Have you ever loaned someone a few dollars and not expected it back? Most of us have at one time or another. This incident took place at a fast food restaurant on Broadway in Fountain City.

A fast food place is ideal for someone to start out or start over. It is at or near the bottom of the work ladder. If you have never worked before, and your education is minimal, you might begin your work history here. If you are retired and have fallen on hard times, they will hire you, too. If you are fresh out of prison or re-hab and especially if you're a woman, this is it.

My husband liked sliced tomatoes. When it came his time to serve in World War II, tomatoes were out of season. In those days if something was out of season, it was unavailable to most folks; not like today. Fresh fruit and vegetables are flown in from exotic places such as South America and India. Restaurants, back then, did serve what were called hot house tomatoes. They were grown in greenhouses. Such tomatoes were a pretty red, but flavorless.

Our house on Lee Road, near Michigan Center, had aluminum siding. It was the newest thing. Before that, there was only wood siding or brick. Aluminum is an excellent conductor of electricity as we would discover.

My father had wired our home at Pulaski. He was an electrician, but had passed on by the time we moved to Lee Road. The lumber yards were not yet selling how-to-it books. Anyway, my husband would never admit he didn't know how to do something. He just tried to bull his way through a problem. Pug wired our house on Lee Road.

Anyone who knows about Stuffed Cabbage will understand what Unstuffed Cabbage is all about. There are several ways to fix Stuffed Cabbage but only one way to do Unstuffed Cabbage. The great thing about this recipe is that it is easy to prepare. There is no boiling the cabbage, separating the leaves and then filling each one with a ground beef and rice mixture. Nope. This one is easier. Just shred or chop the cabbage and start in.

A number of celebrity suicides have been in the news lately. As a Christian, suicide is not an option for me, but who am I to judge? I was talking with my daughter, Anne, this evening and mentioned an episode that happened to a man I knew years ago. “You should write about that,” she said. I said that I would. Not to make me look good but to show what an influence you can have on another of God's children. Sometimes there are warning signs and sometimes there are not. There was this time. Here goes.

Back in Genesis, Eve had an encounter with a snake. It caused her and the rest of us a lot of trouble. I hate snakes. Oh, I know there are good ones, black snakes and such, that keep the rodent population under control. There is also the other kind. They are on my “kill now” list. They used to be on my “kill now” list, but since I am now on a walker, I seldom venture into their environment.

Most of us have a pound package of bulk pork sausage hiding in the freezer somewhere. If you do, that is the beginnings of a good casserole. I don't consider this recipe a breakfast dish. It is more like a weeknight supper.

Talking about sausage, I remember twenty years or so ago buying bulk pork sausage from someone over on Texas Valley Road. No boughten sausage tasted as good as that one. When I think of pork sausage, theirs comes to mind. Of course, stores sell their own bulk pork sausage in the meat case. That is good, too.

My husband's widowed mother married her former brother-in-law in our living room. Uncle Charlie had hurt his leg putting down our well on the property of what was to be our new home, closer to my husband's work. The minister said it wasn't written anywhere that you had to stand to be married. We were all seated.

Back to the well. The water table was high at the new place. We didn't need to drill a well, Uncle Charlie said. He would help us pound down a well. It was cheaper to do than drilling a well. The three of us could do it.

I remember when I worked full time in a sewing factory. My mind would wander while sewing. After you do the same stitching over and over, it doesn't take all your attention to do the job. My mind would wander to wondering what I would fix for supper that evening. My kids were in the lower grades in school and came home about the same time I did. They had a long bus ride.

We had a dog named Buster. He was a beautiful dog of questionable breed, but we loved him. Isn’t that the way it usually is? I remember him well. He didn’t start out being my dog. When Patty and Don Irwin moved in our middle house, Patty got a puppy and named him Buster. He was supposed to be a little dog, not the monster he grew into. Again, isn’t that the way it usually is?