Tag: writing

March 5, 1984 Innocence Lost

Forty-Two years ago on March 5, 1984, my mother’s mom, Ella Pauline Mosser-Ryder passed away. Just a couple months shy of my graduation from high school, the one person in my life that I knew never judged me, always loved me unconditionally passed away. She was one week shy of her 77th birthday. Her death was more significant of a loss than losing my Grandpa Powell when I was 13. While I miss Grandpa, the lack of my Grandma Ryder in my life made me realize a few things and those things were painful. I have never been the same.

Grandma always went by her middle name, Pauline, rather than Ella. I never knew why she went by her middle name. As an adult, I often wonder why. I share her middle name as my middle name but as a child, I was always called by both my first and middle name, Mary Pauline by my mom’s family members, especially by those in Grandma’s generation. It was said affectionately and it never bothered me but my older first cousins referred to me as Mary P.P. and I hated being called that name.

Grandma Pauline shared a passion for science, particularly space travel. Grandma was a postmistress of our home town post office and she got to go to a Postmaster convention in Florida and she got to go to Cape Canaveral for a tour and brought me back a book on the history of rocketry and space travel that was sponsored by Gulf oil. She actually got my brother a book as well. I was the only one who read the book and I wore the cover off both books. Every time something new came out about space or space travel, Grandma and I would talk about it together. Every August when my parents went to Church Conference, us kids would stay with Grandma and she would set me up to watch the meteor showers in her back yard.

When we did those yearly visits (coming back to Illinois from Kansas), our friends (the kids I knew before we moved away) would join us at her house and we would bowl on the sidewalk in front of her house with 12 pop cans and a softball. I am not sure who enjoyed it more, Grandma or my friends and I. Then she would call us all up, give us a can of Hawaiian Punch and a Reese’s Peanut butter cup so we could rest and cool off. Ah the simple joys of childhood!

Grandma lived in 2 different houses that I could remember. One was directly across the street from us and then the big house uptown, less than 300 yards from where she worked at the post office. There were times after school, Mom would tell me to walk to the post office after school and I would stay with Grandma until Mom came to get me. I got to run the hand canceller to help Grandma with the mail and she paid me with a hot chocolate in a throwaway plastic cup that sat in a frame with a handle. Yeah, that Solo cup with a holder.

Grandma was an avid reader and she got me hooked on Emily Dickenson and I have a velvet covered book of Dickenson’s work that Grandma owned. “Because I would not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality.”: was the one line from The Chariot that always stuck with me.

Grandma was a beautiful Christian woman who I only once ever heard her say a bad word and that was the word , “damn” when she hit her toe on the side of a doorway in her house and broke her toe. I remember my dad chuckling and taking her arm and helping her to a chair.

The smells from her house I still remember. Grandma’s coffee would slap you awake at the front door, it was that strong and it would certainly take the tarnish off any silverware. She made it on a gas stove in an old aluminum percolator, always putting a bit of salt in with the coffee to take the bitter bite away. But it was her fried porkchops that were amazing. The smell I remember but have never been able to duplicate. I never knew how she got them to smell that way. She covered them in flour but the smell, it was a heavenly smell and so was the taste. I never got to ask her how she cooked them. Was it an iron skillet? Or was it the cooking grease from the can she saved grease in? I will never know.

The day she died, I was taking a shower when my baby brother (he would have been 11 years old at the time) burst in the bathroom and yelled, “Grandma Ryder died!” I was in shock. As soon as I got out of the shower and dressed, I immediately started packing for the 13-hour trip back to Illinois. My heart was broken, she had promised to come to my graduation and bring Uncle Red. I knew that promise would never come true now. Promise broken, innocence gone.

The next shock came when we arrived at her home and the family was fighting over who got what and why people were taking things out of the house before she was even in the ground. The family I once thought was a happy, working together, loving and peaceful fell completely apart. I realized she was the glue that held the family together. Grandma was gone and no one was able to get their emotions under control. Just three months into my 18th year and what I thought was the way a family was supposed to act and be was not anything close. My relationship with my Aunt and two Uncles was never the same. The relationship with my cousins had never been much as the three older were at least 6-years older and the three younger were at least 3 years younger, we were in different age groups and shared nothing in common. I started my young adult life with no Grandma Pauline as a mentor and my Grandma Powell, well, she wasn’t the type I could share things with.

My life has never been the same since Grandma died. That relationship was one that I have and always will cherish and the only regret I have is not finding out how she cooked those darn pork chops so I could make them, smell them and smile and perhaps imagine she is in the kitchen with me, eating them and the fried potatoes and gravy she always made. Happy Heavenly Birthday, Grandma.

Commentary on Public Education.

This commentary is guaranteed to upset many. It is brutal and yes it targets some ideologies. The reader agrees to read at their own peril.

John D Rockefeller once said; “I don’t want a nation of thinkers; I want a nation of workers.” He of course was referring to the public education system. His aim was to educate people just enough to read and follow instructions but not educated enough for them to think for themselves. So, standardized education came to be, and the United States has suffered ever since. Public schools are the indoctrination institutions of the leftists who think and believe socialism and communism are the best forms of government. They are of course the best way to control and subdue people, but a Republic allows the people to excel, if they choose. Public schools discourage students to seek beyond everyday thought or dream.

Today we see schools indoctrinating rather than teaching. It started slowly with sex education, pushing to teach birth control methods, encouraging promiscuity rather than abstaining. Saying abortion prevents an unwanted child, giving it no value. Then they move their lessons to things that should only be talked about in private. Sexual deviancy is now openly taught as normal behavior, ignoring biology altogether!

Yes, our adolescents are targeted and encouraged to explore same-sex relations and encouraging that normal confusion of a child growing into an adult, as a means to encourage them that they are the opposite of the biology from which they were born. They are confusing and brainwashing a child who should only have to mentally work through feelings themselves. Skipping a natural process in growth leaves a vacuum that should be filled. For better analogy, consider this; taking a weanling racehorse of 7 months, out its pasture straight to the racetrack, failure is guaranteed. Schools are creating failures, students who can’t think for themselves who have no creativity or logic and only seek to satisfy themselves sexually. Schools are producing nothing more than animals, not productive citizens.

Proof of this is in the fact that we now have students who believe they need to use litter boxes instead of a toilet. This only encourages the mental deviant and forces others to accept abnormal behavior regardless of whether it is sanitary or not. It’s no wonder we have so many students committing suicide and on psychotic drugs. Public schools are a danger to our children’s mental and physical development! Sadly, not every family can choose to homeschool or send their children to a private school, and some of those private schools are just as bad if not worse than the public schools.

In some parts of the world, education is thought of as a luxury, and families do everything they can to get their child educated. Here in the United States, we are ruining our children with anti-social, anti-science ideologies that do more harm than good. Perhaps, we shouldn’t require public school attendance at all but leave education up to the parents, we would probably get a better result. Only those capable of understanding instructions will have jobs, and the rest will starve to death. It sounds harsh but when we have schools pushing agendas such as they are, that students are nothing more than animals, then we fall under the Law of Nature. Yep, John D Rockefeller got what he wanted, a population so stupid they can’t use their creativity or have a logical thought for themselves, because they have been so corrupted by ideologies that are anti-human that our children are reverting back to Primeval desires of sexual gratification as the only thing that matters. We’re already seeing the kill or be killed mentality in cities so why keep public schools?

Yes, I despise public school because I would have been a much better scholar in a setting where my natural curiosity would have driven my desire to learn much better than being in a standardized box. I was often told that I wasn’t smart enough to take certain classes or smart enough to be in a vocation that I chose. Being told that, I believed it, and I didn’t reach my full potential. After I got out of school, I found out that I wasn’t stupid, in fact I was much smarter than the average individual! I actually taught myself college algebra when I was told that I wasn’t smart enough to do math. I think we need to change the education system greatly and to start, we need to stop the perverted sex education at age 5, and we need to stop convincing the children that their parents don’t have their best interest at heart. Our children deserve much better, our country deserves much better! As I see it now, we are no better then the perverted extremists who have no value in a woman and force them to be covered up. Congratulations, the influx of radicals and leftist ideologies have brought us to this point. We are going to have to fight back if we want our children to think for themselves and to not be so mentally deviated by the education system.