All My Ancestors

I think all families have stories about bathrooms and underwear. And they’re nearly always told with a grin.

Today we were leaving work and I stopped by the bathroom on the way out. I caught up with my colleagues at the elevator and of course comments ensued. But it reminded me to tell them about an assistant I used to have who always reminded me of how dangerous it was to get on the road without stopping by the bathroom first. I’m sure it would be problematic to have a wreck and suffer internal injuries with a full bladder, but somehow it just always seemed pretty low on my list of considerations as I got ready to get on I-35 for the 40 minute commute home.

Then, of course, one of the other colleagues related how her mother really had always told her and her sibs to have on clean underwear when they left the house. We never got that particular speech at home, unless we were going to the doctor, but it did remind me of my mom telling about taking her 2 aunts to visit their parents’ (and grandparents’) graves.

This would have been about a 4 hour trip. Sometime into the journey, Aunt Edna requested a bathroom stop, with which Mom promptly complied. When Mom noticed Aunt Lorene wasn’t getting out of the car, she asked her if she didn’t need to use the facilities.

“No,” came the reply, “I’m training my bladder.”

I don’t know if my mom laughed then, but I know she did many times later on, as did the rest of us.

This was so typical of Aunt Lorene. She was always training something. She got me started on a quilt of the state birds when I was about 10. I still have most of the pieces and I WILL finish it one of these days. (This project has been complicated by the fact that Aunt Lorene’s house burned with blocks for the states from Texas up through North Dakota). She taught me a how to make hospital corners and a great deal about cooking–she’d trained as an LVN in Albuquerque. She made lots of her gifts and I still like to make presents for others and treasure a handmade gift when it comes my way. She taught my mom a great deal about home decorating and making curtains and slip covers. She was a smart woman. But she did have that “training” gene. She was, after all, the sister to my grandfather who was referenced earlier as drilling holes before he drove in nails. Either one could fix or make almost anything, except peace between them.

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Today I was reading through the index to the oral histories at the library in the Research Division of the Oklahoma Historical Society. There are lots of categories of oral histories, but I wanted to see what the holdings were for the Germans from Russia. My maternal grandfather’s family immigrated from Russia in 1874, from an area called Volhynia. They came with with the wave of Mennonites that came to escape having to serve in the Russian army. They first went to Kansas, but when the land opened up in Oklahoma Territory, they moved south to what is now Goltry in Alfalfa County.

I didn’t find any of my family members interviewed–didn’t really expect to. Most of the interviewees appeared to be from families from the Volga region. But I remember I used to ask my grandad why he didn’t speak German because both of his parents were the first generation born in the US. His older sister, my great-aunt Edna once showed me her school books from when she started school–they were in German. She said she only went to that school one year. I asked her why and she said the German schools were closed after that.

When I went back to check the dates, I found that was about the time of World War I. That’s what I saw today in the interviews–the effect of WW I on the Germans who settled in Oklahoma. Several of the families lived out by Shattuck, in Ellis County, Oklahoma. Shattuck isn’t too far from where I grew up in Ochiltree County, Texas, and, in fact, lots of folks went to Shattuck for medical care at Newman Clinic. My family from Beaver County, Oklahoma, talked about it a lot. But what caught my eye today were the number of people who said that at the time of the first World War, they were not welcome in Shattuck. They were viewed as “clannish” and were not allowed to speak German–the merchants didn’t want them there.

As a result, they went just over the state line to Higgins, Texas. Higgins is in Lipscomb County, and is a little town with an interesting history. Will Rogers worked there as a young man, for example. Seems like I remember some connection between Higgins and Dan Blocker, aka Hoss Cartwright, but I can’t remember or find the connection just now.

Anyway, what I read in the interviews made me think about the current brouhaha about immigrants–of course people stick with the people they know–no matter if they’re from Germany or Mexico or Oklahoma. And the anti-German sentiment probably accounts for the discontinuation of the German schools my aunt started in.

My husband and I lived in Shattuck for a little over a year about 1976–I remember there were lots of German names in the community. And the grocery store sold some wonderful homemade German meat pies called bierocks. yum. Wonder if they’ll be selling tamales in that grocery store in another 60 years or so?

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