You guys tellin' 'bout yer youthful agricultural occupations reminds me of one that I can't really say was the worst ... just one of the most memorable. A friend of mine, Dan Branton, lived on a cotton plantation south of Leland, Mississippi. His mother ran the operation while his dad did whatever rich, white planters do when their wives run the day-to-day operation. Our job as 12 - 14 year olds was to stand inside the two-bale wagons hitched to a tractor that hauled the cotton from the fields over to the gin. This was in 1960 when most cotton was still harvested by hand, but a lot of planters were switchin' over to mechanical pickin'. Ms. Branton sat on the tailgate of her black, '56 Chevy pickup and paid a penny to a penny and a half per pound out of a cigar box to the field hands who dragged six-foot long Croaker sacks along the rows pullin' cotton outta the bursted bolls in 100-degree heat, 90% humidity, sun-drenched, 12-hour work days. In a good day a good cotton picker could do 115 - 150 pounds max. ($1.15 - 2.25 per day). By comparison, a tractor driver/mechanical picker was paid $5.00 per day. Like I was sayin', our job was to stand down inside the 2-bale waggons and empty the picked cotton outta the Croaker sacks after Joe, Ms. Branton's six-foot tall, muscular African-American assistant weighed the bags and slung'm up about 8 feet in the air and over the side of the red-painted, expanded metal sides of the wagon. Let me tell you, it takes a mighty lot of 125-pound sacks to fill a 2-bale wagon. Now, when we found green bolls and dirt clods in the bottom of a Croaker sack, added in there to bolster the weight of the bag, we were supposed to holler out to Mrs. Branton "two pounds of green bolls" or "three pounds of dirt clods" or whatever, so she could deduct a few pennies from the payment to the offending picker. Joe would always glare at us when we did this because it generally deprived some young Black kid of a few cents, and since it was usually an adult who stuck those green bolls and dirt clods in the sack because a young person was not able to pick as many pounds as fast as an adult and because the heavy bags were so much harder for a small person to drag along. Well, one day Dan, his little brother, and I decided we were gonna make a little pocket change to spend down at the plantation store, so two of us at a time dragged a bag and picked cotton while the third stayed behind in the waggon in shifts. I guess we figured we could make more money pickin' than the 50 cents each Mrs. Branton was payin' us to shake out the bags. We started about 7 a.m., and about 11 a.m. we weighed in at 35 pounds and were all entirely exhausted ... last time we ever did that! And after that, whenever we shook out Croaker sacks up in the cotton wagon we never hollered out nothin' 'bout green bolls or dirt clods ever again. The next year I got a summer job at the Stoneville Experimental Station selfing and cross pollinating cotton and then pickin' only the tagged bolls for pure line and hybrid seed extraction ... that was a whole lot easier and more interesting. Besides, it paid 35 cents an hour! Bill

I bought a 1995 Acura Legend in 1998 with 32,000 miles on it. It was a 36-month lease turn-in and was literally in PERFECT condition. It sat unsold on the Acura dealerâs used lot because it was the least expensive model, the L 4-door, with cloth interior and 5-speed manual transmission. But it was exactly what I wanted, White with Taupe interior, Bose stereo, Power seats with memory and (the best part) the sweetest 200hp 3.2L V6 Iâve ever experienced! I paid $26,000 out-the-door, which felt like a fortune at the time (I was 23). I drove it 40-50k miles per year until I was t-boned by a commercial truck in August 2005. It had just turned 329,000 miles at the time and didnât burn a drop of oil (synthetic), the clutch had only been replaced once and the transmission shifted like new. Other than scheduled maintenance, the only thing I ever had to replace was the A/C compressor and two ABS sensors. The impact was so hard the passenger-side door panel ended up breaking my right hand and forearm (it was in the middle of the car). The rearview mirror broke loose during the crash and hit me in the head just above my right ear. It left most of the glass mirror fragments in my head and took 38 staples to close the wound! I also had damage to two discs in my cervical spine that required a 3-level c-spine fusion the following year. But I was able to recover from all of those injuries, which was pretty amazing considering how bad my poor Legend looked. I bought a 2006 Mazda3 Hatchback to replace it in December 2005. Eight years later, Iâm just past 190,000 miles and going strong!

Hey--what constitutes and "American" car these days anyway? Many of the Fords and Chevys (how does one pluralize "Chevy?")are made in Canada or Mexico--while Honda makes most of it's cars sold in the USA here IN the USA. And, of course, Chrysler is now DAIMLER Chrusler--and a German company... Our 2001 Odyssey is also paid for. I hope to drive it for a few years more. If anyone is looking for a LITTLE car-be sure to look at the new Honda "Fit." Elder Son took an internship away from home this summer and needed reliable transport. We might have gotten him a Fit if we could have secured one in the limited time-frame we had. Though perhaps not. We always hesitate to purchase a car it's first year out...and then DH and I feel there's something WRONG about giving a kid a new car...weird prejudice from OUR up-bringings, perhaps. I didn't have a NEW car until my FIRST minivan. (1992 Villager...) As it was, we picked up a used 2005 Scion aB with fewer than 10,000 miles on it. It's in our name--we just let him use it. We'll probably give it to him when he graduates college in 2007. It's a lot of fun to drive-and relatively safe for a small car. I just wish it had the side curtain airbags that the Fit has. Ah well, it DOES have ABS. And it got 39 mpg's on the highway when he drove it up to Cincinnati. melanie

Here's my kitchen and dining room, remodeled in 2004. A few months ago, I thought about painting over the red, but I'm so glad I didn't decide to change it! I have red accents in my living room, too, since the rooms open into each other. I've added a red, orange, and brown patterned area rug under the table, and removed the wreath since I took this picture. I also added red valances on the windows on the left of the picture (where I have a window seat).