My paternal grandmother was raised on a farm in upstate New York. Her diary gives a daily account of a couple of years of her life in the days of no phones, no electricity, and no cars. They went by buggy to town to take a music lesson and found the teacher sick and had to turn around and go back home. Or they got almost to school and found a bridge across the river washed out.

Her diary was full of references to the daily baking, the making of maple "molasses", the harvest of wild berries and canning the bounty from the vegetable garden. Almost everything was natural, and milk, butter and eggs were plentiful.

She married Dr. Ira Hix who died before I was born. Later she married George Tisdale so I knew her as Grandma Tisdale. He also died before I was born.

I remember her best in Binghamton, NY, her home for many years. That was about 60 miles from Oneonta, and the halfway point to Grandpa and Grandma Mott's home in Pennsylvania. It was a whole day's trip there along narrow, twisty, hilly roads, so this was the stopping place for lunch.