Christmas on the Mountain

This evening Shirley and I are leaving on our annual Christmas excursion. We are heading to Wyoming County to visit until Christmas Eve and then on to Monkeytown until December 29. We are looking forward to spending Christmas with our families, and to relaxing now that the new book is in to the publisher.

I thought I'd share some old Christmas photo's with you in this post, which will be the last one until we get back around the first of the year.


In the above photo, you can see that I pee'd on myself but wouldn't let mom change me until I opened some of my presents, namely that gigantic lollipop!! My brother Jason is in the background in his undies, along with my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Allen, who always was a bawl-baby!



In this photo, you can see that I am all decked out in my pink hand-me-down-mom-said-it-was-a-good-coat-so-I'm-now-justified-to-put-her-in-a-home coat. Not that I'm bitter or hold a grudge or anything! Just kidding Maw!!!Jason, on the other hand, is in a spiffy Pittsburgh Steelers jacket! Also in this photo is the woman who gave birth to my mother, my Uncle Allen, my cousin Emily and in the background, my Aunt Aim.

In the above photo, Dad is trying to put together a simple snap-together bird feeder. As you can see, he is using a hammer and screwdriver!! And biting his tongue as all the Burns' do when they concentrate on something.

My brother Jason, eating as usual. I tell him everytime he eats like this to "Keep eatin' Andrew, and we're gonna have to go back to Quality Farm & Fleet to buy you some more abnormally sized fat farmboy pants!"

Pure excitement and insanity when I got the CD set of the Hammon's Family!

Jason quit eating long enough to revel in getting a cow bell! And you all think I'm weird??????


Above: My Dad and two of his sisters, Tam and Aim. As my Granddad used to say, and which angered all of his daughters, "All Rich Burns' girls are hefty bitches!" Is it any wonder they liked to beat him up when he said that? Or wanted to beat him when I reminded them all that he said that?? It's a big joke now to say that when they are all together.

The Christmas Tree on the mountain.

I hope you liked seeing a little of what Christmas on the mountain is like. We have lots of fun, and get to catch up with everyone. I'm looking forward to it again this year.

I hope all of you out there have a Merry Christmas, and a prosperous New Year to come.

Timothy

My very favorite toy when I was little was a little brown teddy bear named Timothy. I don’t recall how I ever came up with that name, but Timothy came into my life when I was about 2 years old, and I remember that I got him from a $2 sack of second-hand toys at the Rio Mall. All through my early childhood years, Timothy and I were inseparable. We’d eat together, sleep together, and play together, and it was on one of these adventures a couple of years later that Timothy got lost.

My friend Timothy.

You see, me, Jason and Timothy all went out to play with the dog in the doghouse one morning before breakfast. We lived at the old farmhouse up Johnson Holler then, and the doghouse was out on the hill from the back porch. Mom would never let us play out there alone because of the huge rattlesnakes that sometimes lay out there. But that morning while Mom was making breakfast, we all sneaked out the back door and went out the play with the dog. Well, we had a good old time rolling around with the dog and getting all dirty. Looking back, we were usually so filthy when we came back inside was probably the reason Mom didn’t want us to go out to the doghouse more often because at that time, she had to haul buckets of water up from the creek and then heat the water just to give us a bath. But that morning, we managed to get out to the doghouse without Mom seeing us. Well, when Mom hollered for us to come in, that breakfast was ready, all three of us were so filthy, and covered with flea’s, that Mom wouldn’t even let us in the back door. She said we needed a bath (and this included Timothy).

Well, we all pitched in and helped Mom carry the water up the hill from the creek (I’m sure we were more of a hindrance) and waited impatiently for the water to heat on the stove. Mom then filled the old galvanized tub that sat on the back porch and gave us a bath. She even gave Timothy a bath and hung him up by his ears on the clothesline to dry. While Timothy dried, me and Jason went in and ate our breakfast.

The back porch where we ate breakfast, and where we were given our bath in this story.

Well, in the meantime the dog got loose, probably from where we had been out playing with him and accidentally assisted in his escape, and when we came back outside after eating, Timothy was missing. Oh, I moaned and carried on something fierce, you’d have thought someone was taking a razor strop to me. We searched high and low for Timothy but couldn’t find him anywhere. I remember Jason and I walking all around the house calling out Timothy’s name like he could answer us. At that time, we didn’t realize that the dog was loose, so that thought didn’t even enter our minds. I was just sure that old Roscoe Johnson who lived up the holler had carried off Timothy and I wanted Mom to take me to his house so I could confront him. Well, of course Mom wouldn’t take me to confront Roscoe and told me that Timothy had to be there somewhere, and told me and Jason to look for him some more.

In the meantime, Mom cleaned up breakfast and put the scraps in a bowl to take out to the dog. It was then that she noticed that the dog was loose, and she ascertained that is where Timothy was too. Sure enough, Mom looked around for the dog and saw him up at the end of the garden chewing on something. It was Timothy. Poor little Timothy had been disemboweled, and was missing an eye. I saw Mom walking up in the garden towards the dog so I followed her and saw the gruesome scene firsthand. Once again there was a great weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth coming out of Johnson Holler. Timothy was dead. I had lost my best friend. What I didn’t count on was that before becoming a parent, Mom was employed as a miracle worker. She told me that she would give Timothy some surgery and that she thought he’d pull through the ordeal, but that me and Jason would have to be really quiet while she done it, like we were when she’d take us to the doctor.

Well, Mom sat down that the kitchen table and sewed and stitched and stuffed and studied, and after what seemed to be a lifetime, she announced that Timothy was going to live, but that he had lost an eye. Mom told me that she could take an eye off of another of our stuffed animals or buy one at the store, or even make Timothy an eye patch. But nope, I wanted Timothy just the way that he was. Mom told me that Timothy had to have another bath, since he had just been through surgery, but that he could play after he dried. Well after that bath, Timothy was once again hung out to dry on the clothesline, and this time I got a chair and sat up residence under the clothesline. I wasn’t going to take any chances that Timothy would get kidnapped again.

After Timothy’s recovery, we once again became inseparable in our escapades, and Timothy remained close to me for the rest of my childhood. I’d like to add that after all of these years, Timothy is still in my bedroom at Mom and Dad’s house, and we had a nice long visit over Thanksgiving. I asked Timothy if he wanted to come back to Charleston with me, but he declined saying he was really looking forward to Christmas on the mountain. That Timothy, he always was one that liked to be where the action takes place.

Happy Birthday Jason

Today, December 6, is my big brother Jason's birthday. He turns 33 today. So I thought I'd devote this post to him.


Jason and me.

For all of you who know me, you know that I like to pick on people, especially if I like them, so I thought this would be the perfect time to jab at Jason a little bit. Growing up, we were best friends and we were about as close as two burrs in a mules tail.






Jason was always tall and skinny when we were kids, and I was short and fat. I remember he used to bounce me on his lap and call me his "little fat buddy". He was pretty much the only person who could get away with that. I remember when I was his little fat buddy, he'd squeeze my fat belly and contort it from side to side. He even had a little song that went:

"Little Fat Buddy, Little Fat Buddy, Little Fat Buddy, too"

All the while keep rhythm with jiggling my fat!!! I'm sure Mom and Dad wondered if the polio hadn't affected our brains, but hey, when you grow up in the middle of nowhere, you make your own fun.






I remember how me and Jason used to love sticker books. We'd each get one every payday when we'd go to the Moorefield Foodland for groceries. Foodland had alot of good sticker books and we usually got them there, but sometimes we'd get them next door at the old Heck's store. Speaking of Heck's, I remember one time how Jason, always a bookworm, got left at Heck's. It was on one of those occassions where all of us kids were loaded up in the back of the truck and we were all supposed to keep an eye out for each other. There must have been 15 or so of us. Well, we'd all been to the Heck's store and after shopping, we all went out to the truck. As usual, Mom asked us, "Is everyone in here?", and we all hollered, "Yeah!", most likely because we were on our way to the Dairy Queen for an ice cream. Well, with that many kids, it was nigh on to impossible to keep track of all of them, which is why we were all supposed to watch out for each other. Well, I must confess, I was supposed to be keeping an eye on Jason that day, but "little fat buddy" here was wanting that ice cream, so I forgot all about him. So we pulled out of the Heck's parking lot and started up the road and my Aunt Tam hollered, "Where's Jason"? She had missed him because he usually rode on her lap. Mom stopped the truck and we all got to thinking who had seen him last, and someone remembered seeing him in the book aisle in Heck's. Well, Mom about freaked, she wheeled the truck around and tore back down the road to Heck's, scared to death. She ran in the store and searched frantically for Jason. She alerted the manager and they were gonna put the store on lockdown, that is until Mom found Jason...right there in the book aisle...reading a book! He was oblivious that we had even left him there. Mom was so upset, she took us straight home that day, and I didn't get my ice cream. So Jason, you still owe me an ice cream cone...plus interest!





I know dirt on Jason that not even he remembers, and I just may use it to blackmail him one of these days. Sure, he may know some juicy dirt on me too, but the difference here is I never was one to care what people think about me, but "Mr. Wile E. Coyote" does.






When we were growing up, when either of us would have a birthday, the other would get what Mom called a "brother present". This brother present was not as nice as the present for the birthday boy, but it was usually something that we'd been wanting. Jason and I shared everything pretty good so whatever either of us got, both of us claimed.




Jason (left), me & Dad. Jason hates this picture, so of course I have to put in on here. See, if I cared what people thought of me, I wouldn't have put this picture on here. And to think, we were the cool kids at school!!!!

Jason is only 18 months older than me, and because we are so close in age, we were meaner than striped-eyed snakes. People always said what one of us didn't think up, the other one did. I remember how we used to get away with stuff at school. He was one year ahead of me, but it was a small school so we saw each other several times a day. Whenever something happened at school, I usually got the blame because the teachers all thought that I was trouble with a capitol "T". Jason, on the other hand, was a goody two-shoes and was never suspected by anyone when something was done. But what the teachers didn't know was, Jason was just a bad, only he was more sneaking than me. If I was gonna do something, I'd just up and do it, and be damned with the consequences, but not Jason. He'd scheme and plot and finagle. Now, sometimes we did join forces and go into cohoots together to achieve many of our mischievous plans. Many's the time, he'd watch out for me while I done an ornery deed that we'd both cooked up, and then lie to protect me when the heat came a-callin'. Since he was perceived to be a "good" kid at school, the teachers would always take his word when they questioned him about me doing stuff. He got me out of a lot of trouble that way, even though we were both in it together. He'd tell the teachers, "No, it couldn't have been Matthew that done that, he was with me the whole time". They never did catch on.




I'm sure Jason's wanting to do this again right about now!


So, we had some good times growing up, and I just want to let Jason know, I'll keep my lips sealed about all the dirt as long as you keep the hush money flowing my way. Of course, the only problem with this is that Jason know's my only weakness...hot sausages. But as long as he doesn't remember that, I still have a chance at conning him. Now that I think about it, just last week Jason bought me a half-gallon jar of hot sausages, so maybe I'd better come up with a better plan. Drat, foiled again!!



Me (left) & Jason (right). Summer 2008.


So, Happy 33rd Birthday Jason, from your Millenium Twin!