Gertie Maples

To day is grandma Powell's birthday. She was born 18 Jan 1891 in Pleasant Ridge, Carroll County, Arkansas and died 20 May 1972 in Green Forest, Carroll County, Arkansas.
I spent many happy hours with her when I was a young girl. She was a story teller and told me many stories about our family.
She told me when she was young her family lived in a log cabin surrounded by a forest.
She said when she was a girl the family ate their food from wooden bowls and had spoons of wood. These things were made by her father with his knife.
One day her father and mother made a trip to town. Her mother never went to town but on this day the family planned on buying crockery bowls and grandma Maples went along.
Her father left her in charge of the household. She had two sister at that time.
Omie was a young child and Bertha was a baby.
Her father loaded the shot gun and left it by the door because black bears came around the cabin some times. Grandma was 14 years old and being a good girl she did the chores and cooked breakfast for her sisters' Their breakfast was hasty pudding. if you want to know what that was "google It" and I bet you can find the answer.
After all her work was finished she was running in the cabin playing with sister Omie.
While playing she knocked over the gun and the blast went under the bed where sister Bertha was sleeping. Gertie was very ashamed, she thought I could have killed the baby. The rest of the day was spent in a less joyful manner.
My grandmother always called her sisters and her brother by name with the word sister or brother in front of the name.
It was always, sister Omie, sister Bertha and brother John when she spoke about her siblings.
I honor the memory of grandma today.
She always used the name Gertrude but confided in me that her name was Gertie because Grandpa Maples had very little education and could not spell "Gertrude" so he wrote "Gertie" for her name in the family bible. I think grandma thought the name Gertrude was more refined.
Click on The title to learn what hasty puddin was, remembering that corn meal was the pioneer's main food along with mollasses and milk from the family cow.
My poem
Grandma
We’re septated by space and time
Our lot in life different by changing ways
In many ways they are the same.
Working with our hands all our days
Traveling life’s roads together we sing
While she sings with angles' band
We sing together ,praises for our king.