All My Ancestors

I was just visiting your blog and went to find the picture of the Girls. There is no date but my guess is that it was some time before Aunt Dude moved to Denver. As far as the horse - the last time I visited Knott’s Berry Farm was 1990 and he was still there! The “Farm” was sold to in the early 1980’s and many things have changed. The Canning Kitchen where the famous Jams and Jellies were made is gone and there is a roller coaster. The chickens for the dinners used to be brought in live every morning and prepared from the plucking to the frying right on the spot. That area is a parking lot. I hadn’t thought of it until this very minute - that must be why Mrs. Knott’s chicken dinners were so good - they were fresh!

In Ghost Town at Knotts is a one room school house (all the buildings were original - Mr. Knott would have them moved to the Farm from where ever?) On the Black Board the lessons were written. Aunt Lois was the one that did the writing long after she had left the Knott Kitchen. Mrs. Knott would call her every now and then to come re-do the board when it got smudged. I never quite got why they didn’t just have her put it on in paint. But as a kid you can bet that all my friends knew that my Aunt was the one who wrote on that board.

Many Sundays we - Aunt Inie, Mom, and all the girls would gather in the Beauty Shop and at least one of us would get a hair-do from the HEAD OPERATOR at Elois’ Beauty Shop. If there was a letter from Aunt Lide, or Dude it was read out loud and we were entertained by stories of their growing-up in Oklahoma & Texas.

I guess being an Okie and living in California was not a good image. When my parents went to get a marriage license and my mother put down the state of her birth as Oklahoma my father was surprised because she had told him she was from Texas. It became a family joke - Mom was an Okie from Texas. On one occasion it turned out not to be so funny. One of my father’s hobbies was deep sea fishing and once for vacation we drove down to Mexico where my father and brother spent the week going out on the sports fishing boat every day and us girls shopped and played in the ocean. On the way home Mom was riding in the back seat. When we stopped to cross back over the border the officer asked my father where he was born and then looked in the back seat and asked Mom where she was born. Her answer of Oklahoma made us all laugh and she had to get out of the car and explain. I guess he thought we were trying to sneak her in to the US. That was our last trip to Mexico - she refused to ever go back.

Thanks for being my blog

Kitty