All My Ancestors

The current challenge to us genea-Bloggers is from Lori at Smoky Mountain Family Historian, to write about some of the stores where we used to shop that are no more.

I have lots of ammo for this one as I grew up in a small rural town before malls.  We had a true Main Street lined with home-owned stores.  My “city-slicker” husband always says it has to be the widest Main Street in the country–it is pretty wide–4 lanes with andled parking on both sides.  It’s Texas State Highway 83 and there are no curves. 

All the buildings are still there but they have morphed into other businesses.  I could write about Malone’s, the children’s store where we went for our shoes and my school dresses, or at least the ones my mom didn’t sew for me.  They had one of those x-ray machines to check your shoes–was it a Buster Brown product? Maybe that accounts for all my foot problems at this point in my life. 

Then there was McClellan’s–truly an old-fashioned dime store.  Everytime I see take-out boxes for Asian food, I remember that I first knew those boxes as the transport for goldfish purchased at the dime store.  (You could also buy baby turtles with decals on their backs and at Easter time, baby chicks or ducks.  PETA would not have approved!)  I remember wooden floors and fans from the ceiling–I remember thinking that ceiling fans were a really cool idea and wondered why people didn’t have them in their houses.  It was also the place to buy records–the vinyl kind–remember those? 

Bryan’s Food Store, on the north end of Main, was where we bought our groceries–there was a real butcher’s case there, a ledge in the front window where people sometimes sat to pass the time with Mr. or Mrs. Bryan or Edith who were checking–it also served as the place to store boxes waiting to be filled with our purchases.  The office was at the back, about 1/2 a floor above the main shopping area–I can still smell the baskets of Lava soap and the dusty potatoes. 

Next door to the grocery store was cousin Delbert’s barbershop.  This place was considered a little shady because my mom suspected he kept “girlie magazines” for his customers.  I’m surprised she actually sometimes let my brothers go next door unaccompanied for their haircuts while she and I did the grocery shopping.  I loved the smell of the butch wax when they came out with their fresh buzz-cuts.  And bubble gum.  Life wasn’t fair for girls in my small town!

But the store I want to write about for this post is Plainview Hardware.  I did a google search on this phrase just to see what would come up and I was pleased and shocked to find that it has some sort of historical landmark status in Texas, with this restored WW II sign mentioned in most of the write-ups.  I also learned that the same folks owned the adjoining Perryton Furniture store–you can see part of the letters for that store in this same picture.

Think of every part for every appliance and machine that existed in the 1960s as well as a full range of kitchen ware, including cooking and serving, and you have Plainview Hardware.  Whatever you needed, they had it.  I graduated college in 1973.  Sometime shortly after that one of my friends broke the basket in her Pyrex coffee maker. 

She was lamenting not being able to use her coffee pot–and she was really attached to it.  This was after electric percolators were available, but before Mr. Coffee was very popular.  But Lori took great pride in using her stove-top pot to brew coffee.  I knew I could save the day.  I went to Plainview Hardware on one of my trips home, and sure enough, they had the glass surround for the basket.  She couldn’t believe it when I brought it back to her.  I was so proud to shock this world-wise friend from southern California!  My dad brought me wire from there for my tomato plants, my mom bought shower gifts as well as her own snack sets she and the other church ladies would pool for wedding and baby showers.  It was like a general store without the groceries.

 I never tired of wandering the aisles and looking at all the different nuts and bolts and washers and nails and chain and pipes and dishes and pyrex coffee pots and parts.  There was, of course, some distant connections to the people who ran the store–the man was from the family one of my great aunts had married into and then divorced, and the woman was the aunt of one of my best friends–and they lived within sight of our house.  Home Depot just doesn’t hold the same charm. 

The only other store that evokes many memories due to the variety of things available there is what used to be known as Corner Drug.  After I went to college, my mother went to work there and as a result, we had all sorts of decorative items–my sisters-in-law still use the leaded glass pitchers and my sons have the Fitz and Floyd dishes.  I worked there during summer and Christmas holidays–usually wrapping packages at Christmas and floor duty in the summers.  I sold magazines and paperbacks and perfume and band-aids and candle-sticks.  This is the place I remember seeing my first Barbie doll.  It was, too, of course, the place we got our prescriptions filled–in later years, they delivered.  Clerks kept kept tablets under each cash register–if a person asked for something the store didn’t stock, the clerk wrote it down and by the next time the customer came in, it was on the shelf.  The store’s services included selling some sort of hair tonic with “Alligator” in the name that the old guys had to ask for from behind the counter–it was the town’s answer to being a dry county but having some customers who couldn’t make it to the state line 7 miles away for their alcohol fix.

My husband asked me the other day if I wanted to retire “back home.”  I told him I really wasn’t interested in living in that small town, but I am (mostly) glad I grew up there.

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.

I’m late this week doing Miriam’s “assignment.” I think I spent too much time worrying about the prompt from last week–about diversity. From reading her blog, it looks like I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t particularly comfortable writing about my family’s views on social diversity and civil rights. It’s not a pretty picture and I like to think I’ve moved past those opinions.

So I am writing about games because we played lots of them.

*Did you have a regular game night or family night?

No. Our family of 5 didn’t play games all that much, but when we got together with other family members, we always played cards (with grandparents) or dominoes or Monopoly (with cousins).

*What games (board, card, dice, or acting out) did your family enjoy? Was there a favorite you played time after time?

I wish I had a dime for every game of Pitch, Gin, and Spades I’ve played. We had such fun–my husband had never played cards and when he got acquainted with my grandparents, he learned to play. My grandmother thought he was unnaturally lucky and would throw salt at him or back around his chair to make him think she could break his luck. The rest of us were usually collapsed on the table with laughter and my husband was just amazed that my grandmother could be that crazy.

We also played Yahtzee a lot, Aggravation (marbles), Sorry, and also dominoes. I remember learning to play Clue and playing it obsessively one South Dakota summer with my friend Lois. We’ve also played our share of Trivial Pursuit. This past Thanksgiving, we played a game called Apples to Apples which was great fun–I gave it to a couple of people for Christmas.

*Did your family have a family or game room? What was it like? What kind of game equipment did it have (foosball, pool table, etc.)?

No game room. We just set up the card tables in the living room or den–my brother has made an Aggravation board, and he’s also made this cool 8 sided, felt covered topper for a card table for cards or dominoes.

*Do you have any funny stories or a particular memory (good or bad) that stands out of game-playing time?

See the story about my grandmother and my husband above.

*Were there any games you disliked? Why?

To this day, I don’t like to play Monopoly because of bad memories. The great aunt and uncle we lived near by had one daughter and 8 grandkids. Those grandkids knew how to rumble, and when they came to visit, I inevitably got roped into playing Monopoly with the boys (there were only 2 girls in the bunch) and my brothers. I was sure they were cheating–which, translated, probably meant I was losing. Later, my husband and sons played Monopoly–I wouldn’t play–and the same level of emotion often “erupted” from that game. So I avoid it. Let’s face it–I work for non-profits.

*Were there any games that were not allowed to be played? Why?

The only thing I can remember is that my grandmother went through phases of thinking it wasn’t “ok” to play cards. It sort of depended on what preacher she’d heard recently. As she got older, and also as we begged her, she would play with gusto.

My husband had never played cards nor had he played any game with dice. He said his mother would make a spinner for any game that required the throw of dice to move ahead. He soon mastered both cards and dice. Don’t tell his mom.

*Did your parents have a regular night when they would play games or cards with friends or extended family?

No, though I do have a very early memory of going to some people’s house who were high-school friends of my parents. They played cards, but I only remember that happening once.

*Did you ever have game nights with groups, clubs, or neighbors on a regular basis?

No.

*Was game playing associated with certain annual events, like holidays, birthdays, or vacation times?

Our game playing tends to be centered around the holidays when we were all together. The past few years, it is Thanksgiving.

*What kinds of snacks and beverages were enjoyed during game playing?

The times we played with grandparents, we often had popcorn. (See my story about popping corn with my grandfather and friend here.) My granddad was also particularly fond of ice cream, to “cool your belly.” My sisters-in-law usually have some yummy snacks–almonds, M&Ms, and those butter-soaked crackers with chocolate chips melted on top and sprinkled with nuts.

*Were there prizes awarded to game winners or even to losers? What kinds? Did everyone chip in towards purchasing the prizes?

No prizes. Just bragging rights.

*Did your family or you ever do jigsaw puzzles? What’s the largest–in terms of number of puzzle pieces–jigsaw puzzle you’ve completed?

We don’t do this so much any more but we used to. I remember having one one year that was too big to fit on the card-table. One of the doctor’s office I go to often has a jig-saw puzzle out on a table–I often find myself working on it and thinking about the times we used to do them as a family.

*What did you do with completed puzzles? Did you display them or simply put them away?

They went back in the box and probably then to the thrift shop.

*What about puzzles such as crosswords, cryptograms, or others found in puzzle books? Are you a Sudoku fiend?

My mom and I used to race to see who could get to the crossword puzzle in the newspaper first. And it was a standing joke in our family that Dad knew the most esoteric things. When I asked my own husband some question about a long-ago political party, and he knew the answer was “Locofoco,” I knew the torch had been passed.

One of my brothers likes crosswords and the other likes cryptograms. One of my sons does Sudoku–I’ve avoided them as I’m afraid of getting another obsession.

*Did you ever go to an arcade and play pinball machines or other arcade-style games? Or did you ever shoot pool?

There were pinball machines at the bowling alley in the little town where I grew up, and the bowling alley was one of the approved places to go. I liked playing pinball. I don’t remember playing pool until I went to college, and then it was at the home of the dean of the fairly conservative college I attended. fun!

*Do you remember seeing your first video game, either in an arcade or on a television (Pong, Atari or early Nintendo games)?

I remember playing Pong on an early Apple personal computer. We had one in the department where I taught–it was out for anyone to play so we could “get over” any anxiety we had about computers. What a good idea.

*What kinds of video games did you like to play, if any? Do you play any now (gaming station or handheld)?

I quit playing video games a long time ago–I used to play Mario Brothers–on my computer. Those games have long out-stripped my abilities. This past Christmas holiday, I was laying in bed, listening to my now adult sons out in the living room playing Wii–they were having a good time and I was having a good time listening to them.

*What was your first computer game? Do you ever play computer games now, either on your computer or online?

I think my first computer game was probably Pong. I do occasionally play Bejeweled, Text-Twist, Freecell, Solitaire, and Zuma–mostly games my son installed on my computer and got me hooked on. I don’t play online. Too chicken.

*What about the present? Does your family or do you personally play games or do puzzles? Do you participate in game nights with others, such as poker or Bunco?

We tend to play games only at holidays when we’re all together. My oldest son and I occasionally do crosswords–

*Here are some other game ideas to write about: lawn games (horseshoes, croquet, badminton); kid games (marbles, jacks); betting, casino games, and bingo; party games (pinata, pin the tail on the donkey), etc.

I loved playing jacks as a kid. I can still smell the heat coming off the building and sidewalk where we sat in second grade playing game after game of jacks at recess. I was pretty good–I think I had fairly good hand-eye coordination. I can remember playing horseshoes occasionally in South Dakota–I could never get the hang of it. I did master shuffleboard–the best minister at our little church when I was a teen put a shuffleboard game and a ping-pong table in the church basement. I wonder how I kept from letting loose with the swear words then?

*What do you know about your parents’, grandparents’, or perhaps even great-grandparents’ game playing? Do you remember them saying anything about games they played when they were young?

My maternal grandparents played cards. And they also talked about playing baseball and basketball at their country school. My grandmother was supposedly pretty good–or maybe it was just my granddad’s romantic memories. He always talked about how good she was. Somehow I don’t think my paternal grandparents would have played games–but I just don’t know.

*Do you have any photos of either your present or your childhood families playing games? What about ancestral photos?

I have lots of pics of us playing cards and various other games. Here’s one from last Thanksgiving–Aggravation on the homemade board. Sadly, no ancestral photos.

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.

I’m looking for a fruitcake to arrive in the mail.

Not just any fruitcake–it has to be one from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas.

This fruitcake has lots of memories for me. To begin with, when I was in band (5th grade through senior year) in school, we sold these fruitcakes every year as a fundraiser. As far as I can tell, the sales financed our trip to Hemisfair in San Antonio my junior year in high school. (Who thought taking 200+ high school kids to San Antonio in the summer on school buses was a good idea? I remember melting in my wool uniform slacks and our chairs sinking into the asphalt.) It may have also financed some of our weekly trips to out of town football games and various contests. I don’t remember selling them to anyone other than my mother who loved them.

Fast-forward 30 years or so, my husband and I are driving my parents home from what proved to be my mom’s final visit to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. We sail through Corsicana and Mom starts waxing eloquent about the fruitcakes. Hubbo turns around and we go back to Corsicana to buy a fruitcake. Mom, of course, says we shouldn’t and that just because she thinks one sounds good doesn’t mean that she can eat it what with all the chemo. But she digs into it and sure enough, a bite or two satisfies her. Six weeks later, she is gone, but the fruitcake stays in my freezer for 2 years. When the fog lifts, I finally gather up the courage to discard it, blue tin and all.

The next year, someone from our church sends us one in the mail. My sons start their “ewwwww, fruitcake” spiel, but I am comforted by the site of the tin and all the pecans and sugary fruit and memories inside.

I’m still waiting.

This morning I was chatting with a friend whose great-uncle had died. She was remembering that when she used to visit this aunt and uncle down in Haskell, Texas, that they always gave her Dr. Pepper, in a glass bottle. For a person of her age (read: young), I suppose a glass bottle was a novelty.

Her story made me think about going over to visit my own great aunt and uncle–we went into their house through the back door. On the back porch (though it was completely enclosed it was still called “the porch”), there was Aunt Eva’s kiln where she fired the china she painted, and a small sink for Uncle George to “wash up” when he came in from the field. And under that little sink usually sat a six-pack of small glass bottles of Dr. Pepper. There was a pantry on further down the way, but the Dr. Pepper didn’t belong in the pantry. It sat out there in plain sight for me to long for. Sometimes I got lucky and was offered one of the drinks–I couldn’t ask for one, y’know, it just wasn’t proper.

This would have been the 1950s and a time when soft drink consumption was way lower than it is now. In fact, we just didn’t drink pop, that I recall. It was a real treat when I’d go to South Dakota for the summers to stay with my maternal grandmother–she owned a country store that actually had pop in the refrigerator. I wasn’t really supposed to drink without paying, but Granny didn’t monitor me, or the inventory, too closely. The cowboys would come in at noon to buy their lunches–a can of vienna sausages or a sliced bologna sandwich, and buy some pop. But that’s the only time I can remember drinking pop as a child–sometimes I’d buy one while in the bus room after school, but not often.

I also remembered my brother and I going up and down the road in front of our house, inspecting the bar ditches for pop bottles. Seems like we could redeem them for 2 cents–it may have only been 1, but it was a way for us to earn some spending money. I have no memory of what we spent it on–but we worked very diligently to gather those bottles. Then began the campaign to get some adult to take us to town so we could cash them in, usually at Bryan’s grocery store.

In high school, in the Texas panhandle, anyway, Dr. Pepper was the drink of choice. I remember having a tower of empty waxed paper cups almost reaching the ceiling in my bedroom–I somehow decided it would be a good thing to save them. But we went faithfully through the Dixie Dog drive-in to keep ourselves well-oiled with the Texas elixir. Later, in college, I drank DDP–Diet Dr. Pepper. We had a favorite convenience store at 23rd and Meridian in Oklahoma City where we bought our drinks–one friend always had Tab, but most of us drank DDP. And the backseat floorboards in our cars clanked with the empties.

I was recently on an overseas flight when a young middle-easterner requested a Dr. Pibb from the flight attendant serving drinks. She asked him to repeat his request and they finally determined that he meant Dr. Pepper–he’d confused it with the Mr. Pibb Dr. Pepper knock-off. She laughed and said she was out but thought there might be one more in the back. Sure enough, she later brought him a can of Dr. Pepper and told him to take it with him. He was thrilled.

Dr. Pepper started in Texas and it’s still very popular there. It is my husband’s drink of choice, but then again, he always orders sweet tea at a restaurant. Maybe it’s his Texas roots–all that sweetness.

One of the things that has emerged from family reunion are formal studio photos of most of my grandfather Osborne’s siblings. I am so happy to have copies of these photos–it’s sort of ironic that the one I don’t have is the one from whom I descend.

Here’s Aunt Becky–

…and here’s the one I knew best, Aunt Eva…

I also knew Aunt Fannie fairly well–she lived in the same town where I grew up and she was the oldest of the children of Charles W. Osborne and Gertrude Susanna Mobley Osborne. She was a character–someday soon I’ll write more about her.

Here’s Aunt Inez–she lived to be over 100. I knew her though she lived in the neighboring town of Pampa.

Here’s his brother Fountain Walton, known as F.W. or Walton.

It makes me wonder if there is one of Thad, my grandad. I’ve never seen one and it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he would sit still for, but then again, the photos exist of him with a friend in his work clothes.

Here’s another brother, David Wilson. One of the first big Osborne family gatherings I remember is Uncle David’s funeral when I was about 8. He was one of the first city commissioners in Pampa in 1927.

Here’s Charles Woodman, known as C.W. or Wood.

and the youngest brother, Emmett. This is from his service in WW I.

This makes a photo for each of the children except Raphael who died as a toddler.

So maybe one exists of my grandfather. But where is it? He had 8 children of his own–there are only 3 now living. I’m asking around to see if anyone has seen one of him and maybe, just maybe, has one. Here’s hoping.

This is a picture of my great-grandmother. She’s always been an enigma to me. I wish I’d known her. Or maybe I should say I have some questions I wish I could ask her now.

She was one of ten children who were the first generation Americans born to immigrants from Russia. They were part of the German Mennonites who left in 1874 when the agreements their ancestors had made with Catherine the Great were being threatened. They brought their hard red wheat and came to Canada and the Great Plains–my family came to McPherson County, Kansas and then, later, to Woods County, Oklahoma.

And I’ve thought a great deal about posting this story. But I think I have to do it. I mean absolutely no disrespect. I believe that my family has been damaged by the secrets it has kept, though I certainly understand the reasons for wanting to keep those secrets.

One of the early memorable experiences I had in my genealogical adventures was going to the library to look for her obituary. I knew she had killed herself and I wanted to see what her obituary said. No one in my family talked very much about this incident, or at least they didn’t talk very loud about it, all of which I eventually understood, but I was determined to see what I could find out.

I knew she’d died in 1933, and that my mother, who was born in 1932, was of very little help. So I pulled out the Beaver County newspaper microfilm to see what I could find. I started looking for an obit sometime after the 24th of May in 1933. I was shocked when I didn’t find an obituary but a news story on front page of the newspaper. Today that wouldn’t surprise me, but at that time, it was quite a shock. I had to get up a take a little walk down the hall and then come back before I could make the copy. Here’s what I found:

It explained a lot.

It explained why my grandparents always traded in Perryton, Texas rather than Beaver, Oklahoma. It explained why my grandad was so nervous when I started the search and talked about wanting to read the Beaver newspapers. (I’d also found their names listed among the delinquent tax lists–who knows if those were correct. It was the depression, they lived a long way from the county seat, they “traded” in Texas (see comment above), who knows? I know my grandad was a bit of a fanatic when it came to bill paying and I didn’t bring it up–I can’t imagine how much shame it would have brought him.)

Anyway, back to the news story. My grandmother had told me about the previous attempt. She said her mother-in-law drank carbolic acid. She said Doc Smith came out to their house and said Matilda wouldn’t live through the night. He left a signed death certificate with them and said the only thing he knew to do was to feed her raw egg whites or yolks, I can’t remember which now, so my grandmother and my great-grandfather did that. My grandmother said there were holes in the linoleum floor where she threw up from the eggs. I can’t imagine what the acid must have done to her mouth, throat, esophagus and stomach. But she lived.

The other thing my grandmother told me was that my great-grandfather and my grandfather took my great-grandmother “all over the country” trying to get her help. I believe they must have taken her to Mayo Clinic–I recently found a picture of my grandad that has “Elmer at Rochester” written on the back with a date that would match. Research note: I need to see if I can get records from there regarding her being there. I don’t know where else they may have taken her.

I suspect she suffered from depression. I usually blame the Germans from Russia for this family trait, but I don’t know. I do believe that she suffered from some sort of chemical imbalance that resulted in a type of mental illness. You read about people who lived through the Dust Bowl as sometimes having mental issues. Living in Beaver County certainly counts as the Dust Bowl–my grandmother talked about scooping off the window sills and hanging wet sheets and towels over the windows. But I also believe depression is genetic in our family. My grandad used to work like a maniac to get through harvest and then just go to bed for days on end. And I believe it was my grandad who found his mother after she’d shot herself. Again, something we just couldn’t talk about, though my gran and I came pretty close, God bless her.

We know now that women don’t typically use guns to kill themselves, so great- grandmother Tillie, as she was known, was very, very determined. This far after the fact I can’t separate that act from her disease–all I know is that I can see the effect of the lack of good mental health care. What might have happened if she’d had access to some good medication?

This is my brothers and me at the house where our great Aunt Lorene (of bladder training fame) was working as caretaker for an elderly woman in Beaver County, Oklahoma, probably about 1964. Check out the wallpaper in the background.This picture re-appeared out of my grandmother’s things–it was probably one my mom had sent her and she had it enlarged and framed which is how I found it.

The gifts aligned in front brought back all sorts of memories. The basket of apples, the horse and the clock, which also helped me date the picture, reminded me of Mom and Aunt Lorene “decorating” the room for the boys that had been built on the back of the house we moved into when we moved back from South Dakota. The year I was in the 6th grade, and that Thad was in the 5th, and that Mike went to kindergarten, we lived in an apartment above our grandmother’s country store in Canning, South Dakota. When we decided not to buy land there and stay, we moved back to Perryton to the small house my folks had lived in right after they married and that I’d come home to after being born. It was two bedrooms, and now it was too small for we three, so a room and (I think) another bathroom had been built on the back for the boys.

This mean bedspreads and curtains had to be made, so Mom and Aunt Lorene sprang into action–I don’t know if Aunt Lorene already had the fabric–it’s possible, but it was red with insets of horses and apple trees–hence the things under the Christmas tree. It was certainly a different time–I’m not sure 8 and 12 year old boys would go for that now. (Maybe they didn’t then, but they certainly didn’t say so.)

It looks like Mike and Thad have also been the recipients of an ear of corn with a harmonica implanted. I think the transistor radio was Thad’s, though I’m pretty sure I coveted it. And the walkie talkie-was undoubtedly theirs as well. The game of Concentration was undoubtedly a family game–I remember playing it a lot–it took forever to set up, but it was fun. I really didn’t have much call to use a muff in that part of the county, but I liked having it as a fashion statement, along with those glasses, don’tchaknow? Don’t think I wore the hat much–it would have mussed that great hair. I think there’s also a photo album of some sort and a some sort of Christmas ornament. Mike’s truck is red–to match their room, no doubt.

I wish I could seee the boys’ boots better–those and the Levis and the buzz cuts were constants for them. I sort of remember getting that lavendar outfit–out of some sort of polyester, as I recall, which was great since it meant no ironing–”wash and wear” we called it. And I’m pretty sure there was an argument about the hemline.

Youngest brother Mike recently told my sons that he’s looking at me like that because I’d just hit him and he didn’t know why–hmmmmm. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have done that.

Here’s hoping for the generation of some great family memories for you and yours this holiday–and that someone’s taking pictures.