My friend Judy (http://www.facebook.com/thesouthernladycooks) always has the neatest things, snuck this from her so you all can enjoy.

I walked out the front door and onto my screened porch and thought I was walking into an oven.  It almost takes your breath away. So my summer was here and I missed it.

Joanna is having a neat blog fest where anyone can post their summer happenings and then read everyone else’s.  She had some very funny happenings.  In fact some of hers sounded sort of like mine.

1.  She mentioned being somewhere with the temp over 100, well not to be out sweated….I have spent the last three weeks, sitting in my car at the edge of a grassy field in a park with no trees within 5 miles, watching and waiting while my 8 yr old grandson learned the fine art of football,  wearing a real helmet and full pads, in 110 degree heat……..the things granny’s do for their grandkids.

2.  I sat hidden in my house under the ac while it has been some 54 days of no rain and over 100 degrees everyday.  Will it ever rain again?  I did have 4 drops today on my windshield until the cloud moved.

3.  There will be a “new Sheriff” in town at my daughters house after the first of October.  My daughter who is getting married (again) and catch this:  to her love when she was in college some 26 years ago.  He has been trying to run into her for those 26 years and finally they landed on the same Facebook page a year ago.  Oh my it’s nerve racking for him to get used to two teenagers and an 8 year old, at his age and never had children of his own!!!!!

4.  Since I am in my “older years” as they say and I have a terrible back and bad leg which causes me to fall flat on my face now and then, I finally gave in to some outdoor exercise.  I got myself a three wheel bicycle so I can ride with my grandson and not fall over and break my hip or something else.  I would really hate to have to be cared for by my newly married daughter and her “true love” …..she would never forgive me.

5.  I have spent an enormous amount of time watering my dead grass and rose bushes, and not achieved anything but a larger water bill.  This heat has killed all the flowers, bushes and grass all over town.  There are a few who still have grass but they are the people with the big bank rolls and can afford underground sprinklers that seem to be on all the time.

Well that’s about all I can think of.  This seems to have been a totally wasted summer having to stay inside.  Or maybe not, grandson will be playing real football this year.

P.S.  be sure and click on the big 7 above and check out Joanna’s summer.

A friend sent this to me and I want to pass it on. Bet not many of you have ever heard this.

COPY THESE DOWN SO YOU WANT FORGET, COPY THEM DOWN ON YOUR SHOPPING LIST.
I am going to watch those bar codes a LOT more now… I am busy reading the ingredients.. 

Boy.. shopping is a full time job!!! 
ALWAYS READ THE LABELS ON THE FOODS YOU BUY–NO MATTER WHAT THE FRONT OF THE BOX OR PACKAGE SAYS, TURN IT OVER AND READ THE BACK—CAREFULLY!

With all the food and pet products now coming from China , it is best to make sure you read label at the grocery store and especially Walmart when buying food products. Many products no longer show where they were made, only give where the distributor is  located.
It is important to read the bar code to track it’s origin.
How to read Bar Codes …. interesting!

This may be useful to know when grocery shopping, if it’s a concern to you.

GREAT WAY TO ”BUY USA   &  CANADA “ AND NOT FROM  CHINA!!

The whole world is concerned about China-made “black hearted goods”.
Can you differentiate which one is made in Taiwan or  China ?
If the first 3 digits of the barcode are 690 691 or 692, the product is MADE IN  CHINA.
471 is Made in Taiwan . 
This is our right to know, but the government and related departments never educate the 
public, therefore we have to RESCUE ourselves. Nowadays, Chinese businessmen know that consumers do not prefer products “MADE IN CHINA “, so they don’t show from which country it is made.   However, you may now refer to the barcode – remember if the first 3 digits are:
690-692 … then it is MADE IN  CHINA
00 – 09 …  USA   &  CANADA
30 – 37   FRANCE
40 – 44  GERMANY
471 …  Taiwan
49 … JAPAN
50 …  UK

BUY USA & CANADIAN MADE by watching for “0″ at the beginning of the number.
We need every boost we can get!  Pass this on to everybody on your E-Mail Contact List!! 
If the government won’t help us, we MUST help ourselves. 

A friend sent me this and I think you will find it VERY interesting….

What it took to get an 8th grade education in 1895…
Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?
This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina , Kansas , USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina , and reprinted by the Salina Journal.
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina , KS – 1895
Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of ‘lie’, ‘play,’ and ‘run.’
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)
1 Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. For tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000.. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. of coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt

U.S History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of   America by Columbus
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)
[Do we even know what this is??]
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u.’ (HUH?)
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia , Odessa , Denver , Manitoba , Hecla , Yukon , St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each..
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete.. Could you have passed?
Gives the saying ‘he only had an 8th grade education’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?!
No wonder they dropped out after 8th grade.  They already knew more than they needed to know!
No, I don’t have the answers!  And I don’t think I ever did!
Have fun with this…pass it on so we’re not the only ones who feel stupid!!!

See the lady in the center of the photo with the bouquet of probably 30 or 40 black balloons.  She has just given up on trying to get them in the tiny silver car you see behind her.  Of course the wind is blowing at gale force and her balloon bouquet is bigger than her car.  Finally after someone tried to help her by pushing the balloons in on her, she gave up, got out and went back into the grocery store where she purchased the balloons.  She has decided to let the person driving the tiny car, go get a bigger car so she and her balloon bouquet can go wherever she was planning on going.  There was a time when she was between the tiny car and the store, that I waited for the wind to pick her up, balloons and all and whisk her off to Kansas.

Well I think I better go on to something else besides life in the “40s Only” – maybe one of these days I will find a subject that a bunch of people like to read. I don’t ever plan to have a site like some of my blogger friends with 89 comments per post!!! I think I would just faint. I blog with some people who are really neat bloggers. My friend “the Retired one” as she calls herself at (the Retirement Chronicles) – she is a fantastic photographer and has the most beautiful photos on her site. You really must stop by and look at her pictures. I have saved a bunch of them and use them as Desktop Backgrounds.

Then there is another friend, Judy, who lives in Kentucky and has a great blog “Living on the Other side of the Hill”
– AND she has another blog called “The Southern Lady Cooks“, and let me tell you, you will gain 10 lbs just looking at the things she has on that site. I keep telling her she needs to do a recipe book. Gosh this lady can COOK!!

Then there is Marissa, who never wants to grow up and says “I intend to live forever, so far so good”. She will certainly make you tired just looking at her riding a push scooter or doing a cart wheel. She calls her blog “WhaHappen? or Surviving adulthood for the kid at heart” – and she is bound to make your day a little more fun and give you a good laugh.

Joanna will fill your reading with something that will make you chuckle at her blog she calls “The Fifty Factor” . How she can come up with such fun, I don’t know. Wish I had her writing ability.

If you are a theatre lover and want some good reads from a community theatre actor, check out Preston Brooks and his blog called “Me and the Blue Skies“. He’s always going out to eat at the neatest places so take notes if you are back East sometime.

Now if the 70s are your thing, Joe has you covered with his blog “70s-Child“. He has a treasure trove of pictures, trivia and information from the 70s. Now who doesn’t have memories from the 70s?

Jude posts her blog like a daily journal which reads like a good novel. in “Brighton the Corner Where You Are” -as she puts it nonsensical thoughts, emotional days, fears and worries and the normal day-to-day in this unfinished woman’s life. Check in and read how she is doing with her new hip.

To finish this post off I want you to look into my son’s blog “Curtis D. Tucker, that sneaker wearing entrepreneurial cartoonist internet guy” -who is the best Dad in the world and probably the funniest person I know. When he tells you of his lunches with his two “crumb crunchers” or an outing with “hot wife” you are bound to wish you could have him for a son. He is the person who warms everyone’s heart and gets their day started with some neat information and a usually a good laugh, on his Facebook.

These are only a few of the nice people who are my blog friends and if you don’t have any blog friends, you are sure to want some after checking out these sites. Make yourself a free blog, let me know your site and lets be friends!

When my son did a 70s fads list on his blog I thought now is a good time to put my 40s list together. I would bet there are some things on this list that will amaze you, having been invented in the 40s.

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with table side juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines on the telephone
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning (there were only 3 channels – if you were fortunate)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S& H Green Stamps

16. Hi-fi’s
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys

22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers
26. two piece bikini
27. the Jitterbug
28. the first jet engine
29. Stuart Little was written in the 40s
30. Slinky
31. Moving to the suburbs
32. Bubble gum blowing contests
33. flying saucers
34. Tutti-frutti
35. Zoot suit
36. Atomic Bomb
37. The Wurlitzer Jukebox
38. The First All Electric Computer
39. The United Nations
40. NATO
41. Aerosol Spray Cans
42. Microwave Oven
43. Cake Mix
44. Tupperware
45. Velcro
46. Dairy Queen and Carl’s Jr.
47. old buddy “Kilroy” peeking over the wall
48. Color tv
49. Frisbee
50. Red Ryder BB Gun

I had a query on what were P F Flyers:

PF Flyers are a brand of athletic shoes that are currently manufactured by New Balance. They were first produced by BF Goodrich in 1937. They had popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but lost steam during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The brand was purchased by Converse in 1972, but later sold off due to antitrust issues. New Balance bought the rights to the brand in 2001 (which had been dormant since 1992) and resurrected it in 2003.
The style most commonly associated with the shoe is the common canvas-duck sneaker, with cloth reaching above the ankle, and a patch that reads “PF Flyers.” This common style is called “Center Hi”. They are very similar to the Chuck Taylor All-Stars manufactured by Converse.