now if you don’t know what horse biscuits are, follow a horse around and you will find out. Anyway he threw those things at Linda and me. Luckily we ducked them; boy what fun. We didn’t notice the time and the cows were coming. Ole Jack was up on us before we knew it. We had to run about ten yards to the gate. Ole Jack was stomping and snorting an looking right wild out of his good eye. We ran ;Ole Jack ran ,we made it to the old rusty gate on the back of the barn, all three of us. We hit that gate at the same time and got up on it and the stupid thing came off. It hit the ground with such a clatter it scared Ole Jack half to death. He just stood there. We were so stunned its hard to say who was in more shock, Ole Jack or us.

Submitted by Tressa

Round Ice Cubes

This is a short story about my four-year-old niece, Taylor on one of many visits to my house.She never ceases to amaze me with her innocence. On one particular visit, my husband was in the living room and I was watching TV in my room. My husband gave Taylor the glass he was drinking from and told her “Take this glass to Aunt Sooie and tell her I want some ice.” So Taylor, following his instructions, brought me the glass and said “Sooie, Uncle Bill wants some ice.” I took the glass from her, proceeded to the kitchen, fixed the glass of ice, then I handed the glass back to Taylor and told her “Take this to Uncle Bill.” Taylor returned the glass back to her uncle Bill. Several minutes went by and Taylor returned to my room, glass in hand. I asked her, “What is it?” and with a confused look on her face she replied,"Uncle Bill wants ROUND ice cubes” I said what? She said again “Uncle Bill wants ROUND ice cubes.” Well that was it, I didn’t know what was going on because I don’t have ROUND ice cubes. So I walked into the living where upon entering there was my husband, red faced pointed his finger at me to wait a minute. So I stood there watching him gain his composure, finally he said “this is good” I told Taylor to, "take this glass back, I wanted round ice cubes,' so she picked it up. The next thing I knew, she was walking by me, and then she did it again, on her third pass of making a complete circle through the house I asked, “Taylor what are you doing?” she said “Uncle Bill you wanted ROUND ice cubes.” This little story of humor from Taylor is just the beginning of many more to come. Submitted by Veronica

Melanie's Son Ben

Baby Surprise: With a Special Gift

In spring of 1990 my first child was just learning to crawl. To my surprise I found out I was expecting again. By August everything seemed to going as expected. During my five-month doctor's visit, a routine examine found the baby’s heartbeat to be irregular and very slow.
My doctor made an appointment for me to see a baby specialist two hours away in another town. The new doctor informed me that the baby I was carrying had what they call congenital complete heart block.
So I asked, "what does that mean." The doctor explained that my son’s heart did not have all the electricity in it to function on its own. And that he had pulmonary stenois. He also explained that he would have to be taken c-section.
So for the next three and half months I went on a two-hour trip every Tuesday to see the baby specialist. He would tell me, " the baby is fine, we will have you come back on anther week." By the time , I was eight and half months and the doctor was call around the clock. He didn’t want me to go into labor.
On December 26,1990 my son was born. I didn’t get to see him until he was over 6 hours old. I was so scared to see my son for the first time. I was expecting a very small sick baby. But he was a whopper, weighing in over 8 pounds. He had a lot of tubes and needles in his little body. And he was all mine.
He had to have a temporary pacemaker the day he was born. The temporary pacemaker lead almost punctured his heart. During his first night his left lung collapsed. By the time he was twenty-four hours old he had a permanent pacemaker implanted in his lower left abdomen.
By the time my son was thirteen days old he was well enough to go home. He is fifteen now and ready to graduate from the eighth grade. The first pacemaker only lasted eight years. In 1998 my son received his second pacemaker and that one only lasted four years. Then in 2002 he received his first dual chamber pacemaker. He has been doing wonderful ever since then.
God bless the doctor who found out what was wrong with my son. My son has been a great inspiration to me and the rest of our family.

A Sample of Mom's Love: The Surprise Quilt

By Linda


When my daughter, Brandi said she was getting married in about six months, I decided to make a sampler quilt as a surprise for her bridal shower. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to keep it a secret since Brandi still lived at home.
Every time Brandi went to work or out with Dee, I would get out my quilt patterns and material and try to get as many squares cut out as possible. I knew if I could get all the squares ready to sew, then I could sew them later.
My husband Ronnie and my other daughter Vanessa were my “partners in crime”, so to speak. They were very good at helping me get the squares out of the house if I wanted to work on it when we were going someplace. I spent a lot of time sewing in the car.
When Brandi came home one night earlier than we expected, she almost found out about the quilt. I was working on her quilt in the living room and we heard a car pull into the driveway. Vanessa screamed, “Mom, Brandi’s home!!” I grabbed the part I was working on and ran to the bedroom, but in my hurry I forgot the other squares.
Vanessa picked them up and came running to the bedroom too.
By the time Brandi got in the house, we had hidden the quilt under the covers and were sitting in the bedroom laughing. She wanted to know, “ What are you doing? It sounded like a bunch of horses were running through the house.” I told her Vanessa was chasing me, but I didn’t tell her why.
Brandi loved the surprise quilt and couldn’t believe we had managed to keep it a secret from her.




I used thirty different patterns for the sampler quilt. On the gift card to Brandi and Dee, I wrote, “Just a sample of Mom’s love.”

The patterns I used (left to right):
Row 1: Weathervane, Constellation, Key West Beauty, Spools, Wild Goose Flight
Row 2: Montgomery, Grape Basket, Pinwheel, Queen Charlotte’s Crown, Rail Fence
Row 3: Watermill, Double Tulip, Saw-toothed Star, Wishing Ring, Four Crowns
Row 4: Tail of Benjamin’s Kite, Star of North Carolina, Card Tricks, Monkey Wrench,
54-40 or Fight
Row 5: Rambler, Ohio Star, Crown of Thorns, Jacob’s Ladder, Shoo Fly
Row 6: Prairie Queen, Drunkard’s Path, Friendship Star, Mosaic, Bow Tie

Good Sentences

1. Best lines from Essays and stories
   Lists of ten
   
   1. I don’t think people stop to think how precious life is.
   2. Grandchildren are one of the greatest inventions God ever made.
   3. If granny holds one child she has to hold the other one too.
   4. Seeing my flower gardens blooming in the summer is worth all the work in the spring.
   5. In 2001, my Aunt Ponza had a stroke that took part of her memory, so now I’m trying to give back all the years of love and care she gave to me
   6. In the third quarter the Lady Rockets came out of the locker room, started scoring and never looked back.
   7. I enjoy my computer I’m also responsible on it, your computer only does what you the user tells it to do.
   8. Make sure you are never hungry when going to the grocery because you will buy unnecessary items that aren’t on your list.
   9. I came up with the incredible idea to get her a puppy instead.

10. The eating is mighty fine, bacon, sausage or ham with eggs biscuits and gravy ,yes I said biscuits my aunt would fix biscuits

How My Computer Saved Riley and her Pups

On Feb.4, 2005 my dog was desperately trying to deliver her puppies. She had moped around the house most of the day. That evening, as I was getting the kids ready for bed, Riley began to breathe extremely fast and hard. I yelled for my husband to see what was wrong with her. Ronnie said she was fine, that she was beginning to go into labor. I was satisfied that Riley knew what to do and I got ready for bed myself.
I went to the bathroom and Riley followed me. It was then I knew something was wrong, so I decided to stay up a while longer with her. Riley’s panting became more often and she seemed to be weakening.
I got Ronnie to come into the living room with me. We were discussing what to do for her. She was really having trouble and we didn’t know what to do. Realizing that it was too late to call the vet,we began to panic. My dog was pacing the floor and scooting her behind across the floor.
I told Ronnie maybe the computer could tell us what to do. So I turned it on, hooked up the phone to it, and went online. Not knowing how to word what I needed, I just put in “how to deliver puppies”. I clicked onto the first site that appeared.
The site immediately began to tell me how to help deliver puppies. Step by step, it gave the procedure. I yelled at Ronnie and told him the steps to go by. After doing the first step, which was to break the bag (the water bag) for her, she began having puppies. Thanks to having a computer and knowing just enough about it, my dog had puppies with no more problems.
find out more. http://www.ehow.com/how_2261_deliver-puppies.html
Posted by Christina