Stone Soup Mondays

Bulls and Laughter by Susan Larson

Thank you Susan Larson for kicking off our Stone Soup Mondays.

(Info about how you can submit your story and image is in the ORANGE HIGHLIGHTED area the bottom of this post.)

Upon the untimely, early death of my father, we moved from Seattle to the tiny burg of Kilmichael MS, population 300 on Saturday night. But when we first arrived we stayed at our Uncle Doyle’s house out in Poplar Creek, MS, a small community gifted with a small general store that had a gas pump. We may have well have been on another planet.

Behind Uncle Doyle’s house, there was a ditch with a big plank over it leading to the barnyard. In the late afternoons we were allowed to cross the ditch to feed the chickens a few ears of corn that we would carefully scrub off. While this was fun, we were amazed to learn where eggs came from, we were warned to watch out for the “old King snake” that lived in the corn crib, so we never went very far into the dark corn crib. I can still smell the musty odor of the corn and the barn yard.

But there was also a big bull that we were warned to stay far away from. Every evening the cows would come up for feeding and milking and one of us was the look out for the bull. As soon as he was spotted, way in the distance, we ran shrieking over the plank to the house. More than once, one of us fell into the stinky creek.

Soon we learned we had all kinds of relatives in the area and a girl in my class was a distant relative. Soon I was invited to spend the night at her house out in the country. Well, they too had a mean ol’ bull. My older cousin, Glenda, would get in the beat up old truck and go out to round the cows up with us in the back of the truck bumping out into the pasture. Soon the bull would be charging the truck while we shrieked in fear and laughter.

Looking back, through the lens of age, I now understand the treasure of extended family. I know they laughed at our naïveté and we laughed with them. I feel sorry for children who grow up in gated communities or concrete jungles far from their roots.

We invite your Stone Soup stories.

You probably remember the Stone Soup saga - a traveler comes to a village where people have nothing to share and offers to make the best soup ever with three magic stones. He builds a fire, sets up his pot, carefully places the stones, adds some water and begins to stir.

“Old fool,” the people think as they peek out their windows at the misguided traveler. Finally, one old woman feels sorry for him and brings him an onion for the pot. A gardener pulls the last carrot from the ground, cleans it, and shoves it toward the traveler with a gruff, “Here, you’ve gotta have something more than stones in that soup.” After that, one by one, the villagers come, each bringing a potato, some left over rabbit, a bit of parsley, and soon the pot is bubbling, filling the air with the smells of a feast and the sounds of neighbors chatting and children laughing.

You have stories to share and we have the need to feast on them.

Please share … stories, poetry, song, art, old family recipes, words of wisdom that came your way and made a difference. Tiny stories can be shared in comments.

Longer stories accompanied by a photo or piece of art should max out at below 500 words. Send your stories to info@gratitudemojo.com in pdf form for text and jpg for images. Family friendly, please.

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