I spent my early years in Michigan. The last thirty years I have been here. If I had known how wonderful Tennessee was, I would have been here long ago. Don't fault me for being from Michigan. We all have to be from somewhere. I will try to keep the secret of how wonderful East Tennessee is. After all, there is only so much room for former Yankees down here.

There was a day when spring cleaning was a real chore with a capital “C.” Let's start with the windows. After the house had been shut up all winter and the wood stove in the parlor and the cooking range in the kitchen spewing out smoke and soot all winter, the windows really needed attention.

The Pizza Parlor in Maynardville made good pizza. I worked there for a while as short order cook when they first opened. I prepped and made the salads as well as the spaghetti sauce. It was a time of learning for me. I had never before cooked ground beef in water, stirred to separate it and then drained before adding to tomato sauce to make a spaghetti sauce. Made that was, there was very little oil to skim off the finished sauce. Not enough to bother with.

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to tear our kids away from the TV and video games. It wasn't always that way. Back in the day, before TV, when all we had was the radio and our imagination, we played games with each other. No expensive equipment was needed. Let me tell you about some of them. If your children haven't heard of them, why not introduce these age old games to a new generation?

I'm in trouble right out of the gate. There is no ham in my Ham Salad Sandwich Spread. Nope. Just good old bologna. It sounds better than saying, "Bologney Sandwich. That means something else to me. I remember taking sliced bologney sandwiches to work. They would be warm by lunch time. Yuck! Those weren't happy memories.

How old were you when you learned to drive? Twelve or so if you grew up on a farm and learned to drive on the tractor. A man in our Memoir Class had a driving experience at the age of fourteen. That one took off the door of the family car. Not a good thing to do. My experience wasn't any better. I remember it well.

We never ate pork chops when I was a youngster. Pork steak was cheaper. When you find a meat you can afford, your next task is to find a way to fix it that the family will eat. We loved pork steak fixed Mother's way.

Who was accepted in the draft during World War II? Any man breathing without a wooden leg, or so it seemed. At the last class we learned of a man who was blind in one eye. He was drafted. Of course he didn't see combat, but he did serve in the motor pool at a base in Texas. The armed forces are much different now. I doubt he would be called to serve, if there was still a draft. The draft back then was more of a lottery. Numbers were drawn by members of the local draft board. Many a man waited anxously to see if his number came up.

There is a vegetable salad I have been making since back in the 70s. Green Pea Salad. When I think of Green Pea Salad, I think of my years in a sewing factory and that reminds me of Arlene. She was on a perpetual diet. Poor soul, she couldn't lose an ounce. It was a time when Weight Watchers was on top of the diet schemes. They are still around. Arlene very carefully ate every morsel of every dish she was allowed to have on their diet plan. I have watched her chase that one last green grape around her plate.

Name the hardest rug to clean. Did you say shag? If you did, you are right. Shag rugs are a bugger to clean. Eating supper in the living room while watching TV on your portable TV tray? Did some baked beans roll off your plate and onto the rug? Sorry. The pile will instantly snap them up. Watch where you step. Smashed baked beans are hard to find and hard to remove.