A fine summer day

I love this picture. Bare feet, you can almost hear the bees. Who can tell us where this house is? Was it in Milford?

Aunt Kate Herrli, Grandma Sarah's youngest sister, provided more information about this house. She says, " My dear Lorin, I can't tell you how much I enjoy that blog. The house you asked about is the first house east of the Rassi home, on the right side of the road. Remember the next home was on the left with the duck houses. Those pics of your mother and aunts and cute Larry, they are great. As to me adding, I am toooooo slow to catch on. Love, Aunt Kate."

As you can see, I can add stuff for you! Just send it on to me and I'll post anything you like, my dear family.

When Thanksgiving was B.Y.O.T...

Will you take a look at this huge turkey!? It's almost as big as Grandma! The back of this photo reads "Thanksgiving at the Slabaugh home. I was 24 or 25."

I bet she also wrung its neck, plucked it, prepared it for roasting, made the stuffing, potatoes, green beans, pumpkin and dutch apple pies and did all the dishes.

Grandma with her brood

The caption on the photo on the left says "I was 28-29 at this picture"...that has to be Uncle Larry she's holding hands with.

The photo on the right says "One Sunday morning ready for church. Delores-Shirley-Patricia. I was 25 or 27."

Sarah and Romey made good babies! We are missing the youngest, Gloria, from this array...she came later. Make sure you visit Jennifer's photo album on Facebook of Gloria...some really great photos there.

Grandma included this epigram:

Modern day don't make a difference

You can't alter truth and time,

My religion's not old-fashioned

But it's real genuine!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I expect to pass through life but once

If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow-being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.

-- William Penn

Sarah and Romey: The Early Years

The caption on this wonderful photo reads: "Jennifer likes this, she says Keep It! :-) Early 20s I was." Jennifer is Jennifer Baumgartner, her youngest daughter's youngest daughter. I love that Grandma used a smiley emoticon, long before there were emoticons...

Anyway, don't these two look ready to take on the world? Grandma Sarah lost Romey (Roman, a.k.a. "Pop" to us grandkids) back in 1968. He was just 59 years old. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 9 and his death was my first brush with mortality...it was shocking. He was a wonderful Grandpa.

Grandma gave me a large portfolio filled with poems and commentary. The inscription at the beginning says "This book holds many little goodies that helped make my days and life worth living."

The first poem copied out by hand reads:

Prayer for Today

Lord give me strength just for today.

To do the tasks that come my way.

To say the words,

To think the thoughts

With which real strength of soul is wrought.

Lord give me courage to resist

The urge to worry or persist

In borrowing from future years,

Troubles unknown or futile tears.

Just for today, Lord, let me find

True strength and faith

And peace of mind

And I will for tomorrow pray,

when it becomes new today.

Amen!

-- Author unknown

Kindness is a language which even the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

-- Mark Twain

Grandma had a flame!

We grandkids just never thought of Grandma Sarah having boyfriends or dating. Yet the caption on the back of this photo says "One of my old flames. I was 16 or 17." This would have been taken around 1928 or so. Notice the drop-waist dress, very flapper of her.

Grandma collected snippets of quotes and poems and put them on her refrigerator and kitchen walls... I'll include them with the photos. They really give a sense of her priorities.

Approaching the Great Depression...

Grandma Sarah, about age 16

This photo must have been taken when Grandma was about 15-16...and if you do the math, that puts her right around the stock market crash of 1929 and looking down the long nose of the Great Depression. She always knew how to have a good time, no matter how bad times were. I included a poem below that she copied out by hand into a notebook (she must have really liked and believed it!). Don't forget to scroll all the way down to see it.

Tribulations

Looking back it seems to me
All the grief that had to be
Left me when the pain was o're
Richer than I'd been before.

And by every hurt and blow,
Suffered in the long ago,
I can face the world today
In a bigger, kindlier way.

Pleasure doesn't make the man

Life requires a sterner hand

He who never knows a care

Never learns what he can bear.

-- author unknown

My brother Larry's eulogy for Grandma Sarah

Larry gave this eulogy at Grandma Sarah's funeral this week. I'm so proud of him and had no idea what a great writer he is! See if you agree...

My Grandma

A tribute to Sarah Slabaugh
December 13, 1912 – January 29, 2010

I didn’t have a “Grandmother” – I had a GRANDMA.

What’s the difference?

A grandmother is proper. She wears high heels and lipstick.

A grandma gets mud (or duck poo) on her boots. The lipstick she wears comes from the kiss on the cheek that her teenage granddaughter left before she goes out on her first date.

A grandmother’s dresses are pressed and never more than a year old.

A grandma’s dress is appropriate attire for the duck house chores. Her year-old dress is worn to church on Sunday.

A grandmother maintains her distance and belongs to the right family, joins the right clubs, and has the right friends.

The right club for a grandma sits around a circle and sews. She laughs with her best friends, some of whom she met only an hour before.

A visit to a grandmother’s house requires an invitation, an RSVP and is planned a month in advance.

A knock on the door is all the advance notice a grandma needs. The best three-course meals ever served come from what grandma creates from refrigerator leftovers.

A grandmother loves her grandchildren on her terms. The life lessons are given verbally.

A grandma loves her grandchildren – period. A grandma has an uncanny ability to relate to any child on their level. She knows when to speak and when to act. She realizes that her grandchildren may or may not be watching what she does, but she knows that God is watching and she makes sure that His light shines through her so her grandkids can see.

A grandmother has Bactine, Band-Aids and Tylenol in her medicine cabinet.

A grandma has Watkin’s salve, gauze and peppermint oil in hers.

A grandmother grows roses and carnations in her flower garden.

A grandma raises the most fragrant collection of herbs you can smell. Grandma did love her flowers (as evidenced by the fact that half of all her vacation photos were of flowers that she saw), but herbs can cure what ails you.

Everyone here knew the woman we grandkids only ever called “Grandma.” It always amazed me that wherever I went, people knew Sarah Slabaugh. I realized early on that she was a great reference point.

I was always proud to be her grandson. She set an example for me of how to work hard, use the brain that God gave me, appreciate what’s around me, and to look at the bright side of any situation. She didn’t know much about sports, but she knew how to motivate me. She offered me encouragement on more than just a few occasions when I wanted to quit.

Whenever I went through hard times in my life, I knew Grandma was always first in line to say a prayer for me. I never met anyone who had a more personal relationship with God, and was willing to share what that meant to her.

The last years of Grandma’s life were not especially kind to her. She lived through the tragedy of losing her two youngest children and a wonderful son-in-law. But through it all, her faith remained strong and she stayed true to who she was. She knew that she didn’t deserve God’s grace and mercy, but if there was ever anyone who deserved Heaven’s reward – it is my Grandma.

-- Larry Yeater