The Impossible Dream

 

The Impossible Dream

I dreamed about this story last night.  I don’t know what it means, after all, I don’t even have a brother.

It was after supper and homework was done when I ran up the wooden steps to the second floor of our house.  My hard-bottomed Mary Janes made a nice tapping sound on every wooden stair that I climbed.  My pigtails were still intact after a long, tiring day at school in the third grade.  I paused at the top and looked into my brother’s bathroom across the hall from his bedroom.  I was told to stay out of there, but that just enticed me to want to go in there more.  I could claim it was an “emergency”.  I entered and closed the door.  I hesitated because the lock was broken, and I couldn’t maintain my privacy.  I thought about leaving and going to the other bathroom, but convinced it would only take a minute, I proceeded with my business.  As soon as I sat down on the toilet, my brother, who was 15 years old, burst into the bathroom.  He ignored me at first and then our eyes met and simultaneously we both gritted our teeth and whisper shouted, “get out”!  I said I was here first, and he proceeded to go to the sink and look at himself in the mirror.  He drew the water in the basin and began putting shaving cream on his barely-there stubbled face.  Again, I said get out, I was here first, to which he replied “well, you are not supposed to be in here”.  I thought about my options.  I could scream for our parents but probably would only get myself in trouble.  I could plead with my brother not to tell them.  I had no bargaining chips.  He knew that I secretly smuggled the family dog into my bed to sleep with me at night, which was not permissible either.  He really did have the upper hand.  I could diplomatically ask my parents to fix the lock on the bathroom door, but in doing so could give my disobedience away.  I was caught between a rock and a hard place in this situation.  I said, if you have any decency, let me out of here without a peep, and I promise never to come here again.  At this point, he was shaving his face like he thought he was a man.  I sat there, feet dangling, my jumper skirt covered me, so there was no exposure.  He said, okay, I’ll step out, you finish up and get out of here.  I hope you learned your lesson!  I was relieved that he was graciously giving me an escape from this predicament.  I guess I owed him now, more than ever.  I did learn a valuable lesson from this interaction: before you go into a place you shouldn’t be, make sure you have some blackmailing material on your brother, just in case he wants to rat you out!

What a weird dream!

  Tammy Harvey  9/2/2025

Gardening

 

True Story of Gardening

In my flower garden I was working,

Little did I know, so many creatures were lurking,

An extremely large praying mantis was my first encounter,

Possibly 4 inches long, reverently posed in a prayerful stature,

As I dug my first hole, a fat little frog was on display,

I carefully placed him out of harm’s way,

Dragonflies were plentiful and butterflies galore,

A menagerie of fluttering, who could ask for more?

There were bumblebees perched on the tops of the sedum,

Joined by honeybees who flitted, enjoying their freedom,

I sat down for a break and to my surprise,

A hummingbird appeared before my very eyes,

It was sipping out of my hummingbird feeder,

And the sound of its wings was like musical theater,

It was only a few feet from my chair, so I froze,

But it flew away quickly, migrating south, I suppose,

As I dug my last hole, a squirming plump earthworm appeared,

A good sign that the soil was better than I feared,

For clay in my garden can be as hard as a rock,

 Oh, but time has flown by, as I look at the clock,

I enjoyed the creatures I’ve seen in my garden today,

I welcome them to always come for a stay!

Tammy Harvey

9/5/2025

Twinning

 

Twinning

I have always had exposure to twins in my life.  Oh, that makes it sound like a communicable disease.  Let me rephrase, I have enjoyed having twins in my family and otherwise.  Growing up, our neighbors across the street had identical twin girls, Judy and Jill.  They were hard to tell apart and cute as a button. My maternal grandmother was a twin.  She was named Vola and her twin was Lola.  My grandmother was the runt, quite smaller than her sister.  I think they were fraternal.  My paternal grandfather had twin sisters named Stella and Della.  As a child, I heard of them often, but don’t remember meeting them.  I married an identical twin, Jerry Ray…his older brother by 22 minutes is named Gerry Jay.  It indicates they are identical on their birth certificates.  They were truly look-alikes, but it was their voice and mannerisms that made them so alike.  My youngest son married a young lady whose father is a twin.  His name is Terry and his twin is Jerry.  Ironically, my husband Jerry’s brother was almost named Terry instead of Gerry. Both Joshua and his wife have fathers who are twins, but I don’t think that will affect their chances of having twins, because twins originate from the maternal side.  Rhyming names seemed to be the norm back then, or at the very least, the names began with the same letter.  My sister and I, who are only 18 months apart, were often mistaken for twins as we were roughly the same size.  We are named Pam and Tammy, thus adding to the confusion.  In addition, mother often dressed us alike.  I wholeheartedly thought me or one of my cousins on my mother’s side would produce twins in our generation.  I had always heard that it skips generations and with having a grandmother twin it was almost guaranteed.  None of us had twins.

On my paternal side, none of us cousins had twins either, however, we produced 13 grandchildren, 10 of them boys.  All of these cousins had either all boys or all girls, no boy/girl combinations.  Among the ten, however, only one could carry on with the family name.  Roger Paschal was the sole male Paschal among us. He was successful in having two sons of his own with his wife Kathy.  The first offspring born to his son Blake was a little girl, Elsie Faye, but recently Blake’s wife had a baby boy, Holston Roger Paschal!  This boy has the destiny of Paschal’s family tree in his future. I digress.  In a nutshell, my dad and all of his brothers had only girls except for Frank Paschal, who had only one child, a son, Roger Dean Paschal, to carry on with the family name. 

This association with so many twins in my life is fascinating to me, as is the legacy of the Paschal name. 

Samuel Jr: Chrylene Paschal-> 2 girls

Margaret: Ricky Jett-> 3 boys

Margaret: Fonda Jett-> 2 boys

Doris: no children, never married

John: Pam Paschal-> 1 girl

John: Tammy Paschal-> 3 boys

Frank: Roger Paschal-> 2 boys

Tammy Harvey  9/4/2025

Post Number 600

 

Post Number 600!

This is my 600^th post on Pouring which began nine years ago. 

Six hundred is 60 decades,

It is 6 centuries,

That is a lot of thoughts to have shared,

A journey that began in 2016,

Both comforting and challenging,

Delightful yet demanding,

But sometimes effortless,

Always fulfilling,

Writing about my experiences produces gratitude,

And to find something humorous is a blessing,

The blog is a kind of legacy left to my family,

The joyful stories are being documented,

I want my posts to be a keepsake for my grandchildren,

I want to write silly limericks that can put a smile on someone’s face,

Yet touch on real life topics; some that are hard to explore,

But in a way that is inspiring and encouraging to readers,

 That’s what special moments are; nothing can replace them,

I record true, outrageous stories that can’t be made up,

Precious memories of days gone by,

Quiet time, writing in my office, brings me peace,

Responding to the pouring that is in my soul, has been therapeutic,

Unbelievably healing while providing valuable lessons,

I sometimes wonder what to write about next,

I am excited when the words come to my mind,

And I am full of zeal to keep on writing the next 600!

Tammy Harvey

9/3/2025

Tennessee Football

 

Running through the “T”

With the “kickoff” of college football this weekend, many talented athletes will be taking the field.  There are 340 other talented folks who will be on the field as well and need to be recognized.  The Pride of the Southland Marching Band of the University of Tennessee, my alma mater, is one of the most prestigious college bands.  The traditional “running through the T” entrance of the football team has become an iconic performance.  The first time it happened was in 1965 at the season opener against Army.  Head coach Doug Dickey and Band Director Dr. W. J. Julian collaborated on an idea.  Coach Dickey decided he wanted to move the team’s locker room from the east to the west side of the field.  This required a unique entrance to avoid the opposing team.  Creatively, Dr. Julian came up with the formation of the “T” by the band members.  

In 1983, the original east to west formation was replaced with a north to south entrance when the locker rooms were again relocated to the north end zone.  The exhilaration of attending Neyland Stadium with a current capacity crowd of 101,915 in a sea of orange and white, while the Tennessee Volunteers run through the giant “T” is impossible to describe.  The roar of the crowd is deafening.  The charge is led by Smokey, the beloved Bluetick Coon hound mascot and Davy Crockett who represents the Volunteer spirit.  The mascot dressed as Davy Crockett runs onto the field with Smokey and waves a giant Tennessee state flag as the band plays “Down the Field”.  In seasons 1999-2000 and 2000-2021 my brother-in-law, Ron Osbon, was a trumpet player and marched in the Pride of the Southland Band.  At the ripe old age of 40, he was the oldest member of the band on the field.  The other students called him “grandpa”.

The other represented mascot for the University of Tennessee is the one who is dressed up in a Smokey costume wearing a double zero jersey and providing comic relief and energy to hype up the crowd.  This crowd-pleaser Smokey has won three College Mascot National Championships and was inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2008.  The first official costumed Smokey made her appearance in 1973 when Nancy Nelson Wyszynski first wore the costume.  The costume was revised in 1982 when a more realistic version was introduced, however, it was rejected by the students and fans.  Today’s Smokey costume was accepted in 1988.

So why does the University of Tennessee have a bluetick hound as a mascot?  In 1953 the UT Pep Club held a contest to determine their live mascot.  They had already determined it should be a coonhound breed of dog.  At the halftime of the Mississippi game, several dogs were presented to the student body on the cheerleader’s ramp at Shields-Watkins Field.  Each dog was scored by the applause of the crowd.  The winning dog was the last entry, “Brooks’ Blue Smokey” who howled when his name was announced and subsequently howled each time the crowd cheered.  He became the first in a line of Smokeys that is currently, Smokey XI.  The eleventh Smokey ran through the “T” for the first time November 25, 2023.  During game days and while attending official mascot duties, Smokey is handled by members of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity.  Mostly, Smokey lives as a pet for the Hudson family in Knoxville.  The original bloodline was Smokey I-IV.  Smokey IV died of cancer in 1979 without producing offspring which ended the initial line. Smokey V, in 1980, was the nephew to Smokey IV, and thus beginning a new bloodline.  This bloodline continued through Smokey IX, who retired in 2012.  In 2013, Smokey X as the first not to be a descendent of the original lineage, but the first to be born and bred in Tennessee.  Smokey XI, the current mascot, is the son of Smokey X and part of the new, Tennessee-bred lineage.

 Under the sponsorship of the UT Pep Club in the mid-1960’s, a Grand Champion Tennessee walking horse also walked the sidelines of the football games.  That tradition was discontinued in the 1980’s as the new artificial turf presented a fall risk to the horse.  Then in 2023, the tradition was renewed at Homecoming with a world champion youth horse, Labeled A Parolee, ridden by Eliza DeKleyn performed for the crowd.  This tradition is specifically reserved for the annual Homecoming festivities.

Tennessee football is rich in tradition and many Tennesseans bleed orange.  From the checkerboard endzones to Power T, to the trio of mascots, to the blaring of Rocky Top, to the Pride of the Southland, the University of Tennessee has a flare for making a football game an unforgettable experience. 

Tammy Harvey

9/10/2025

The Snake and the Ninja

 

The Snake and the Ninja

It was a Monday morning, Labor Day to be exact, at about 8:30am when my phone rang.  I was in bed having already woken up but just dozing off again.  My son Ted on the other end of the phone said he was coming by to pick me up.  He was on a mission.  A copperhead snake removal mission.   My daughter-in-law, Danielle, my oldest son’s wife, had called him to say a large copperhead was in her garage.  It was the first day of dove season and her husband had gone hunting an hour and a half away.  Well, for Ted this was no new task.  Just like his dad before him, he had already been deemed the guy to call in his own neighborhood when someone encountered a snake on their property.  If it was a “good” snake, it was relocated, but if it was a venomous snake it was killed.  When he drove up in my driveway, I proceeded to offer him any of my “tools of mass destruction”.  His choice was a pointed shovel.  By now, he had had time to think about it, and his nerves were starting to get to him.  It is a duty he is willing to do, but not his favorite activity.  In the back seat was my 5-year-old grandson dressed appropriately in his head-to-toe black Ninja costume with plastic sword, ready for battle.  He was excited to be with his dad on this adventurous excursion.

After a short 3-mile drive, we arrived at my son’s home where the snake had invaded the garage.  It was coiled up under a wire shelving rack.  It was big and dangerous.  The first step in the attack was to get it out from under the rack.  Ted chose a golf club (not sure the choice of club, lol) to reach in and pull the snake out.  It was agitated by now and struck a few times at the club.  I was videotaping the event, and at that point, the camera went into a wild spiral, filming the ground, the sky and Grayson running away!   Granted we were not close to Ted; we were standing at the edge of the garage door.  We were rubber necking the event.  When the snake was out, Ted immediately chopped it behind the head with a swift chop of the shovel’s blade.  It took 3 swift chops to finally dismember the snake and still it moved involuntarily.  The head still seemed “alive” as did the body, even though they were in two parts.  It was approximately 2-3 feet long and looked like it was well fed.  Blood ran from the snake’s body, and it looked like a crime scene.   Ted cautiously took the head and body separately and disposed of them near the railroad tracks behind the house.   All the while Grayson was proclaiming “Can I just say, I don’t like this!”.  The garage was safe again.  It is important to rid your property of a venomous snake when your daughter is 2 years old, and the snake is coiled beneath where the bubbles are stored.  I am just thankful that nobody was harmed in the making of this adventure.  Ted is the hero with the help of his trusty sidekick, Ninja warrior Grayson!   

Tammy Harvey  9/2/2025

Labor Day 1994

 

Joshua’s Birth

Yesterday was “Labor Day” and of course, I know that means we celebrate the work force of the United States.  But in my mind, Labor Day reminds me of the days in which I was in labor to birth my three sons.  The most interesting of the three is Joshua’s birth, our youngest son.

Joshua was quite the surprise.  We were “thinking” about having a third child when I found out he was already in my belly.  I found out on Jan 13, 1994, which is the exact date I found out about my pregnancy with Thomas, six years prior.  The due date for Joshua was September 16.  Thomas was due on the 19^th of September but was born on September 20.  Joshua was born on Thomas’ due date of 9/19.  With both Thomas (1988) and Ted (1991) the labor was long, and the process included induction, an epidural, and in Thomas’ case also required suction to get him out after 3 hours of pushing.  He was one short procedure shy of a C-section.

Everything was different with Joshua’s birth.  My water broke at 4 am on the morning of September 19.  It was a Monday morning.  Contractions began shortly thereafter, and it was time to go to the hospital. The Peters, our neighbors, were awakened and summoned to stay with our sleeping children.  I sat downstairs at the kitchen table and waited for Jerry.  He was shaving and talking to his brother on the phone.  I could feel the urgency and yelled out for him to come on!  Jerry knew from past experiences that it would take all day and did not seem to be in a hurry.  As we approached the first red light, however, the contractions were coming so close together that he proceeded to run the light.  The hospital was a 20-minute drive, with no traffic and as we approached it, Jerry turned one street too soon and we ended up in a vacant parking lot.  By then it was nearly 6 am and he was getting a little nervous about the panic I was in.  Arriving at the emergency room entrance, we left the car and scurried in and by wheelchair, I was whisked away to labor/delivery.  The nurse checked me, and I was at 8cm, and she told Jerry that if he wanted any photos to go get his camera, but don’t bother to move the car as if there wasn’t time.  I was frantic because I had never had a baby before, the natural way.  I cried out “I can’t do this!”, to which the nurse replied “yes, you can, you already are!” speaking to me with her nose almost touching mine.  Jerry returned, followed by the doctor who walked in just in time to deliver Joshua at 6:26 am on Monday, September 19, 1994.  He was 8 lb. & 6 oz and 21.5 inches.  We did not know we were having another son because during the pregnancy with Joshua, not one ultrasound was performed. (Nowadays, at 34, almost 35, I would have been considered a high-risk pregnancy.)  We brought him home from the hospital on Thomas’ 6^th Birthday. He was born without me so much as getting an IV, no drugs and no intervention.  The natural birth delivery turned out to be the best and fastest delivery I had!  I like to say that I pushed 3 hours with Thomas, 3 minutes with Ted and 3 times with Joshua.  I’m a proud mama to three handsome sons.  This month, Thomas will be 37, and Joshua will be 31 years old.  Ted turned 34 on August 5.

Tammy Harvey  9/1/2025