All My Ancestors

Read all the postings on this topic at Donna Pountkouski’s What’s Past is Prologue.

This week I was reading an Okahoma small town newspaper from about 1915, and in the “News About Town” column, the 2 local grocers seemed to be in competition for access to the local eggs and butter.  One of them used the term “cackleberries” for eggs and I’m pretty sure I laughed out loud.  My dad used that word for eggs, much to my mother’s chagrin.  He wasn’t born until 1929, so the term must have lasted longer than 1915, and gone beyond small town Oklahoma to small town Texas.  My dad also referred to getting around by walking as going via “Shank’s pony,” and using “Armstrong power steering” on our early cars and his farm equipment.  My favorite language use from my dad that I remember was when he used to sing “mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy….”  That was magical to me for some reason.

My maternal granddad was probably the most colorful user of language in the family, much of which isn’t appropriate for a family blog.  :-)  But one of his phrases was “Ned in the first reader.”  This phrase was used to convey simplicity and not always in a good way.  If someone was putting you down, they were trying to make you feel like “Ned,” for example.  The only other person I heard use this phrase was as far from my granddad as he could possibly be–one of my grad school professors.  In fact, this man was cause for another student and I recording his phrases in the backs of our notebooks–wish I’d kept them.  They were colorful!  Despite his advanced education, I’m pretty sure he and Granddad would have gotten along just fine, based on their language alone.

Other phrases I remember from my maternal grandfather:  He referred to eating ice cream, which he loved, as “cooling his belly,” as if this were one of the requirements for a healthy life.   He frequently asked us grandkids if we needed any “walking around money.”  We learned that one quick!  And he called their outdoor toilet “Ike.” 

I never quite got around to getting the explanation for that one.  He also referred to “cutting di-does”–I assume this came from the lathe cutting dadoes, but he used it to refer to someone slipping or driving recklessly or some such near out-of-control action.  He also talked about “tuning up” someone, or “dusting” them off as a way of talking about some sort of physical “corrective” action.

Last September I went to Ireland and I loved listening to the Irish talk, including one of our tour guides.  One of my favorites was the phrase used by our guide when she was discussing a strike of the airline workers.  They were protesting there not being enough flights going out of northern Ireland, as I recall.  Patricia had no sympathy for their protests, believing the issue had been settled and pronouncing it  “done and dusted.”

And then there’s the learning curve that occurs when two families unite by marriage.  I could not understand what my husband meant when he talked about putting his clothes onto racks (we called them hangers) or chewed a block of gum (they were sticks to my family).  And we were even from the same state!

I’m writing this as a response to Bill West’s invitation to a Geneablogger’s Picnic.  Bill blogs at West in New England. 

He provided these questions as starters:

• *What food does your family serve at picnics?
• *Are there traditional foods or family recipes?
• *Is there one particular relative’s specialty you wish you could taste again or one perfect picnic day you wish you could go back and relive?

At the risk of being as welcome as a herd of ants at the picnic, I have to say there really weren’t any picnics in my family. 

I passed up writing on Miriam’s AnceStories2 prompt about summer because I didn’t want to be too negative.  Summer is my least favorite season because I don’t like being hot.  As my brother says, “We come from a family that doesn’t like to sweat.” 

I think the root of this “problem” derives from the part of the country we’re from and the fact that our livelihood came from working outdoors.  It is just too hot in the Texas panhandle to enjoy a meal out of doors.  Most years, it gets hot in April and stays hot through October.  Here’s picture I have of some of my family making the attempt–doesn’t it look like fun? 

NOT.

The woman in the white dress on the right is my grandmother Rachel Cooper Osborne.  I believe the man just behind her whose face is hidden may be my grandfather–I’m basing my guess on the way he’s wearing his hat.  It looks familiar.  The women are her sisters-in-law–married to my granddad’s brothers, some of whom are in the background nearer the cars. 

I just don’t think this looks like a good time.  I don’t know the circumstances of this gathering–my guess is that it’s near Pampa since that’s where these couples lived at this time in their marriages.  It looks like they’re maybe getting ready to roast some marshmallows–can’t believe this crew would roast weiners.  I don’t know, but you can see how the surroundings just aren’t conducive to picnicking.

My dad wasn’t really a grouch, and he didn’t insist on many things, but he was adamant about not eating out of doors.  His view was that he worked outside all day and when he came home for a meal, he did not want to go back outside.  And don’t get me started on what he thought about picnic fare such as wieners or bologna.  He was a farmer to the core–he didn’t mind being outside dawn to dusk to do that work, but he certainly didn’t want to have a meal out of doors.  And his view of meat definitely didn’t include anything other than the standard cuts of beef he’d learned from his stock-raising relatives and his own experience.  We always had beef in the freezer and that’s what we ate.  (Those were the days before we were aware of the health and social consequences of raising and eating so much beef.)  My mom, with her German roots, occasionally sneaked some bologna into the house but trust me, it never appeared on my dad’s plate.

So my theory is that this is an important piece of info to record about my family.  I think we didn’t picnic because we didn’t live in a part of the country where picnicking was a part of the culture–the outdoors were part of our work life but not a big part of our recreational life. 

We had long hot summers–the closest to a picnic we had was when my mom and I would take dinner to the field during wheat harvest.  That was usually early June and it was often 100 degrees–we had the hot meal we’d spent the morning cooking loaded into the trunk of the car, we parked into the wind so the car wouldn’t overheat, and the men came in on their combines and trucks and used the shade the vehicles cast to eat.  (My mom had on gloves and wore long sleeves because she was so fair-skinned.)  My Uncle Pete always requested my mom’s smothered steak and there was always a lot of iced tea.  We served it unsweetened though nearly everyone put in varyig degrees of sugar.  There was always dessert–usually a cake or a cobbler.  It was too hot for ice cream–it wouldn’t have lasted a minute under those circumstances.  The men were grateful for the break and the meal and they put their dirty dishes back into the trunk and we were off, back to the house to clean up.  No paper plates or plastic utensils for us.  :-)  And, in response to Bill’s prompts, I’d only like to repeat this experience if I could be with my family for the event. 

In South Dakota, my grandmother usually fixed lunch at home for Granddad to come in for–which he didn’t need much of because Gran had fixed eggs, fried potatoes and pork chops for breakfast.  His fields were closer to the house than my dad’s were back in Texas.  The one thing I remember, too, about my South Dakota grandmother is that she had sewed some layers of fabric around some quart jars that she used for a “thermos” when she took tea or water out to Granddad in the field.  I don’t remember any of us ever having any official ice chests or picnic baskets. 

It really was a different world. 

Here’s my response to Miriam’s AnceStories2 prompt for this session, “The Doctor”  

*Who was your doctor or health practitioner when you were growing up?

When I was a child, my doctor was “Dr. Roy.” At that time, there were only 2 doctors in town, I think.  Dr. Kengle had his own hospital and had delivered me, but I found in the county history that he started practicing in 1929, so I think he was probably retired shortly after my birth.  I rdo emember being in that hospital as a child–one of my aunt’s worked there.  I don’t remember why I was there, I don’t think it was for an appointment.  But I remember that it was built more like house.  It had wooden floors.  The building was later the local USDA office–pretty appropriate for the small rural town I grew up in.

Dr. Roy’s hospital was on Main Street and was a 3-story building.  I can still smell what it was like.  One of my brothers now has an office in the basement of that building–a few weeks ago we went up to the first floor.  It really still looked the same–the pharmacy, the waiting room, the two halls that the receptionist sat in front of.  It was all office space now but I could still see the hospital there.  We rode up to the first floor on the elevator–probably the first one I’d ever seen as a child.  I remember going to visit my dad in that hospital–he’d had to have an appendectomy.  Hospital rules prevented me from visiting him, but for some reason, they brought him down on the elevator and I got to see him.  He was in a hospital bed and I don’t remember getting to be very close, but somehow just getting to see him and have him speak to me made me feel better.  It was amazing being in that space again–somewhere in the late 1960s the county built a new hospital on the outskirts of town–probably about the time Dr. Roy retired.

So with that move to a new hospital, we could no longer tell by driving down Main Street whether someone was having a baby.  On the top floor on the north end of the building was the labor and delivery room, according to my mom, who ought to have known.  If the lights were on, we knew there would soon be another citizen of our area.  It was one of those rituals we always went through when we drove down Main Street.

*How often did you go to the doctor? Every year for a check-up, or just when you were ill?

I remember going only when I was sick, which wasn’t very often, and when I had to get vaccinations for school.

*Did you have a lot of illnesses as a child? Or were you fairly healthy?

I must have been fairly healthy.  The only childhood illness I can remember having is the mumps in the second grade–I still have the “get well” cards my class made, drawn on that thick now-crumbling paper we used for art in our classrooms in those days.  Earlier, I know I also had the chickenpox and have the scars to prove it, but I don’t remember having them.  The family story is that I got them from my brother who’d been hospitalized with the croup–he came home with chickenpox.

*Did you have any injuries (broken bones) or surgeries? Have you ever had to be hospitalized?

Not as a child, and it’s a miracle, really.  My brother built tree houses and I would help him and then sort of take them over for my own purposes–usually reading.  And we would walk the top of the corrall fence, which was essentially a 2″ x 4″ several feet in the air.  Grandad’s barn was always fun, too–despite dire warnings, we climbed to the top of the hay bales stacked to the top of the barn.  And if he was in the field for the day, we ventured onto the roof of the barn.  I only had brothers and there were only boys in my neighborhood so playing rough was part of my growing up.  My brothers ended up with stitches but I managed to escape with neither stitches nor broken bones.

*What specialists did you have to see?

I never saw a specialist of any type and I don’t remember anyone else having to see one.  Except maybe my cousins might have seen one because they had to wear special shoes.  I’m not sure that as a child I was aware of specialists.

*Did you have to see an optometrist and/or wear glasses?

We always had health screenings at school.  I remember the year I couldn’t read the eye chart–I was in the fifth grade.  So off to Dr. Nowlin’s.  His son was in my class and the last time I checked, he was the town optometrist, following in his father’s footsteps.  My first glasses were pink cat frames.  So cool.

*Was going to the doctor a pleasant or unpleasant experience? Share both your most unpleasant and your favorite medical memories.

I was always scared when I had to go to the doctor.  Probably because it wasn’t any sort of regular event.  My most unpleasant childhood medical memory is getting my diphtheria vaccination.  Those were the years when they stuck your arm repeatedly and then an awful scab almost the size of a dime appeared.  I still remember thinking the nurse wasn’t ever going to stop sticking me and I find myself checking the upper arms of people about my age for a similar scar.

I don’t remember any particularly pleasant experiences, except I do have this vivid image of sitting in the waiting room at Dr. Roy’s hospital, reading magazines.  I think the floor was those green tiles of linoleum and the chairs were red vinyl–it was the 1950s after all.  In my mind, I think I remember reading an article about Twiggy, but she was hot in 1966 and that was kind of late for me to have been at that hospital.  I don’t know–I just remember there were always lots of interesting reads in the waiting room.  We always had the newspaper at home and we went to the library, but there weren’t the glossy magazines that were in the waiting room.  It was a peek into a world I didn’t have much access to.

*As an adult, how do your current medical experiences compare with those of your childhood?

Probably the biggest difference is that I try to do “preventative maintenance” with fairly regular visits to the doctor.  I’ve had surgeries, including knee replacements and a couple of C-sections, with two healthy sons to show for it.  I use health insurance which is not something my parents dealt with until I insisted.

*Do you still see the same doctor?

Dr. Roy is long deceased and I am long gone from my home town.  About 8 years ago, my physician of 30 years retired–much to my distress.  :-)  He certainly deserved some time with his family without the stress of his practice, but I felt pretty abandoned.  I shopped around until I found a good replacement–I was careful to look for one younger than me (easier and easier to do these days) so I don’t have to go through the retirement trauma again.  

*What kinds of health problems are prevalent in your family? Are there any genetic diseases of which your relatives should be made aware? How have you attempted to avoid these risks or diseases?

The two diseases I know of that may be genetic are arthritis and heart disease.  I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis at a fairly young age (35) when I weighed what I should.  I had to have my first knee replacement 20 years later–again, a bit young for such an intervention.  My weight is more than it should be, but I also know that my dad and many of his cousins had knee and/or hip replacements.  Both of their grandmothers were in wheel chairs because of arthritis.  When I first visited him for my knees, the osteopath asked me if there was some sort of cartilege disease in my family–there very well could be but as far as I know, it has never been diagnosed.

My paternal grandmother’s family has strokes and my paternal grandfather’s family has heart disease.  That said, my grandmother lived to be 83 (she did have a stroke a few years before her death) and my grandfather lived to be 93.  And my grandfather smoked unfiltered Old Gold cigarettes until his late 80s. 

And then there’s my mother who had breast cancer despite there being none in the family.  Her mother lived to be 92!

So I eat healthy and attempt to be active.  I’m not as active as I should be but I’m doing better since my knees no longer hurt.  My weight is more than it should be, but my “numbers” are good–no high blood pressure and decent cholesterol.  I cannot discount fate’s role in my health.

*Are there any doctors, surgeons, specialists, nurses or other health practitioners in your family, or in your ancestry?

I have a sister-in-law and a niece who are nurses–they do not currently practice, but it’s nice to have them available as “resources.”

My fourth great-grandfather was evidently a country doctor.  William Greene Ball was born about 1808 in New York City, trained for his medical career in Clark County, Indiana, and practiced for many years in Warren County, Iowa until his death in 1881.  He’s referred to in the family as “Dr. Ball.”  :-)  I have a couple of his “recipes” for various ailments.

*Are there any stories about certain medical problems or injuries, or about interactions with medical practitioners that have been handed down through the generations?

My dad was always proud to have had Dr. Denton Cooley (whom his staff called “LJ” for “Little Jesus”) do a valve replacement on his heart.  My mother’s family didn’t have much use for “doctoring.”  My grandad on that side had a pacemaker implanted and never went back to the doctor–until about 25 years later when the battery was apparently run down.  And the other family story is of “Ol Doc Smith” who came to the family home in Beaver County, Oklahoma, in the early 1930s when my great-grandmother drank carbolic acid.  He left a signed death certificate there because he didn’t think she’d live until morning but left instructions to try feeding her raw eggs to cause her to throw up the acid.  She lived through that episode but was untimately successful in taking her life.  I don’t know where Doc Smith was based, but I do know my grandparents lived several miles out in the middle of nowhere, so he must have truly been a country doctor who made house calls on those dusty roads.

Thank you again to Miriam Midkiff for her prompt down another memory lane.

This post is written in respnse to Miriam Midkiff’s prompt at her AnceStories2 site.

I have bad teeth.

Who knows why?  My dad had terrible teeth–he said they were “chalky.”  Supposedly he didn’t assimilate calcium.  I don’t know who made that diagnosis but I do know he didn’t have good teeth.  He had dentures fairly early.  I don’t know if he went to the dentist as a child, but I doubt it.  He was one of 8 children, born in 1929, and reared in a fairly rural area.  I just don’t think he would have been taken to a dentist–there may not have even been one there.  (Isn’t it amazing what you don’t know about your own parents and hometown once you start this sort of a project?)

I do remember being taken to the dentist as a child.  I guess somehow my mom got the word that it was important–I happen to know her own mother didn’t go until she was well into her 70s.  And then the dentist pulled the wrong tooth!  I’m pretty sure she didn’t go back.  My aunt, another daughter of my grandmother who didn’t go to the dentist until she was 70+, was also an adult before she went to the dentist.  When he told her to spit, she didn’t realize she needed to lean over the little bowl at the side.  I’m sure that dentist wondered where this rube had come from.  My mom inherited her own mother’s good teeth but she didn’t pass them down to me. 

I do remember Mom taking my brother and I to the dentist’s office–it was across the street from the library–probably my most important landmark in my hometown.  I really don’t remember anything about the visit except that the dentist was a youngish family man, new to town, and his name was Kelso.  This would have been in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  I started school in 1956, so maybe I went as a part of getting ready for school, though I’m not all that sure he was there that early.  Perryton was the sort of place where everyone knew everyone else–there were generations of families there and of course the “new dentist” was a novelty in town.

This prompt has been rolling around in my head since I first read it.  I had to think long and hard about how I wanted to address this posting.  The difficult part is that what I remember most about my dental history is that Dr. Kelso and his entire family–his wife and their two children–were killed in a plane crash.  I had somewhere in my memory that it happened during a holiday but I had no idea of a precise date. 

I started looking to see what I could find to document my faint memories.  Imagine my surprise when I found the 4 Kelso death certificates indexed as 27 November 1963 for the date of death–just 4 days after the JFK assassination.  No wonder the memory from that time is blurred and dark.  I was in the 7th grade in November 1963,  12 years old going on 13.  

I didn’t go back to the dentist until I was in high school, by which time I had 16 cavities!  I remember the dentist sounding pretty shocked when he delivered that news–as was I.  He filled those teeth, 4 at a time, over the next few months.  I ended up with a mouth full of silver fillings.  Shortly after that, I had to have my wisdom teeth out.  That same dentist took them out, two at a time, the first pair while I was still in high school and the last two after I was in college.  (As I recall, the reason mom didn’t take me there to begin with was that he was an older practitioner and had a reputation for being kind of rough.  But he did so much to preserve my teeth, I’ve always been grateful.  I don’t remember him being hard on my mouth–I think I had a fairly realistic understanding that filling 16 cavities wasn’t going to be a cake-walk.  I’d already been on too many of those.)  I remember steeling myself for having my wisdom teeth pulled, but it really wasn’t bad.  I begged my mom to let me go out the evening after I’d had the first 2 removed–I think I won that one and don’t remember any ill effects.

As it happens, I went to the dentist today and he reminded me that I have one more of those “old silver fillings.”  I started going to my current dentist, whom I love, in the mid 1980s–he was fresh out of dental school and he was amazed that those fillings from 1967 or so were still in there and doing as well as they were.  The worst tooth, one of my molars, which ended up with more filling than tooth, plus 3 others, now have crowns.  And there was a root canal or two along the way.  But one of those fillings, now 40+ years old, is still serving the purpose. 

I don’t mind going to the dentist–I guess I just made up my mind that I was going to spend lots of time in the dental chair and I might as well deal with it.  Nothing will ever be as bad as going to that dentist who found 16 cavities.  My dental hygienist today asked me if I drank coffee, and if I flossed.  I do drink coffee–lots of it, so my teeth show it.  And I try to floss but my crowns are so tight it usually breaks the floss.  So I brush religiously and use tartar control toothpaste and do pretty well.  I haven’t had a cavitiy in years–course, it’s sort of difficult to get cavities in those crowns.  Thank goodness.

It was a 1963 Chevrolet Impala SuperSport convertible, with a 409 engine. It was navy blue with a baby blue interior. I think the top was white.

I suppose as a female I shouldn’t have cared much about cars. But I did. I had a girlfriend whose brothers were proud of their mechanical skills and their restored antique cars, and I picked up some car knowledge from them. Plus this was the era of the original Mustang and the GTO, so there was a lot of car talk going around.

Additionally, I grew up in the Texas panhandle, where the highways are seemingly never-ending, disappearing off into those unreachable horizons, and vehicles are important. It goes without saying that the cars had to be powerful because things aren’t close together out there, and when you had to go to the neighboring town, like maybe sneaking off to see your boyfriend, you wanted to get there and back home in a reasonable amount of time. Amarillo, the nearest town of any size, was 2 hours away–we didn’t measure in miles, it was too depressing. Rather, we used time.

My grandad bought that car for my brother and I. I asked my brother once why he thought Grandad took us squirmy, loud kids fishing–understand that our grandad wasn’t the stereotypical warm, fuzzy grandpa–he swore like a sailor and he was probably more than a little bipolar. My brother said, “I think he liked us.” Leave it to my brother–a man of few words. So I guess Grandad bought us the car for the same reason.

I’ll never forget walking across the big round gravel driveway, out to the granary, and around to the back to see the car. There it sat out in the middle of the South Dakota prairie, a sort of enigmatic picture. The granary was ancient and held my great-grandfather’s carpentry tools. And then there was this gorgeous car. I still wasn’t clear on how I got so lucky, but I was willing to deal with the ambiguity.

I don’t remember how we got the car home to Texas. I guess we must have driven it all 640 miles home, but I don’t remember that as well as driving it back and forth to college. You couldn’t have a more impractical car than that one in this part of the world–it was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Riding with the top down was almost an impossibility because you risked baking. Anytime it rained, of course, if you were driving at any speed, it leaked. But who cared? We were young and the car was fast.

My brother and I were driving home from college one night–actually early morning– through the back roads in rural Texas. From nowhere, there was a sheriff or a highway patrol–my brother got a ticket for going 121 mph! The thought of that gives me cold chills now, but at the time, we were pumped about beating our time driving home from school. That car could fly.

There are other special cars in my memory–the 1959 Bel Aire sedan I drove when I first got my drivers license at 14! And used it to break a guy’s ladder that was sticking out the back of his pickup the first time I drove it to the grocery store. I think this was the car that we had air-conditioning put in–it was a unit under the dash in the middle–it froze your shins if you were riding in the middle, but what a luxury we thought that was.

About 3 months after I went to college, Dad bought me a used Chevy of some sort–one time having to come pick me up at school and get me back somehow impressed on him that he needed me to have a car. When I graduated from college in 1973, he bought me a new car–the first new car I’d ever owned. I think he was a little disappointed that I wanted a Toyota Celica, but he got it for me since that’s what I wanted. My high school boy friend’s 1956 Olds 88 (the tales that car could tell!), my Grandad’s ‘48 Ford pickup I learned to drive in, with an in-the-floor shift, my brother’s first car that was a really a pick-up, a family Buick that kept catching on fire, my Uncle Larry’s’57 Chevy with Hank Williams songs on the radio, my grandmother’s circa 1954 purple Pontiac–all cars that are strong in my memory.

But they can’t top the Chevy SS convertible–I loved that car.

Miriam’s most recent journaling prompt asks us to think about who and how humor works in our families.

This is a topic I should be an expert on. I wrote a dissertation on humor. The main thing I learned was that the dissection of humor is the only operation in which the patient ALWAYS dies. (That’s not original with me, by the way, but I can’t remember–or find–the source right now.) It seemed like a good idea at the time, but anyone who’s done that sort of sustained, intense project, soon realizes that there’s nothing funny about it, no matter the topic.

We laughed a lot in our family–it seemed to be a point of pride to get others to laugh, in fact. Not that we were/are all clowns, but we do appreciate a good turn of phrase. My husband is from a family that laughs as well. And he’s the youngest, so he’s the performer, as is our youngest son. Our older son and I tend to be the “critics,” though that’s typically phrased humorously as well.

*When you laugh, who do you sound like? Your father, mother, a sibling, or other relative?
I don’t know who I sound like. I suspect I sound like my mother–everything else has gotten to be like her as I’ve aged–my hands, my skin, my looks. I know I don’t sound like my siblings–one brother sort of grins and giggles and the other laughs a bit louder than him, but we don’t sound alike, though we can enjoy some of the same things to laugh at.

*Who in your family giggles? Belly laughs? Chuckles? Guffaws? Knee slaps or does some other large physical act while laughing?
My grandad used to slap his knee sometimes when he was laughing, particularly if it was something he thought you should be laughing at also. The only person I can think of who giggles is a most unlikely candidate–he’s a cousin who is a big, tough, (at least in his youth) cowboy. I couldn’t help joining in the fun when Willie giggled. My brother laughs a bit like him though he would probably clobber me if I said he giggles.

*Who has the most unique laugh in your family, and why
In my immediate family, our youngest son has the most unique laugh–it just sort of bursts out and is there before you know it’s coming.

*What kinds of things did your family laugh or joke about?
All sorts of things, including each other.

There’s also a tradition of telling stories about serious events but using a humorous twist. I wish I had a recording, for example, of my cousin’s tale about setting his house of fire right before Christmas. His daughter was getting married and his dad, who had cancer, was there. It reminded me of Ogden Nash’s tale of “The Night the Bed Fell.” The event wasn’t funny but the telling was hilarious–all the things going through his mind, his dad, my incorrigible uncle, facing off the official who wanted to replace his meds from the fire-damaged pouch, the interaction with the firemen–not funny, but hilarious in the telling. My husband has a few of those types of stories as well–the first wedding he performed had a bomb threat called in AND a tornado siren go off during the service. They had to evacuate the church twice, in pouring rain. You can imagine what the wedding pictures look like from that one!

*What best describes the style of humor in your family (dry, wet, ironic, silly)?
I’d say it is ironic and even sometimes sarcastic. It’s not mean-spirited but it does have an edge.

There’s some silliness, as well. My dad lived with us for a couple of years after my mom died. His stroke and aging made him all the more susceptible to my sons’ silliness–and they loved having the audience. He loved the antics of the pets as well–he chuckled when he told me about the dog stealing his sandwich off the counter while his back was turned as he was putting the sandwich makings back into the fridge. And then there was the time the hot air balloon came over the back yard and scared the dog.

*Did you ever have tickle fights?
Maybe one. At least with me. Because I probably beaned whoever tried. I always thought they were sort of mean–probably because I was on the receiving end as a child. And maybe it wasn’t all that much of a fight–I was just being tickled and I didn’t like it.

*Who were the practical jokers in the family?
My brothers were practical jokers when we were younger–I was probably a really good target. Once they left jelly beans on their bed that they knew I would eat. They’d made sure our dog had licked them first.

I’ve been known to pull a few myself–I used to tell my youngest brother that chocolate milk came from black Angus cattle–I suppose this is sort of a region-specific joke. Back in that time and place, Herefords were the most common and desired brand.

And I told my husband-to-be at the time that we didn’t sing our school song, we whistled it. He made the mistake of checking with my parents and then he married me anyway.

*What private jokes did you have as a family? What key phrases were giggle starters?
One of the things that can send us into gales of laughter is the mention of hearing aids, or talking about not being able to hear. Our grandad got progressively more and more hard of hearing as he aged. We were all gathered in my parents’ family room, and Grandad kept having us, or more likely, Grannie, repeat to him what was being said. My younger brother, the shrink-in-training at the time, said, “Grandad, have you ever thought about getting hearing aids?” To which Grandad roared, “An airplane! What do I need an airplane for?”

*What do you remember about your own children’s first laughs when they were babies? What silly things did you do to get them to chortle?
Almost anything could send son #1 into a fit of the giggles–getting down close into his face or rolling him around a bit or just talking silly. Son #2 was a tougher audience, but usually with some patience, he would laugh at the same things.

*What books, magazine, or cartoon strips were favorite humorous reads in your family?
We always read “the funnies,” in both the daily paper and the Sunday comics. My dad liked “Dennis the Menace,” “Alley Oop,” and “Nancy,” as I recall. My own sons like reading “Calvin and Hobbes” and it’s probably pretty telling that #1 son loved (and understood) Matt Groenig’s “Life in Hell” at a very early age. They both, along with their dad, like to watch “The Simpsons.” And they love to make fun of me because I don’t like watching it.

*What comedy television shows or movies were favorites in your family?
As I’ve said before, we didn’t have television when we were kids. But sometimes we got to go over to Aunt Eva’s and watch cartoons. I think I enjoyed more watching my brother giggle at Huckleberry Hound than I did watching them myself. Later, my aunt kept my oldest son when he was a little one, and she introduced him to Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther. He does a great Guy Gadbois to this day. My grandad loved Red Skelton–again, it was as much fun to watch him as it was to watch the show.

*Do you ever play games that get your family giggling up a storm?
Password, when played in a multi-generational setting, nearly always set us off into laughter. My grandad, no matter how hard he tried, just couldn’t keep his salty language under control during the pressure of the game, which, of course, sent us kids into gales of laughter–our mother, his daughter, was not so amused. We would practically wet our pants when he and my dad, his son-in-law, were paired up and trying to get the other one to say the magic word. And my grandmother would throw salt at my husband and walk backwards around his chair when she thought he was winning at cards too much. All cause for lots of laughing.

*Do you have digital recordings, videotapes, audio tapes, or home movies with family members talking or laughing in them? I’m a fan of Susan Kitchen’s blog, Family Oral History Using Digital Tools, and she has lots of good tips for preserving these recordings. Perhaps you should plan to do some recording at the next family gathering!
I wish I did have recordings of some of those card games and games of Password. So maybe it’s time to use my digital recorder at the next family gathering. I will say that one of the favorite recordings that makes people laugh in my family is the an old movie of me, at about age 3, gagging myself repeatedly while cleaning my sunglasses. I’m decked out in my two-piece sun suit, and just can’t seem to get those glasses smear-free.

*Besides preserving audio recordings (and perhaps posting them on your blog!), you can post photos of family members cutting capers, laughing, or joking around.
I have done some of this. My grandmother’s 4 sisters astride the horse at Knott’s Berry Farm is a good example. I think the Anderton’s always had a good time when they got together. My grandmother was not rambunctious, but she did like to laugh and make others laugh.

This was a fun reminiscence. I’m glad to be a part of a family that laughs–some of those times and the shared experiences make our lives all the richer. They give us a bond with family members who are no longer around but who can still make us smile when we remember some of our times laughing together. And the stories repeated give other family members information about those they may not have known first-hand. I’m so glad my great-aunt Edna told me the story about “fur-bearing Christians,” for example. I can still see the twinkle in her eye when she told me that tale.

And I remember going to sleep with a smile on Christmas’ Eve because from the living room, I could hear my two adult sons doing what can only be described as giggling as they were playing “Guitar Hero.”

In keeping with my plan to respond to other bloggers’ challenges or questions, here’s my response to Miriam Midkiff’s prompts over at AnceStories2. The theme is winter.

* What has been your attitude toward winter? Is it “the weather outside is frightful” or “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow”?

Comparatively, I like winter more than summer because I don’t like to be hot. I don’t dread it and I’m not particularly afraid to drive in wintry weather. Maybe that comes from having grown up in the Texas panhandle where winters could be fierce but not all that long–and there were chores to be done no matter the weather so staying in the house all the time was not an option. (Not that I had to do the chores, but Dad was out there come rain or shine or snow.)

*What are or were your favorite outdoor winter activities? Some ideas to jog your memory include sledding, skiing, skating, snowshoeing, snowball fights, or making snowmen. Where did you go to do these activities? Did you ever have an accident participating in any of the more active sports?

Of course we had to make a snowman when we were kids if we got enough snow to do so. I also remember my brothers and the neighborhood boys making snow forts–we even had them on the playground at school for a few days one winter. We could hardly wait to get out there, install ourselves in our respective forts and let the snowballs fly.

I have never skiied–not too many opportunities in the panhandle, though some of the area families used to travel to Red River or Taos to ski. My winter sports were mainly done in South Dakota at my grandparents’ place. We ice skated on the companion pond to the where we swam in the summer–I loved ice skating even if my ankles weren’t really cooperative. And we nearly always went sledding or tobaggonning. Somewhere in the family archives are some wonderful home movies of us all out on the hills taken about 1953. My dad, who would have been a very young 24 or so, was attempting to go down the hill on a grain scoop. He had the handle out front using is as a steering mechanism. Needless to say, there were lots of accidents on the slopes that day, but it looks like we were having a lot of fun.

*What are or were your favorite indoor winter activities? Did you play board games or cards, listen to the radio or watch TV, do puzzles or needlework, read books and magazines, or write letters, journals, or stories?

I’ve always read, no matter the weather. We didn’t have tv when I was growing up–not that it wasn’t available, but my mother thought it was “not a good influence.” I’m pretty sure it would have been no worse that the attitudes and words that were produced when my brothers and I played a game of Monopoly. But even today, when we get together at Thanksgiving or Christmas, there are card games and/or dominoes going on, and usually a really big jig-saw puzzle set up on a table over to the side.

*What do you remember about winter clothing in your childhood? Do you have any stories to tell about long johns, snow suits or snow pants, a favorite or unfavorite pair of boots? Did you wear a pair of mittens with a string connecting them around your neck?

The main thing this part of the prompt makes me remember is Bill Cosby’s routine on “Idiot Mittens.” I suppose you have to be of a certain age to remember that and smile.

*Did anyone ever make you hats, scarves, mittens or sweaters to wear? Were they knitted or crocheted?

No one in my family knitted or crocheted. I do remember getting this “wonderful” mohair sweater for Christmas about 1967–we’re all standing out in the South Dakota winter sun and snow having our picture made. Everyone’s all bundled up except me–I’m proudly displaying my gold fuzzy sweater and brown stirrup pants. Those were the days!

*What were your favorite winter foods or drinks? Some ideas include soups, stews, casseroles, hot chocolate, tea, or hot buttered rum.

I don’t remember winter food being much different than the rest of the year. After they retired from spending winters in South Dakota and would be at my aunt and uncle’s, my grandmother would make stew that was delicious. The last bite was always a kicker because she inevitably sneaked in a little cayenne pepper, which settled to the bottom. And Grandad would do his popcorn thing, so I guess those are my main memories of winter food.

*How about the cold? Did you ever get frostbite? Did you ever take a dare and stick your tongue on something metal? Was your bedroom cold at night in the winter? How did you stay warm at night…with an electric blanket, a bedwarming pan, or hot potatoes at the foot of your bed under the covers?

I don’t think I ever officially got frostbite, but I think I came close. The year I was in the 6th grade we lived in South Dakota and my brothers and I went to what was essentially a 2 room schoolhouse. Recess was great fun–there was a huge hill by the school and in the spring and fall we often went down that hill inside a tractor tire. In the winter, we used sleds or tobaggons or what were called “flying saucers.”

My bedroom that year was freezing. We lived in apartment above my grandmother’s store and post office. The only heat source was the furnace in the store downstairs. My mother lived in terror of our being in a fire, and, looking back on it, I can understand with that fear. All the bedrooms were in a row on one side of the apartment–I think it might have formerly been a hotel. My room was on the end that had an outside wall. I think I had an electric blanket but I don’t remember for sure. I just remember that I could usually see my breath in that room.

And the real “inconvenience” was that the toilet was downstairs and outside. This was 1963–not really the dark ages, but it certainly was different than what I was used to, having come from the oh, so civilized, Texas panhandle.

The only thing I can remember sticking my tongue on is the orange juice can. In those days, we bought condensed juice in a small frozen can, added 3 cans of water and stirred briskly. But what was there about sticking one’s tongue on that can? It’s almost a rite of passage for people from that era, and I have to admit I did it more than once. So much for “live and learn.”

*What big storms or hard winters do you have memories or stories of?

About 1956 there was a huge blizzard in the panhandle. We have a picture of our little house with a snowdrift up to the eaves.

My most recent memory of a bad storm is the ice storm we’ve just experienced here in Oklahoma City. Our power was out 6 days. Our fine mayor wants to bring an NBA team to the City–I’m wondering how interested they are going to be in coming to a place that has trouble keeping their power on?

*If you live(d) in areas that get little to no snow during the winter, what are or were your winters like? Windy and rainy? Warm or hot? Did you wish for snow, or were you glad you didn’t get any? If it did occasionally snow, did the bad weather shut down your community? Do you remember the first time you saw snow? What did you think of it?

I’ve always lived in a place that gets snow, at least occasionally. Of course, there’s always the hope that the snow will shut down work or school. That happens more here in Oklahoma–I don’t ever remember school being called in South Dakota. I am actually one of those people who can honestly say she walked to school in -20 weather. Granddad would sometimes take Grannie on the tractor to open the store–the mail must go through, y’know. She had to be there, just in case. Plus I think they kind of liked the challenge of it all–Granddad had some sort of heater on his pickup and that was the first vehicle I remember seeing plugged in at the utility pole. They certainly didn’t have a garage, so between the plugged in pickup and the tractor, they could usually get where they needed to go. They lived on gravel roads that Mr. Stuart, the county road caretaker, kept graded with the road-grader he kept at his home.

*Do you remember stories from your parents, grandparents, or other family members or old timers of big storms or hard winters of the past?

I just remember my mom talking about their first winter in South Dakota. Granddad had moved up there thinking he wanted to ranch. My dad and he had spent the summer and fall doing the back-breaking work of putting up fence and then the winter came. Feeding and watering the livestock in those conditions was a bit more than Granddad bargained for, I think. By the time I was a teenager, he was leasing out his pasture land and farming some land he rented from an absentee landlord. There were a couple of horses in the barn that had to be tended to, but that was far easier than having to tend livestock in the pasture.

*Do you have any photos of your ancestors outdoors in the winter, or of their homes or automobiles covered with snow? What about photos of ancestral horses and sleighs?

I talked a little bit about some of the photos earlier. Grannie would send us pictures of the snow in her letters from South Dakota–she was the family photographer. She was the one who shot the movies referenced above. No pictures of ancestral horses and sleighs, though there must have been some of those–I wonder if that’s how the part of the family who lived in Russia in the 1860s-70s got around.

I think there’s something to be said for living in a place that has seasons–sometimes in this part of the country it seems like there are only two–summer and winter, but the change of seasons creates a nice rhythm for life. And I can always use the cold as an excuse to not go out–sort of like I use the heat in the summer time.

One of the first things I saw in Ireland was this:

Who knew there were palm trees in Ireland? I certainly didn’t.

And then one of our side trips took us to Newgrange. What a wonderful site. I’m so glad my traveling companions made arrangements for this excursion.  This mound is older than the pyramids and I got to go inside!

On the way to Newgrange, our terrific tour guide Mary read us an article from the Irish Times entitled “No Petty People, the Ulster Presbyterians,” published 15 May 2007. She read it to us as we traveled through the Boyne Valley, beside and across the River Boyne, scene of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. One of those battles I’d probably read about in some history class, but it only came alive to me when I was there and hearing about the Ulster Presbyterians, aka the Scots-Irish, in the article.

These folks came to America in the early 1700s, were largely Protestant, particularly Presbyterian, and worked the land. I’ve come to believe that Christopher Osborne was probably Scots-Irish–he’s found in western North Carolina before 1750, he’s Presbyterian, and he worked hard to acquire land. That, of course, does not prove the issue, but it does provide some clues. I think I remember my dad saying some of his family were Scots (he said “Scotch”) Irish–honestly, I don’t know if he was talking about his father’s Osborne line or his mother’s Cooper and Landrum lines. I do believe the Landrums were from Scotland, however, not necessarily via Ireland, according to the research of others that I’ve read. The earliest Coopers we’ve found in our line were in Hampshire County, WV and Maryland.

I have read both James Leyburn’s The Scotch Irish: A Social History (1962) and David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history). The latter uses the term “borderers” rather an “Scots Irish,” and notes that these folks have substantial Anglo-Saxon and Viking and/or Scandinavian heritage–again, this matches what the Christopher Osborne DNA test reveals. Fischer says,

Some historians describe these immigrants as “Ulster Irish” or “Northern Irish.” It is true that many sailed from the province of Ulster… part of much larger flow which drew from the lowlands of Scotland, the north of England, and every side of the Irish Sea. Many scholars call these people “Scotch-Irish.” That expression is an Americanism, rarely used in Britain and much resented by the people to whom it was attached. …”

So I have more work to do–learning more about the “borderers,” the Scots Irish, and determining what, if any records exist of their migration. The better I understand the people and their history, the more clues I’ll find in the pitifully small amount of information known about Christopher.

Despite finding palm trees in Ireland and learning more about what I don’t know, I think I can move on.

I know enough about the nature of information to know that the more you know, the more you want to know–sort of a variation on the genealogist’s old saw, “You get one question answered and then you have at least 2 more.”

Today is my Dad’s 78th birthday–he died too soon for an Osborne.

After Mom died, Dad lived with my family and me for a couple of years. One of his “jobs” was to let Slim, our dog, in and out. Both being gentle spirits, they bonded. I’m pretty sure Slim took advantage of Dad’s generous spirit, asking to go in and out way more often than absolutely necessary, but Dad never complained.

One day when we came home from work Dad had to tell us that day’s events. Evidently a low flying hot air balloon chose right over our yard to open the burner, and it was not equipped with one of the “whisper burners” sometimes used to keep from spooking livestock. Slim and Dad were in the back yard at the time, but not for long. Slim was spooked, to say the least. My dad was a quiet guy, but he was laughing so hard, he could hardly tell the story. And he laughed that hard each time he told the story. (I regret to say that bathroom humor was probably the only other topic that made him laugh that hard.)

We had a laugh here at home today remembering that event when we were trying to inflate one of those large exercise balls and Slim went ballistic, so to speak–he started barking and biting at the ball. We had to send him outside. Hubbo is sure he (Slim) was recalling the balloon experience.

I’m thinking Dad probably had one more laugh at Slim’s expense.

Earlier in the week I read the Pioneer Woman’s post about her pesky brother in law Tim’s Tractor Love and I thought of my brother who really wasn’t completely happy until he bought his very own John Deere for working on his place at the lake.

If anyone was born to farm, other than our dad, it would be my brother, who, by the way, shares our dad’s name. But making a living somehow took priority so he and his family now run a very successful business from their beautiful place on the lake. It’s taken a lot of work and one of his first purchases was a riding mower–of course it was a John Deere. But even though it was indeed a John Deere, and it had quite a few attachments, it just wasn’t quite big enough to be called a real tractor.

I think it might be genetic. He has a grandson who will sit on that lawn mower for hours and be perfectly happy. And when my brother made him a bed like a John Deere tractor, there was never another problem with going to bed to take a nap or at bedtime. He got his own battery-powered, down-sized version of his very own tractor for Christmas and he loves to drive it, but he does have some concerns that it’s getting dirty.

So you can see that John Deeres hold a special place in our family. My brother hauled John Deere tractors, combines, etc. right after he quit farming–that was almost close enough to farming for him. While he worked for that company, he collected the small model versions. Are you getting the picture? Below is a cover of the John Deere magazine, appropriately named The Furrow–with some of our relatives’ names on the cover–they evidently ran an implement company in a neighboring town. My brother found it among our granddad’s things after he died–wouldn’t you know this would be the thing he would choose to rescue?

This past couple of years, he and his family, with the help of various neighbors, have been working on a house built in 1906, one that probably began its life as a ranch bunkhouse and one that they moved onto some property my niece bought across from her folks, to make a great home for her. I got to see it for the first time this past weekend. They’ve done a great job of making the house modern but retaining the old house charm–hardwood floors and some beadboard walls. But when I left, after it had been raining for 3 days, I started sliding sideways off the curving, sticky, clay road. I managed to get stopped six inches from a tree trunk.

All I could think of to do was to start honking. Then I remembered I had my cell phone, but he was already down the driveway in his pickup. I swear his eyes sort of lit up when I told him I was stuck. He said for me to stay put and he’d be back. About 10 minutes later, he came out with his coveralls on, galoshes and cap (John Deere, of course) and gloves on, moved his pickup and fired up his green and yellow tractor. It’s not a big one, but it’s a Deere.

It was raining too hard to get a good picture. You can see the “slow moving vehicle” triangle reflected in my mirror–and if you look carefully, you can see the pickup to the left. But trust me, the tractor’s there.

I, of course, wasn’t getting out. He was on the ground, under my vehicle, flinging chains this way and that, and finally, giving me instructions:

“Put it in reverse, but don’t gun it. I don’t know if this ‘little fart’ will do it, but we’ll see.”

He knew it would, and he was right. Soon I was on my way home, and he was back in the house, singing the praises of his tractor, no doubt.

What a guy. What a Deere.