Before I begin my infamous blog, that shockingly, I have developed a fan base for, I must again apologize for my absence on the blog scene. You see dear friends, writing for the papers and the magazine is very time consuming and if it will fit in either of those categories, my writing goes there first. But blog writing is far more fun in nature and less technical, so when I do write one, I try to make it worth the while of reading, because unlike years ago, time is very important to us busy people. The fun of blogs is I don't have to follow any rules in my writing style or worry about my editor bleeding all over the page with her well known red pen. I know sometimes I am wordy, but I am trying to make up for lost time while simultaneously entertaining and enlightening my readers with the things I find funniest, real life, not some fairy tale fiction created by boring people with no story to tell. So please, feel free to comment, come by and say hello to me at the Highland office and most of all, enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing.

Most of my friends and readers know that I have been struggling with the upcoming and unmentionable "BIG 40." For some reason that milestone, to me marks a halfway point in my life, and sadly, forces me to reflect, regroup and rethink to make sure I don't miss anything. I realize it isn't a death sentence and more people survive life after their 80th birthdays then ever before. Nonetheless, it has really made me think about life and make sure I am doing things right, I do everything with all I have and will continue with this practice, ultimately with the hope that it pays off at some point through my children. After all, I don't want people to be sitting at my funeral saying anything very bad about my life or the examples I have given my children.

Perhaps having a daughter turn 18 in the year prior to my BIG ONE has also put things into perspective best for me. I can no longer pick clothes for her, and the generation gap has completely reared its ugly head. If I like it, she won't. Before,her high school years, I always thought I was an up to date mom. I never did the whole aqua net goddess, stuck in the eighties, high waisted Lawman jean thing, at least not after they went out of style, but I made every conscience effort to make sure my kids weren't embarrassed by me in both my appearance and my demenor. I just somehow wish they knew at one time I was pretty cool, I attended the best parties, played quarters with the best of them and even wore some pretty trendy tight rolled, acid washed jeans and leg warmers. I could sing every Prince, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper song there was and could even hit a softball pretty far. I wish they knew I came from the same planet as my teenaged monsters who repeatedly roll their eyes at the first word of a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

When my children were in elementary school, I was always the parent who came to every play, had the most volunteer hours, came early and stayed late at every party and event and usually was the mom sporting some sort of out of the ordinary snack, like reindeer cupcakes and things that I stayed up all night thinking to make it the "perfect party." Somehow despite my best and most planned out Princess, Luau, pizza, pool and Emmy award parties, I never quite made it to the proverbial Parental Hall of Fame, and you know what, I don't care. Then, as now, I did the best I could and just held on to the hope that these memories I worked so hard to create would live on someday when my daughter or son presents their children with bees made out of nutter butters or a Minnie Mouse cake with fondant icing that took two days to prepare.

Now that I am almost the BIG ONE, I suppose I am starting to revel in the things that set my generation apart from that of my children, not so much rejecting the whole 2000 generation, but stepping back and loving the experiences and things that have molded me and the things that made me a unique lady of the eighties. I vowed as a young adult I would never not once even attempt to tell my kids about how bad I had it as a kid, how we only got new clothes at Christmas and when school started, how I would never tell them about the amount of chores I had to do or even worse, about how seldom we went shopping, or the mode of transportation we used to cross the lake to Mountain Home.... I lied and I lied BIG.

Now for some reason, I feel compelled to tell my kids these stories, just like my mom and dad told me and their mom and dad told them. They had to "walk to school up hill both ways, sometimes in the snow", "girls should never call boys", "You're lucky you got white meat, when I was a kid I was the last to eat and all my brothers and sisters got the meat, all I got was juice" and "If everyone else was jumping off a bridge would you do it too?" (one I have already used, likely more than once..oh my)

What am I becoming.... my parents? I found myself thinking deeply, as I normally do during me and my sister-in- law's drive to Mountain Home over the weekend. During this trip, she, who is very similar to me in age(yet has crossed the line to the BIG ONE), forced me to realize... we have to tell these stories to our children, if we don't then the whole past is essentially gone. This is the reason the Egyptians carved hieroglyphics, cavemen wrote on the walls of caves, the Indians recorded things on animal skinslies, and in 2009, I am recording an electronic blog of things I told my kids....odd how history, the subject I hated most in school, now is one of my favorite things. If only I could make my kids understand, those "dead guys" are the ones who have set precedence for the future and the way things are in the world today.

On the trip we crossed the bridge over Norfork and both happily recalled waiting in line to cross the ferry years prior when we were in junior high school...yea, I am that old. And, for those of you who don't remember, it was actually a wooden ferry that would take cars across the lake for the trip to Mountain Home, prior to the building of the bridges. We would visit with people both before we boarded the ferry and on the ferry, often meeting new people, and, at times people we knew. Once in town, we would take a long day to go shopping in the huge town of Mountain Home. Friends, this wasn't that long ago...or was it... I was in hog heaven in Wal-Mart's shoe department (you all know it has been a fetish since way back) and remember loving the trip across the lake at such a slow leisurely speed, when time wasn't something we seemed think much about. When Wal-Mart finally did come to Ash Flat, you would have thought NASCAR was in town during most of the first month or so of its existence. Friends, some things never change.

On our drive, we laughed about the small country grocery store at Agnos that I frequented as a child. The most memorable part of the store was, of course, the glass candy cabinet that contained such things as round pink peanut patties, colorful pink, yellow and white coconut bars, peanut planks, and my dad's favorite Three Musketeers, as well as real red licorice that was purchased by the foot. I do not recall anything remotely resembling a Reese cup back then. The old store was quite functional, yet not overdone with eccentric things like many of the stores of today. Each item had its unique purpose. It included an antique cash register, which, when you pulled the handle, made a ringing almost "Ca ching" sound that will be etched in my mind for eternity, as if it were opening its mouth to partake of the cash and loving it. Not only did the machine gobble up cash, there was a special place within its wooden drawers for charge tabs, signed only with a handshake and faith in a person's credit worthiness to repay the debt. In many cases people would trade fresh eggs for items at the store, and barter was not uncommon. The smell of molasses from the livestock feed stored in the back and fresh bananas were always a reminder of a time when, like riding the ferry, life went at a much slower pace.

A friendly visit with Mr. Hubert Ellis, the store owner, who always popped open the now antique "pop" machine to hand me an ice cold Blue Frosty cream soda, which is still one of my favorites, although very hard to find, was the highlight of our weekly visit to the store. Within the small country store was also a huge feed scale, which I was weighed on more times than I could probably count, as well as a produce scale on which Mr. Ellis always weighed new babies in the area who came to visit his store.

Before our family's trips to the country store, we would always gather our Coke bottles for return, yes, back in the day, they refilled them and reused the bottles filled with the sugary treat that today most kids take for granted. Friends, we rationed that stuff back then, it was a treat, not a staple. Many times these bottles contained a foreign item you weren't sure about, whether it was the remains of someone's chaw of tobacco or a dead bug, lawsuits weren't something that was ever the topic of media attention, you just laughed and dumped out what portion of the drink you hadn't already consumed, after vowing to look at the bottom next time before chugging the whole thing.

These were the gems of my childhood and why would I not want to share these with my children, who will undoubtedly roll their eyes and tell me how old I am? That in itself makes it worth it, because I might be getting older, but it has sure been a fun journey getting there.

The glory of the whole thing is that, someday not so far in the future, they will have this same historic realization and will start telling their kids about how they actually "Paid good money for jeans with holes in them" and "Used to text, actually type messages into a phone to communicate with our friends." (NO WAY) So in some ways, the generation gap has come full circle, but I want to live to be much older than 80 so I can tell my grandchildren about the ferry, the country stores and anything else that enters my mind. So 100 years from now, what we do today, however insignificant it might seem is recorded as a small part of history in their minds.

Although the modes of transportation may change, rotary phones with cords have long been replaced by cell phones and phones with "apps", clothes and hair styles will continue to rotate every thirty years and pink peanut patties may be nearly extinct, the quest for information about ones past remains a constant. Even though Astro pops and plastic powdered candy filled fruits may have blasted into a nearly forgotten past and energy drinks with names like Rock Star and Amp have replaced cherry soda and good old Frosty, change is all but inevitable. Afterall, I am pretty fond of my SUV and wouldn't really like to go back to a horse and buggy.

In a day when the worst thing one had to complain about was the nosey neighbor listening in on the party line and the weekly trip to the grocery store meant a two mile drive down a narrow gravel road, things just some how seemed much slower and the pace more relaxed. As one sat in the middle of the gravel road with the engine stopped on the way to the store visiting with a neighbor for what seemed like hours, time seemed to momentarily stand still, only to be relived as a fond memory a nearly thirty years later.

So here is to history and the making of it, may we all at some point pass down "Make sure you have on clean underwear, you might get in a wreck" type historical information for generations, and may verbal communication always be our gateway to the past, not for a desire to live there, but merely as a looking glass at the road that helped us travel to where we are today.