All My Ancestors

I love this picture.

I can remember seeing it at my grandmother’s house in South Dakota and not really “getting it.” What were 4 grown women doing dressed in cowboy hats on a bucking horse? (I led a fairly sheltered life, what can I say? –not to mention being a tad judgmental about what I didn’t understand.)

It’s a picture of her 4 sisters. Gran was the oldest of her family and she lived in South Dakota, moving there about 1951 from the Oklahoma panhandle. Three of her sisters lived in California, and many of her brothers. I can now see that their “migration” to the west coast was part of the many many folks who went from this part of the country to California–not exactly Okies in the John Steinbeck sense, but definitely heading west from the Depression-ridden Great Plains.

So I didn’t get to know her family very well. I can remember going to visit and being visited by some of her brothers who stayed in Texas–Uncle Rusty lived in Amarillo, Uncle Bill lived in Stinnett, and Uncle Jerry lived in Sunray (I think that was the name of the little company town). And, of course, I knew Uncle Velcie fairly well because he also lived in South Dakota.

My Gran would tell me stories about her siblings, and I think being the letter writer she was, she probably kept in pretty close touch with her sisters in California. She would tell me about them and about their kids–I got to meet some of them through the years when they went to visit “Aunt Lida.”

I knew that Auntie Lois lived in Buena Park. Truthfully, that didn’t mean much to me because I had never been anywhere west of the Texas Panhandle. I also knew she was what we then called a “beauty operator,” and that she had worked baking pies at some place called Knott’s Berry Farm. And that she “did” Mrs. Knott’s hair.

I don’t know the occasion of this picture, but it sure looks like they were having fun. And from what I’ve learned about the Anderton sibs, I think they probably were. In the history of Knott’s Berry Farm, there’s mention of this “Ghost Town” being developed so folks would have something to do while waiting to eat Mrs. Knott’s fried chicken dinner.

The only one still living is Katie, who is the one furtherest right. Auntie Lois is at the front, then Vi, known as Dude, Inez, and then Katie. Aunt Dude lived in Denver most of the time I knew her–I don’t know if she was visiting at this time or if she was then also living in California.

And then there’s the part of me that doesn’t want to think about the poor horse. It brings to mind other slightly bizarre stories about real stuffed animals–Roy Rogers’ horse Trigger and Sorrow the dog in Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire.

Or am I still just a tad judgmental?