Growing up in a big family in a small town.

My parents didn't know that I was blogging until recently and have been having fun reading all the goings on at home here in Maine while they are in the sunny south. It's not like we don't talk frequently but sometimes I go on about things in my posts that we may not have hit on during the numerous conversations.


This is one of my favorite pictures of them and it was taken in front of my fireplace last fall as you can tell by the decorations. They were on their way to church but I caught them long enough to snap this pic and as I said it turned out to be one of my favorites.


Growing up we lived in a small, and I mean small, town in Maine with a population of about 400 and that was probably counting the chickens too. It was the Mayberry RFD type of town where everyone knew everyone else and waved every time you drove by. The Post Office at Preble's General Store was the hub where everyone chatted and got caught up on all the town gossip while waiting for the mail to be sorted each morning.


We had one small church in town that taught us the Word of God each Sunday morning, evening and had Wednesday night Prayer Meeting. Sometimes we had 'cottage' prayer meetings where we met in several different homes that night instead of all together at the church. It was in this church at the tender age of 8 that I realized my need for salvation and asked the Lord to be my Saviour. This decision has helped me through the ups and downs of life all these years.



We lived in a wonderful big old house with a huge connecting barn and lots of room to roam. We tented out on the lawn or in the pasture sometimes at night without fear of the human predators that seem to abound today. It was a different time, the Mom's were home and the Dad's went to work. There were lots of kids to play with and we always found things to do without Play Stations, Ipod's, computers or the such. A game of hide and seek or kick the can was exciting to us as we burned lots of that youthful energy. Swimming was a big part of summer fun and of course when we got our horses that took precedence over most everything else.


My Dad worked long hours in the woods, getting up in the wee hours of the morning when the temperatures were way below zero most of the winter and the snow could be waist high. He got frostbite on more then one occasion. I remember the winter of 1962 when it snowed for three days and the roads weren't even open to get to the store for several days. Wish I had some of the pictures of the snow drifted almost to the roof of the porch.


My mother kept the home fires burning with five kids in tow. I remember the freshly laundered sheer curtains blowing gently in the breeze of the open windows in the summertime and the hardwood floors so slippery from the cleaning and waxing that she did on her hands and knees. We didn't have a lot of money for new clothes but let me tell you we were clean and neat when we went to school or anywhere for that matter.


We always attended the little church as a family and my parents were involved in many of the ministries there. They always stood up for what they believed in not just as a 'Sunday' thing but as a way of life . For this I have the utmost respect for them. Now in their 80's they still are busy with their church in Florida and continue to live a Christ centered life.


Well, this has been my little jaunt down memory lane today. These are just a very few of wonderful memories that I have of growing up in a big family in a small town. Hummm....that would make a good title for this post......