The first is that early burial records for Fairlawn Cemetery here in Oklahoma City has gone online.  This is one of the oldest burial grounds in Oklahoma City, which if you recall was established overnight by the land run of 1889.  The images are of Fairlawn’s record books and they are not searchable.  However, it is fairly easy to browse them, and the benefit of being able to look at the book is that you actually get more information.  There is no public index for deaths in Oklahoma so this is a wonderful resource for central Oklahoma.

For now, the information begins in 1901.  My source tells me the earlier books have been scanned and will be up within a month or so.  We look forward to having access to these records for so many of Oklahoma City’s early citizens.

Secondly, I have just found marriage records for Oklahoma counties have been put up at FamilySearch.  As with many states, Oklahoma has no statewide index to marriages.  This database has images where available–I found an image of my parents’ 1950 marriage in Beaver County, including images of the index–one for the grooms and one for the brides.  However, I found only an index entry to what I believe is probably a 1909 marriage between my the great-great aunt and uncle in Alfalfa County. (My great-grandfather’s brother (Simon B. Unruh) married my great-grandmother’s sister (Josephine Buller)–I was hoping for the record of my great-grandparents 1904 marriage, but because of the pre-statehood date, I really believe it is only available in the church book.)

The entire state is not included–my understanding is that some counties declined to have their records filmed.  I hope you are one of the lucky ones!

December 14 – Fruitcake – Friend or Foe?
Did you like fruitcake? Did your family receive fruitcakes? Have you ever re-gifted fruitcake? Have you ever devised creative uses for fruitcake?

This is a repost from 21 Dec 2007–it seemed to fit today’s prompt.

Anyway, this is where I remember our Christmas tree being every year that we lived in this house on the farm. (Just the year before, we’d been living in town–I was never sure of the reason for the moves, but we went back and forth several times.)  I’d forgotten that Mom pinned the Christmas cards to the curtains–I’m sure she made those curtains and I’m sure she flocked the tree with that terrific fake spray snow.   The bureau was borrowed from my bedroom and I know Mom painted it to match our wallpaper.  I wish I remembered what was in some of those packages.  When we lived in this house, this was always where the tree was.   We always had a real tree until after I was in college.   I don’t remember helping to decorate it until we got a little older–by high school, my dad and I usually did the decorating.  I do remember that about this time, when I was in the first grade, I had to take an ornament to school and Mom helped me make a Santa out of a blown egg.  The face I drew on was a little cross-eyed, and Mom made a red hat trimmed with fake fur.  I had that ornament for years until one of my brothers stepped on Santa and crushed him.  I like to think he got coal in his stocking that year.

I’m still hoping to find the picture of our tree the year Mom decorated a tumbleweed.  We lived in the Texas panhandle and they were plentiful.  We all thought it was some sort of sacrilege, but perhaps she was just a Southwest decorator ahead of her time.

written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2010

And the topic for the 100th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is… “There’s one in every family!” Bring your stories of colorful characters, unique heirlooms, mouth-watering recipes, most dearly beloved pets, whatever! Interpret as you like. Every family has “special” individuals, you know, the ones with a green thumb, the black sheep, the lone wolf, the blue-ribbon cook, the story-teller, the geek! I know you have treasured recipes and amazing heirlooms you’ve yet to share! Tell us about them and become a part of history in the 100th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy!

Though I haven’t been blogging much lately, I do want to do my part to make Jasia’s dream come true of 100 entries for the 100th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.  I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a topic and finally I decided to blog about my mother’s “Pink Salad” that usually made an appearance at Thanksgiving and/or Christmas dinners.

Then I noticed that the instructions read “treasured recipe.”  This one doesn’t fit that category for me.  But it is memorable.

When I started looking for the recipe for this concoction, I knew I wouldn’t find it in my mother’s handwriting.  She didn’t really save recipes except in a jumble in the top drawer to the left of the cooktop.  They didn’t survive the cleaning out of the house–she may have thrown them all away herself as she did clean out their house at least twice before we had to move dad out.  I could remember that it had Eagles Brand (aka sweetened condensed milk), Cool Whip, and cherry pie filling.  So when I did a little investigation online, I found this one at www.allrecipes.com, which allows you to put in some ingredients and provides recipes with them included.  There were several variations of this salad, all with rave reviews.  Which surprised me.  So maybe it does fit the “mouthwatering” criteria.

Ingredients
1 (21 ounce) can cherry pie filling
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (11 ounce) can mandarin oranges, drained
1 (15 ounce) can crushed pineapple
1 cup shredded coconut
2 cups miniature marshmallows
1 (16 ounce) package frozen whipped topping, thawed

Directions

1. Mix together the cherry pie filling, condensed milk, oranges, pineapple, coconut, marshmallows and whipped topping.
2. Chill for several hours and top with crushed pecans if desired.

My mom sliced bananas into it right before serving, and I don’t think we ever had coconut in it–too many members of the family disliked this particular ingredient.  And there weren’t always mandarin oranges, but it was always large and pink and fluffy, and usually served in her large yellow pyrex bowl–maybe it was the color combo that didn’t appeal to me.

Actually, while I am far from a health food nut and am known to say “There is no such thing as too rich for me,” this salad just seemed not worth what I knew was a decadent “salad,” and not it a good way.  I would have no problem consuming the same number of calories and fat grams if chocolate had been involved.

But it was traditional and when I started thinking about it, it reminded me of the story I heard about some members of the Clinton family insisting to their White House chef that Coca Cola Jello salad be prepared for their holiday meal, much to the chef’s consternation.  And then I remembered we’ve had that one too.

We do love our congealed salads at holiday times–I found this whole post on a foodie blog devoted to them.

March 7 — Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother’s kitchen. Why is this dish your favorite? If you don’t have one that’s been passed down, describe a favorite holiday or other meal you shared with your family.

Cooking was not my mother’s joy or strength.

She did it and she did it fairly well–especially since her boundaries were fairly fixed.  We lived in a rural area where it was almost too hot to have a garden–at least for my red-haired, fair-skinned mother.  And we always had beef in the locker in town, and later, in our home freezer.  I was shocked once to hear a friend’s mother talk about how tired she was as a child of eating lobster.  But she was a child of maritime Canada–I was a child of the Texas plains, and we ate beef.  My mom was known to sneak in a package of bologna or liverwurst occasionally, but it was never put on the table as the main dish.  She did pass to me her skill at making gravy–one of the secrets is letting the flour cook a bit first–I later learned this was called “making a roux” in official cooking terminology.  The other secret is having the right utensil to stir to keep from having lumpy gravy as the liquid (usually milk in our case) is added.  Mom’s utensil of choice was some sort of coiled, springy metal thing probably originally intended to beat egg whites or somesuch.

But at some point she had a great recipe for a dessert that has been lost.  She got it from her best friend Phyllis, and when I moved to the same city Phyllis left our small town for, I called her, but she couldn’t remember the recipe.  I can see it written on a scrap of paper and stuffed in the recipe drawer, but I cannot re-create it nor can I find one despite handy sites like AllRecipes that let you type in the ingredients and provide you with a recipe using those foods.

It started with graham cracker crumbs.  I think it probably had sugar and seems like some whipped egg whites folded in.  These, along with some undoubtedly additional forgotten ingredients, were patted down into a 9 x 13 pan and baked for a bit.  Then, what made it truly amazing, a boiling mixture of crushed pineapple and I can’t remember what else poured over it right as it came out of the oven.  This resulted in a yummy gooey bar that was so good, at least as I remember it.

And maybe it’s the best kind of recipe.  I certainly don’t need the calories, but I relish the memory of cooking in my mother’s kitchen, from recipes she’d scrawled on scraps of paper, making food that had come from her shared friendship with other women at the church.  I was able to locate her “quick” fruit-cake recipe after many years through the magic of the Internet, so perhaps the pineapple, graham-cracker bars will eventually appear as well.

I thought about it for a while and wrote both sons telling them I had their maternal grandmother’s wedding rings, and while there was only one diamond, they were welcome to think about using the stone and/or rings if they and their beloveds agreed.

They talked and the rings were examined while everyone was here for Thanksgiving.

In the end, the oldest son agreed that since son #2 had firmer plans than did he, he should have first crack at the rings.

So #2 son brought his beloved over to check out the rings.  My mom had saved the original 1950′s Zale’s settings when she had her diamond reset into newer gold  rings about 1975.  When Ang viewed both the updated gold set and the old white gold, stoneless set with a break in the thinned, well-worn wedding band, she fell in love.

With the older set.

I predicted this as Ang wears clothes from vintage shops that look very much like what I wore to college 40 years ago.  Except they look much better on her.  She manages to make those double-knit a-line dresses look great.

The end of this story is that Ang received the old, repaired, restored engagement ring that my mother wore so many years ago for Christmas.

Mom would be tickled–in the sense that her grandson is marrying someone who values the history of that set of rings, but also because she (Ang) prefers what she (Mom) set aside almost 25 years ago.

Welcome to the family, Ang.

This is a repost from 21 Dec 2007–it seemed to fit today’s prompt.

So I’m late joining this exercise, but maybe it will serve the purpose of getting me started writing again.  And help take me away from the frantic-ness that is too often part of these holidays.

I’d love to say we have some heirloom or cherished ornaments.  I think we have some that are on their way to cherished status, but not a lot.  A few years ago, I purchased some retro ornament that reminded me of those smaller glass ornaments of my childhood (1950s)–there are lots of blues and purples and stripes and some sort of rough white glitter “snow.”  They aren’t circular like today’s bulbs–I’ve enjoyed putting them among our other ornaments the past few years.

My favorite ornament that I kept for many many years was a Santa Claus head I made as a first grader.  We were assigned to make or bring an ornament for our classroom tree.  As I recall, Mrs. Price put up some sort of painted twiggy looking tree at the back of the classroom on the counter next to the sink–as I recall, it got decorated for each season so it wasn’t a true Christmas tree in the sense that it was not evergreen.

To make my ornament, my mom blew out an egg and I drew on the face.  He was a little cross-eyed as I recall.   Mom helped me further by sewing a red hat–I remember we had a time making it big enough to fit over the egg–and I glued on some cotton for the white fur.  I loved putting this ornament on the tree for years–first at my parents’ home and then on my own tree.  However, egg-head Santa suffered a crushing blow–someone stepped on him.  I don’t even remember who now but I do remember it was a very sad day when I had to do away with my Santa.  I think his scruffy little red hat still fills one of the corners of the Christmas storage boxes.

But we do have another ornament that is taking on the “heirloom” mantle–it is already cherished.  Our oldest son made an ornament one year out of an even more unlikely household item than an egg–a toilet paper roll.  The ornament represents a man dressed as in Biblical times–or a young child’s idea of what that would be, anyway.   Construction paper was used to make a red undergarment with a blue outer robe.  Now-raveling burlap forms the headdress–glued over the top and partway down the back–and the face matches the artwork of my 1st grade Santa–but this one has a very dark beard colored on.  It’s just so primitive and representative of my son at that young age–I love it and love to tuck it into the tree each year.

I don’t remember ever stringing cranberries or popcorn, but one year I did decorate our family tree in the tradition of what I’d read and learned about our Germans from Russia ancestors.  Here in Oklahoma City, there is always a display of trees decorated by various groups who want to participate.  Persons can tour the display and the event earns money for a local charity.  The local Germans from Russia chapter had a beautiful tree up and it made me think about my own ancestors.   My family were Mennonites so I can imagine their choice of decorations as being practical.  I put unshelled walnuts and apples and candles on my tree that year.  I did spray paint the walnuts with gold paint, and the apples were not “real” fruit–the were smaller shiny apple ornaments, and my candles were lights.  It was beautiful to me but I remember my sons being a little puzzled.  It took me back to the year my mom “flocked” (with that spray snow that was available and a staple of 1950′s Christmases) a tumbleweed for our Christmas tree in the Texas panhandle.  Looking back on it, it seems appropriate but I really was embarrassed and thought it was weird at the time.

*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.

Here’s my mom on an outing with her girlfriends–they’re wading–barely. This is about the extent of the water in the area of the panhandle I know.

There is a picture somewhere in my family of me, my brother and my aunt when we were about 5, 4, and 9 (respectively). We all have on swimming suits that are way too huge for us. I certainly don’t remember the occasion, but I do know that both my granddad and my uncle carried that photo for years. We were standing in the driveway of my South Dakota grandparents’ home–South Dakota was the only place we ever swam.

More frequently we fished.

There was the truly old-fashioned swimming hole down the road from my grandmother’s country store. We often spent entire afternoons in that lake–the Hilmer kids from next door to the store could usually be persuaded to come along, or vice versa, and we had a lot of fun there. (That’s Doug H. with my brother Thad in the photo above.)

Someone had rigged up a diving board–I, of course, was too chicken to jump. And if you got to close to the underside of the board, you were at risk of getting leeches. I suppose it was actually a fairly clean lake as it was spring-fed, but when I think back on it now, I’m surprised we survived. There was a very small island a few yards out–I wasn’t a strong enough swimmer to make it out there except floating in my inner-tube. And in those days, it really was the inner tube from a tire that we used. If we could wrangle a tube from a tractor tire, we’d hit the big time! There was gravel in the bottom of the lake so it really wasn’t a bad place to swim.

Here’s the best picture I have of someone in my family in a swimming suit:

It’s my mom, and I think this photo was taken on her honeymoon. Mom and Dad married 21 May 1950 in Beaver County, Oklahoma, and came to Oklahoma City for their honeymoon. I suspect that’s Lake Overholser in the background.

My mother had red hair and the palest skin you can imagine. She really really didn’t like water–she’d never learned to swim and it terrified her. It’s just as well my brothers and I did most of our swimming in the summers we spent with grandparents. She also sunburned through her clothes so this picture is pretty amazing. But it was her honeymoon, and she was very young, so I’m sure allowances can be made.

But I love this picture of her–I’d saved it as “Bathing Beauty Mom” in my files. I’m really surprised it survived her culling of the family pictures, but I’m really glad it did.

Written for the 49th Carnival of Genealogy.