Johnnie likes tea parties and she has been having them for half a century. When our daughters were little she bought a child's china tea set and started having tea parties with them. She used the tea parties to teach them etiquette and manners. 

As time went by some of Susan's and Angela's friends were invited to these tea parties. Then Johnnie became a teacher for these friends also. Before long the mothers of these friends were calling Johnnie and asking her what she was doing to their little girls.

They all said that their little girls had started showing better manners then they ever had before. So Johnnie started inviting the mothers to her tea parties. It was surprising how much some of the mothers learned about etiquette and manners from these tea parties. I guess their mothers had never had tea parties with them when they were little girls.

When our daughters got older the child's china tea set was packed away and the girls were busy with school activities so their tea parties stopped. But not the grown-ups tea parties. Johnnie still had her tea parties with her ever widening circle of friends.

Before we knew it our daughters were grown young ladies and married. Then along came grand children in the form of two grand daughters. Out came the child's china tea set and the tea parties started all over. Johnnie, now Grannie, was at it again. Tea parties, etiquette and manners for a new generation.

We were in a new house in a new neighborhood by then, with new neighbors who had kids. The tea parties continued to grow. The boys in the neighborhood were not interested in tea parties so Johnnie started a lending library of books for them. We would sit out on the front porch with a box full of child's books that we had bought in garage sales and the kids would come and check out a book and take it home with them.

This went on for a while and Johnnie noticed that the Mexican boys that lived across the street never checked out any books. She asked the oldest one why he didn't check out a book and he told her he couldn't read English. Johnnie asked him if he would like to learn how and he told her he would.

So Johnnie started tutoring the Mexican boys in reading. Now she had tea parties, a lending library and tutoring classes. By then our front yard had become the gathering place for all the kids in the neighborhood.

During the fall the boys would play football and the girls would cheer them on. Johnnie taught the girls how to be cheerleaders and do little dance steps while they were cheering. Then she would line up the losing team and march up and down the line and give them a pep talk. She would call them the cowgirls and tell them if they wanted to be cowboys they would have to try harder.

Time marches on and now there is a great grand daughter who is having tea parties with Johnnie. She is also playing "t" ball with a team from her school. I can't wait to see that 70 year old Johnnie get out in the yard and play "t" ball with that great grand daughter. But there is a new generation of neighborhood kids also. Maybe they will be the ones to play "t" ball with Chivona and Johnnie will only have to coach.

                   ~ By Loren Moore who is 72 years old and an "uneducated redneck" that took early retirement from the General Motors assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, and is from the piney woods of East Texas. He writes saying: "Now that I'm in my old age and do most of my hunting and fishing in my memory, I decided to write about a few of my experiences. Those were the days my friend. We would live the life we choose. We would fight and never lose for we were young and sure to have our way. Copyrighted 2003 ~

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