Memories of Snow

The Broken Beans

The Broken Beans

I have heard of spilling beans, but not breaking beans. I remember my grandmother breaking beans, of course she called it snapping beans. I think the reason she used that term was because that was the sound the beans made when she broke them in half. My grandparent planted a garden every year and one of the thing they planted was string beans or green beans.

I am not sure why they were called sting beans, maybe it had to do with the fact that the beans resembled strings. The beans were long and green. When grandma broke them in half they made a snapping sound. After she broke them she would cook them and then can them in glass jars. There is nothing like the taste of freshly picked green beans. The commercially canned beans taste nothing like home canned beans. I miss my grandmother's cooking. I miss picking beans or digging potatoes. I miss Oklahoma.

I do not miss the tornadoes. I do not miss Oklahoma the way it is today. I miss the Oklahoma of my childhood. I miss the look of the thunderheads just before a rain or lightning storm. I do not miss going to the cellar and waiting out a tornado. I miss the Oklahoma the way I thought it was as a child, which probably was not the way it really was. Memories are funny things because they are the past seen through rose colored glasses.

Mama and my grandparents tired to protect us for m the harshness of the world. I do not know if it was a good idea or not. We had to do chores, but we were protected from the way the world really was. I miss the protection my grandparents tried to give us. Sometimes they could not protect us form the harshness of the world and sometimes they could. I miss my grandparents. I miss watching Grandma Marry snap beans. I miss watching Grandpa Frank roll his own cigarettes.

I miss Grandpa Frank and Grandma Mary. I do not think I would want to go back because the world has changed so much. Some of the change made the world better and some of the change made the world worse. It is a different world then the one I grew up in. I still live in the United States of America, but the country has changed. Humanity has changed. It is more then just the technology that has changed the world and humanity.

When I was growing up in Blackwell, Oklahoma, the world was in the process of change. I did not know it and I am not sure if my grandparents knew it. The change was slow then, but the speed has picked up. The speed of change has accelerated. There is no stopping it and there is no going back. Humanity has to continue to move forward because if we stop the human race will be left behind.

Just as there is no putting the snapped beans or broken beans back together once they are broken there is no going back to the way the world used to be. We, humanity must go forward. We must continue to advance each day toward an unknown future. I am not sure the future is as unknown as people think it is. The situation on the planet Earth appears to be getting worse, but we are in the midst of change. We do not know what the future holds, so we can just continue to move forward and pray for the best. Humanity will survive. Humanity will unite. Humanity will get through this present darkness and walk into the light a race united.