All My Ancestors

Using Ancestry.com, I found my paternal grandparents in the same place they lived until their deaths in the 1977 and 1982. Trolling through the unindexed Ancestry images reminded me of the days when we scrolled through reel after reel of microfilm–ok for the short term but I’m eager to have access to a search engine for more mobile folks.

This is one of the few records I’ve seen that shows all 8 children in the same household. It sort of makes my heart stop when I see children aged 25 through 4–I can’t imagine a house full of 10 people, including grown sons as well as a 4 year old.

Granddad is the last person on page 2B and then the rest of the family begins the next page:

This list of my aunts and uncles, along with my dad, reminds me once again that practically no one in this family used their birth names.

There’s Lowell C[ooper], Cooper was my grandmother’s maiden name, who was always known as Scoops.
Clark Mobley (Mobley was Granddad’s mother’s maiden name) was Pete.
Dorothy E[valyn] was Dot.
Gertrude R[uth] was Ruth. (Gertrude was Grandad’s mother’s first name)
Donald G[uice] was Jack–later legally changed to Jack. Guice was also a Mobley family name
Raymond K. was known as Ray–pretty close to his actual birth name
T. Morrison was my dad, named after his father, officially Thaddeus Morrison Osborne, Jr., known as Morrison
and the “baby” was G[eorge] Landrum, always known as Landrum. George was Grandmother Rachel’s father AND brother’s name, and Landrum was another family name.

I was most anxious to see the 1940 census to find my mom as she had not been born on the 1930 census. But seeing this entire family together in one household was rewarding as well.

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Yesterday we buried the last of my dad’s siblings.

I’d been sad for days. Though I grew up knowing all my 2 aunts and 5 uncles, Uncle Ray was one of the special ones. He and my dad were closest in age among the children of T.M. “Bud” and Rachel Cooper Osborne, being less than 2 years apart. We all lived in the same small town–and when we were young, we spent lots of time together. Later, Ray and June were in and out of my parent’s home on a regular basis–my husband and I stayed in their home when we traveled back there to celebrate my maternal grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. My own kids had mistaken Uncle Ray for their Papaw (my dad) when they were little, so strong was the famiy resemblance (and I say their sweet spirits).

But Uncle Ray died early Saturday morning and as happens when loved ones are sick and suffering, I had very mixed feelings, knowing his suffering was over but that one of life’s milestones was passing.

His funeral was in the same church where my Uncle Landrum’s funeral had been 17 years ago. Landrum was younger than I am now when he suddenly died. Again, an uncle who had lived my hometown and whose children I had babysat–it was a very hard funeral to attend to tell that beloved uncle good bye. And now I was returning to the same sanctuary for the last uncle’s services.

That church and another one are the bookends on the street where I grew up. The minister for the service was a man I’d gone out with a few times in high school and whose parents had been my teachers and were very very special to me as well. What a swirl of emotions it was going to be. . .

It was one of the most wonderful days I have had in a very long time. I didn’t expect to feel this way, but there you have it. Family members flocked in from the other family home towns of Pampa and Lubbock, and all but two of our 12 cousins were there. Parents of some of my high school friends were there to provide love and support and memories–some of those folks had been friends of my own parents in school–that’s the kind of place it is–generations of people have known and associated with each others’ families. Sounds warm and fuzzy but it’s always created more discomfort than comfort for me. Except for this time.

We remembered Uncle Ray. Cousin Charles recalled being a very young salesman who came to Perryton to check on some as yet unpaid for equipment he’d left at a company there. He’d gotten word that the company was going bankrupt, and he called my Dad or Ray to see if he could borrow a pickup. Both showed up with their trucks, helped load the copiers and machines, and then sent Charles on his way to return the equipment to a neighboring town. He said they weren’t at all concerned about his driving off in their vehicle even thought they didn’t really know him all that well. (I’m sure Ray and Dad didn’t even think about it–Charles was their cousin Mary’s boy and he was family.) Charles got back the next day and they sent him on his way, glad to have helped him save the day.

I got to tell my cousin, his son, about my Dad’s story of our grandmother calling Dad and Ray ‘Lasses and Honey. He said they had molasses or honey on their breakfast biscuits every morning, but I couldn’t remember which was which. Lindey said, “Oh, I’ll bet Dad was ‘Lasses–we always had a jar of blackstrap mollasses in the house.” That made MY dad Honey, I guess.

I didn’t get to tell them that Uncle Ray had provided a great deal of comfort to me when he told me “you kids are doing a good job of taking care of your dad.” My dad had a major staph infection after a hospital stay, resulting in a stroke and debilitating him at age 55. After our mom died too early from cancer, we had to make some decisions about Dad’s living arrangements which meant he had to move from the place where he’d been born, lived, and where all his friends were. Ray’s assurance went a long ways toward making those tolerable.

“Bittersweet” seems like an overused word, but it does describe the day. It was comforting–to be with family and the long-time friends of the family, to hear the compressed version of my Uncle Ray’s life, very well-lived, and to be in the midst of so many memories and to rest on so many strong connections.

It was a very good day. I have a bit of a burn on my face from the sun and the wind in that wind-swept place, and I have a full and grateful heart for having had Raymond Kenneth Osborne as my uncle, and for being part of his official send-off.

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Written for 52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge #7

from Amy Lenertz Coffin at http://wetree.blogspot.com/2010/01/52-weeks-to-better-genealogy.html

Play with Google Maps (http://maps.google.com). This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.

As I’ve written here many times, I come from a family of farmers–persons who had land, for the most part.  Those farms and ranches are no longer in the family.  But I can visit any time I like using Google Map.

My maternal grandparents lived on a ranch in South Dakota.

The main buildings were the house and the barn.  The barn, at the time of this photo, sported my grandad’s brand above the doors, Lazy XY.  The house actually faced north, but this is the southern exposure.  It was too cold in South Dakota to have a north facing entry, so we always used the “back porch” as the entry.

My grandparents had moved most of their things back to Texas by the 1980s–they were in their 80s by then and they first spent winters in Oklahoma and Texas with my folks and my aunt and uncle, and later stayed “in the south” year round.  Shortly before my grandmother died in 1998, the house burned.  We don’t know the details, we just know that it burned to the ground.  In a sense, it was a blessing that the house took care of itself–

When I find myself thinking about the carefree summers I spent at my grandparents’ ranch, I look at my photos, but I also often pull up their place on Google Maps:

I can still see the barn and the tree rows planted east of the house to catch the wind and snow.  A trailer home replaces the house for the family that lives there now.  If I really want to, I can move to the right on the map to “roam” the pasture.  And I can follow the road (306th Ave. on this map) a couple of miles down the hill to the little village of Canning where my grandmother ran the country store and post office, and where we lived the year I was in the 6th grade.

This picture brings back lots of memories.

Over there at the left is the beginning of the spring-fed lakes where we swam in the summer time and ice-skated in the winter.  At the right, the “top” of Cactus Loop, is where the school was.  There was a cemetery behind it and a huge hill down the side.  We sledded in the winter and rolled down in tractor tires in the spring.  Why we weren’t killed is amazing to me.  My grandmother’s store and PO was to the left of the intersection of Chesley Rd and 206th St.  It looks like there’s some sort of barn there now.  Above where Spring St, crosses Chesley St. is the church, with another cemetery behind it.  On up that hill takes me back to my grandparent’s ranch.  See the house at the lower right?  I won’t include the name of the people who live here, but my granddad helped build that house–with someone as particular as he was–they got along fine.  The drilled holes for the nails before they pounded them in–no nail guns here.

I have these places, and others, bookmarked on Google Map.  I like visiting them occasionally.  There’s a country cemetery in Beaver County I like to visit–it’s easy to count the miles as I travel down the road, and I know how many miles and which directions it is to visit where my great Aunt Edna and Uncle Gurly lived, and where my great-grandparents lived out there in Beaver County Oklahoma.

And then I can always “drive-by” the house where I grew up (marked with the small white heart)–it’s a different color now but it’s still located across the street from the high school, between the First Christian Church and the Church of Christ on Jackson Dr., and I can drag Main Street if I’m feeling really nostalgic.

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I spent part of yesterday at Mercy Hospital here in Oklahoma City with my husband.

He asked me if I heard “that lullaby.”  Of course, I hadn’t.  The clamor in the emergency room had me on edge, not to mention just the fact of having to be there.  Hubbo is a minister, among other things, and he is a frequent visitor to the area hospitals.  He told me that the music I hadn’t heard was an announcement that a baby had been born.

Mercy Hospital is huge–I was amazed that they had such a personal touch as announcing the birth of a baby.  Of course, we had no personal information about the new one but somehow just the knowledge that a new life was beginning somewhere in that building was comforting.  I found myself listening to see if I could hear the musical announcement the next time.  And I did.

I also remembered how in the small town where I grew up we would always check the northernmost third floor window at the hospital on Main Street to see if the light was on.  From personal experience, my mom knew that was the labor and delivery room.  So if the window was lit, we knew someone was having a baby.

My friend Richard from ‘The Cheek that Doth Not Fade” welcomed his first grandson into the world Saturday night as we followed along on Facebook.  Yesterday and today it’s been great to see the pictures of the bright-eyed little Sam Andrew.

So announcements of births come in all forms–just thinking about the beginnings of the lives of the persons to whom we will someday be ancestors. 

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Some Osborne Women

Perryton, Ochiltree Co., Texas

home of George M. and Eva Rosemary Osborne Cooper, est. 1963

back row: Winifred Cooper Bozeman, Nancy Bozeman, Eva Osborne Cooper, Mary Parker Graham, Joyce Bozeman

front row:  Fannie Osborne, Inez Osborne Parker.

Fannie, Eva and Inez are sisters and daughters of Charles W. and Gertrude. S. Mobley Osborne.

Winifred is Eva’s daughter, and Nancy and Joyce are Winifred’s daughters.

Mary is Inez’s daughter.

Fannie never married.

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My Aunt Dot died 9 September 2008.  She hadn’t been in good health for a very long time.  She was one of two of my dad’s 7 siblings who were still living and since my dad died in 2003, they became even dearer to me.

Aunt Dot and Uncle Jimmy never had children of their own so we nieces and nephews usually felt pretty special.  I still treasure the Fostoria crystal pieces she gave me for my wedding, and I spent time with them back in high school when I was at “camp” at Texas Tech in Lubbock.   One week was photography camp and the next week was yearbook camp–I didn’t see any sense in traveling the 4 hours it would take to get home and then back to Lubbock, so I spent the weekend with them.  They took me out for Mexican food and any other place I wanted to go.  I remember they had a combination washer-dryer–it was all in one machine, a front-loader of some sort.  Coming from my family of 5 I couldn’t believe that anyone could get along with just one machine for washing AND drying.

I’ve always loved this picture of them–possibly on their wedding day in 1950.  Uncle Jim always wore his hat at that angle and Aunt Dot always looked that dressed up (with later subtractions of corsage and hat).

Family members used to say I looked like Aunt Dot–I can certainly see the family resemblance.  I tend to blame my shortness and wideness on my German ancestry, but truth be told, I get some of it from the women in the Osborne family as well.

I always loved it when Aunt Dot and Uncle Jim came to Perryton for Thanksgiving or for Christmas.  They were often driving Uncle Jimmy’s very clean, very spiffy pickup.  (There were only working pickups in my life then–it’s what my dad and all the farmers drove–you didn’t just travel in them.)  Uncle Jim worked for Texas Tech and I’m pretty sure he could build or repair anything.  For a few years he would bring the clay pigeons and device he’d built to “throw” them, along with all the shotgun shells he’d reloaded.  His 6 brothers-in-law and various other relatives entertained themselves for hours out at the farm with his toys–Aunt Dot was in the kitchen bossing and cooking.  She had on her good clothes with an apron and she always smelled good.  I was in awe because she was so dressed up and also, she was one of the few women in my family who worked outside the home.

Part of my dealing with grief is to record the lives and deaths of my loved ones.  I went to www.findagrave.com to post Aunt Dot’s obituary only to find that it had already been posted.  I felt a little robbed, though ultimately I am grateful that there are so many generous folks out there who do that sort of thing in their area.

I didn’t get to attend her funeral–the only one of my dad’s siblings that I didn’t get to go to.  We were getting ready to go to Detroit and I just could not get away and I knew I couldn’t drive that far and back in one day–all the time I had if I really squeezed the calendar.

So now there is one.  My Uncle Ray, at 81, believes he’ll farm another year, because what else would he do?

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After reading couple of posts online about “jobs I’ve had in my life,” I decided it would be a good topic for today.  (I can’t find my camera to post a picture of an heirloom for the Carnival of Genealogy!)

In childhood and junior high, I thought I wanted to be a nurse.  I had a great-aunt who had gone to school to be an LVN as an adult and I admired her a lot.  I still can make hospital corners on a bed thanks to her–one of life’s really useful skills.    I also read a lot of Cherry Ames as a child–then I hit chemistry class as a high school sophomore.  That did it–I knew the nursing curriculum was not for me.  Looking back on it, I should have recognized that the appeal for me of Cherry’s adventures probably had more to do with her solving mysteries than with her nursing skills.

The first regular paying job I remember was working at one of two of the dry cleaners in my hometown during the summer.  My mom was working there and the owner had a daughter my age so it was familiar.  I didn’t work much but I do remember being very tired after standing on cement floors all day–Mom had to get really stern one day after I’d come home from work, fallen asleep, and didn’t want to get up to go to the basement for the tornado coming our way.  The dry-cleaners had a drive-up window where I took in items to be cleaned and dispensed the spic and span ones.  The worst “take-ins” were floor to ceiling drapes from the house of some heavy smokers and the laundry of one of the harvest crews in town.  ick!  The other thing I remember from this job is that I folded shirts on a machine–the first step was to button the front and put the neck down into a cutout that had 3 knobs in it.  After the shirt was “installed” and smoothed, I hit the button that made the 3 knobs move out to make a triangle of the shirt collar.  One man in town had shirts with necks so large the machine wouldn’t touch the collar, so we had to improvise for his.  It seemed like magic to me each time I then hit the lever that made the rest of the shirt fold up and I put it in the plastic bag.  At least I didn’t have to iron them!

Another job I had about this time was helping my Grandmother Osborne clean her house–looking back on it, it’s sort of an interesting proposition.  She wasn’t a warm and fuzzy grandmother, but I find my myself wishing I’d paid more attention.  One of my jobs was to help her wash down the walls around the chair where my grandfather sat smoking unfiltered Old Golds.  The walls were actually sticky and yellow.  We also took down, washed, ironed, and re-hung the curtains.  I don’t remember much else, but I do remember that she would write me a check for my “labors.”  I wasn’t used to being paid for helping out around the house, but I think that was my grandmother’s way of telling me she appreciated my help and that what women did was important as well.  I wish I had a copy of those checks–I’d still like to know if she had her own account and just how she and my grandfather handled the household funds.

When I got to college, I worked in the college print shop.  That was probably one of my favorite jobs of all time.  We worked in a really old building, and this was the early 1970s, before the days of ubiquitous photocopying machines.  So nearly everything that was printed at the college went through our shop.  We often knew the scoop before the rest of the campus because we didn’t fail to take a look at what we were printing.    I didn’t actually run one of the presses, but I think I could have.  Rather I was responsible for burning the plates, which sometimes included taping in negatives of photos–doing the layout.  I had a desk with a top over it to shield the lightbox a bit and I wielded my exacto knife with precision.  Then there was the folding machine–which my friend got her hair caught in one day–and the huge paper cutter that could cut reams of paper at once.  I started out making $.90 an hour and then somehow the student rate was raised to a whole $1.00.  It paid enough to keep me in Diet Dr. Pepper and Tab, as I recall, and the occasional dinner out at El Charrito ($.98 for the enchilada dinner on Wednesdays).

My other college job was being editor of the yearbook.  For being selected for this position, I got free tuition for up to 18 hours a semester.  I’m sure my folks appreciated that break in their tuition payments.

Summers and Christmas breaks I sometimes worked at Corner Drug in my hometown–doing inventory, cleaning out files, wrapping packages, doing extra duty on the floor during the last frenzied days of Christmas shopping.  My most useful skill from these days is that I know how to make a ribbon rose, the trademark of packages from Corner Drug in those days.

My first professional job was teaching junior high school.  The year after I graduated from college, 1973, I worked at a graduate assistant while earning my masters degree.  I taught a 7:30 am class then then went on to my junior high school day.  I usually had classes after school–how did I do that?  Much younger!  I taught 7th grade speech and I was glad for the job–I worked out in what we called the t-building (“T” for temporary) and those were the only classrooms that were air-conditioned.  The last hour of the day, I had to go back into the main building and teach yearbook.  I loved doing the yearbook but it was hot in that second-floor classroom.  This was also the year I took on my first debt–I went to the credit union to get a loan to buy a washer and dryer.  The house where I was living had hook-ups and I hated going to the laundromat.

I got married the summer after my first year of teaching, and midway through my second year, my husband and I moved to a small town in western Oklahoma.  He pastored the church and I languished–I was way too unprepared for the expectations of being “the preacher’s wife.”  The only question I remember being asked by the board when we interviewed was whether I played the piano.  I did not–probably the only wife of a Nazarene minister not to do so, but, trust me, being a minister’s wife had never been one of my goals.  I thought I was marrying a history teacher/bus driver.

Part of what helped me during that time is that I worked part time at a flower shop.  This was a small town but it had a large hospital that drew people from the panhandles of Okahoma, Texas and southwestern Kansas.  Until my boss put in his shop, there’d only been one florist in town.  So we were the new kids in town.  We were very busy.  I remember being ankle deep in clippings from corsages and bouquets on Mother’s Day.  The other thing I remember about working there is that there was a significant Seventh Day Adventist population in the area.  Their faith discouraged them from buying and selling on their sabbath, so about 1 hour before closing time on Saturdays, the phone would start ringing.  They allowed as much of their sabbath to pass as possible before they placed their orders.  Then we had to scurry to get them done and out the door before being closed for Sunday.  Other memories of this time include our boss getting married and our having to do the flowers–talk about pressure!!

We moved back to Oklahoma City after about a year when I got an offer to apply for a teaching position at our alma mater.  I got the job with the proviso that I would start graduate school and earn a PhD, which I readily agreed to.  The next few years are a blur–we lived in the men’s dorm where my husband was the resident counselor, we had a son, and I continued teaching fulltime and going to school.  I had no idea what I was doing in grad school–I could certainly do the classwork, but I had a hard time grasping a vision of what I was doing beyond meeting the requirement for teaching at the college.  Time moved on, we bought a house, re-did it, had another son, my husband finished grad school, sometimes commuting 150 miles 3 times a week, and I grew restless, thinking I was never going to finish my dissertation.  I had no problem finishing my coursework but not having the discipline of class meetings to write, I soon began to feel like I wasn’t going to make it.  I took a sabbatical from teaching and determined I was going to finish–therapy also helped.    I was an avoidant personality–oh, really?  I remember taking my 6 year old to school one morning during this time and noticing that he was distressed.  When I inquired, asking him what was wrong, he replied, “I don’t know what I’m going to do my dissertation on.”  yikes!!  I assured him that not everyone in the world had to do a dissertation, and resolved to be a little less transparent about my struggle.  (Just this week he started his own graduate program!)

I was stuggling, too, at the college.  Women were not very high on the list of valuable human beings at that place–it was very paternalistic, reflecting its religious roots.  I was growing more and more dissatisfied with the whole conservative religion thing–I’d traveled to Russia as a sponsor of a mission trip with abut 50 college students and was treated like an underling–told to go to a meeting with the students when the rest of the (male) sponsors went out on the town in Budapest.  I’d been able to move into working in the degree completion program for adults and that had helped me some, but I just didn’t see staying at the college for the rest of my life–as I did when I started.

So, with a newly minted PhD, finally, and a great deal of disagreement from my husband, I quit my job there.  I worked as a GA again, this time in the school of library and information studies at the University of Oklahoma.  It was small-time wages but I felt like I had to re-tool.  My library studies classes merged nicely with my communication studies.  I was offered the assistant dean’s job in the library school, which I accepted.  Commuting 35 miles to Norman everyday was not great, but my mantra was “I am the mother of teen-aged sons; time alone in the car is not the worst part of my day.”  I got a cell phone for emergency calls, most of which entailed some variation of “What’s for supper, Mom?”

I worked at OU 3 years–then I decided I wanted to work in a library–what I’d gone back to school for.  I actually didn’t get a couple of jobs I thought were shoo-ins for me.  I had this great academic background but no academic libraries seemed interested.  Just as well.  I hired on in the large public library system in town and became manager of the Downtown agency about a year and a half after I started.  I learned a whole lot during that process–we built a new building, installed the internet, went through a couple of directors, and about 9.5 years later, I knew it was time for another change.  I’d gotten too old to dread going to work each day, to work for a person who was a nit-picker and who was never going to give me the support and freedom I needed to do my job.  Besides, I found myself at the same age my mother was when she was diagnosed with the cancer that finally took her life, and I knew that I didn’t want to spend the next 10 years of my life there if my life-path happened to follow my mother’s.

For the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t working.  The first six months were great, but then I began to become the hermit that I am prone to be.  My friend at the library at the state historical society asked me if I wanted to work a few days a week, and I agreed.  I’ve worked there about 2 years as a library-tech–and it’s been great.  It’s the sort of job you don’t have to take home with you.  I’ve recently been “promoted” to replace the librarian who has left–I’ll have some supervisory duties and work 4 days a week.  Part of me wishes I could have just kept the tech position, but this is the library that got me started in my genealogical adventures and where my volunteer time convinced me I wanted to go back to school to earn an MLIS.  So maybe this is my give-back time.  We’ll see.

That’s my history of labor–it’s fascinating to look back and see how fortunate I’ve been to be able to nearly always work in a job that I love–that involves information and communication and research of some sort.  And, as I always told my seniors at the college and a few people since–it’s not the degree, it’s the skills.  Market your skills.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

 

 

 

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