I am always up for a good adventure. My definition of what adventure means has changed more times than I can remember throughout my 60 plus years of life. As a child that could look like a summer day spent at Granny and Popeye's house playing with paper dolls, watching Granny whip up a hearty meal as soon as the breakfast dishes were washed so we could eat "dinner" at noon when the firetruck sounded it's siren and Popeye came home from his job for 40 minutes just to return back to work with a full stomach. Then we would clean up the kitchen quickly so Granny could watch her soaps and then my sisters and I would pile in Granny's car to drive to the creek where she sat on a quilt wearing her straw hat under a tree with the latest copy of Good Housekeeping watching us "dig a whole to China" for hours upon hours only to have the hole in the creek replace itself with water with every shovel of sand we tossed. If we were really feeling ambitious we would drag the enormous metal buckets from the trunk of the car up and down the hill and sit in them, in the water of course, thinking we could float down the creek maybe ending up in China? What incredibly intelligent youngsters we were. We would dry off and sit on small towels all the way back to Granny's and run to the refrigerator to take a sip of our individual pints of Borden's chocolate milk with our names scribbled on them in ink so as to not mix them up because this was a coveted treat we would make last all week gifted to us by George who delivered the milk. We would go play in the barn in the back or on the front porch and Granny would get ready for Popeye to come home heating up leftovers for "supper". After we ate we would all pile in Popeye's pickup truck to go check on the cows at the farm. When the cows were all counted and fed we headed back to take baths in a very old porcelain tub and sneak some of her Jergen's lotion that smelt like cherries. In our pajamas one by one we would sit in front of Granny as she sat in her rocking chair and use a big pink brush to comb out our hair while we watched the tiny TV. She would tuck us into the menagerie of beds in the front room where you could hear the trucks come into town on the highway and if you were lucky enough to stay over on a Sunday night you would hear the sounds from the cattle being brought in for auction across the street. This was my definition of a wonderful childhood adventure. Granny and Popeye were special. Hallettsville was special and we knew it. Granny was HOME and I want to be exactly this to my grand babies.
