DNA? Do. Not. Ask!

Near the end of April, when Ancestry.com had a sale on DNA testing, I decided to go for it. I mailed a tube of saliva to Ancestry and got the results a short five and a half weeks later. There were no surprises except that I'm more Irish than I knew. Given my love of all things Irish, I'm happy about  that.

Here's my "ethnicity estimate":

While I waited for the results to come in, I decided it was time to take the plunge and put my genealogy database online. I'd read several reports that the genealogy software I was using was not properly exporting files to Ancestry, so I didn't even try. I began entering names, dates and places one item at a time.

From the very beginning, I couldn't see my family information in tree form. I had recently become unable to load photos on Facebook and to view YouTube videos. Something was obviously wrong with my computer.

I plodded on. It was slow going, but I had time. I worked on my family tree every day, and every day I lost one more capability. Eventually, I could no longer even enter information into the Ancestry database.

My computer was seven years old, something of a record in my technological experience. After much consideration, I bought a new one--same brand, newest model--and began the process of setting it up like the one that's nearing death. What a nightmare!

I had two genealogy programs on the old computer. Neither one is compatible with the new computer's operating system. What's more, the manufacturers don't plan to issue any newer versions. I opted for a different program on the new computer. It works, but I don't like it much.

I've had two printers for years: an old laser printer that's economical for black and white prints and an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier for color printing. The old laser printer isn't compatible with the new computer, and I couldn't tell about the color printer because one of its six ink cartridges was empty, so it wouldn't work. I bought a new yellow cartridge to replace the empty one, then the printer gave me a message that the light magenta and light cyan cartridges had "expired" and the printer would not operate with expired cartridges. I made another trip to Walmart to buy ink cartridges. They only had four of the six color cartridges. You want to guess which two colors were missing? Yep, light cyan and light magenta. Days later, after all the new ink had been installed, after an hour of tinkering with cables and printer drivers, the expensive-to-use color printer now works with the new computer. The laser printer still works with the old computer.

My attempts to follow directions and transfer my email mailboxes and messages to the new computer were dismal failures. For now I'm checking email on the old computer until I can summon the mental fortitude to call tech support services.

In the meantime, I'm still entering one name at a time into Ancestry's database. So far I've accounted for about one-eighth of the people on my suddenly obsolete software, with about another seven thousand to go. The good news is I can now view my ancestors in brightly colored tree form. The bad news is I don't seem to have inherited the luck of all those Irish ancestors.

Father and Son

One of my favorite family photos is one I never saw until summer before last when my stepsister gave it to me. It's a picture of her paternal grandfather, an old Kentucky farmer, resting for a moment while working in his field.

Otto J. Hofmann - 1868-1939

I love pictures that show people in their natural environment, as opposed to all stiff and proper in a formal studio setting. Another reason I love this one is that Otto bore such a close resemblance to his son Tommy, my stepfather:

Thomas J. Hofmann - 1913-1996

In honor of these two gentlemen from Kentucky, today's Saturday Song Selection is a bluegrass number, another in the recent series of "old man" songs:

The song is "Old Man and His Fiddle" by Michael Cleveland and Larry Sparks.

Thanks to Marvin Nicholson for posting the video on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

A Little Bit About Not Very Much

For the past week I've been buried up to my eyeballs in genealogy, digging into step-families and in-laws so that even our youngest family members will have histories that go back five generations or more. Only two still have a lot of blanks: a small brother and sister whose paternal grandparents seem to have arrived on this earth fully grown and untraceable. Maybe they were in the witness protection program; I don't know. I like playing detective, putting the clues together to find the information on my own. To have to go to the horse's mouth and ask directly for names, dates and places takes all the fun out of the research, but that'll have to be my next step.

Genealogy is a great way to spend a cold rainy day like the one we had yesterday. While I was searching, finding, cutting, pasting, entering data and labeling files and photos indoors, it was thundering and raining enough outside--so much rain that only a very small patch of the covered garden-shed porch stayed dry:

It was cold, too, down in the mid-thirties this morning. I can't believe I'm still using the electric blanket in the middle of April.

The oak trees are in full flower, although I think it's a big stretch to use the word "flower" to describe those yellow-brown stringy things that first cling to the leaves and the Spanish moss, then drop to cover the driveways. And when hard rains such as yesterday's wash the pollen down into the grass and water standing on the lawn, some of that pollen sticks to the legs of the dogs, who track it into the house. That would explain my itchy eyes, stuffy nose and sinus headache.

The sun came out late this morning, though, so I tore myself away from the computer long enough this afternoon to go get a haircut, play with my grandson's new puppy, and pick up Chinese food for supper. Now I'm stuffed and sleepy, but I'll try to stay awake to watch "Survivor," "American Idol," and "Nashville." Maybe I'd better DVR them all in case my eyes have other ideas.

Lola's Journey

Yesterday was the final session in my third course of Life Writing classes. We'd been assigned to select an ancestor who had influenced us or in some other way (by immigrating to America, for example) changed the direction of our lives, then research that person and write about him or her. We were also supposed to include in the report some facts about what was going on in the world during that person's lifetime, but I forgot that part. (We all forgot that part.)

There are many people in my family history who were the first of their line to come to America. When I couldn't decide between them, I switched to focus on who had influenced me most. It didn't take long to narrow it down to three ancestors who had most affected how I turned out: my mother, her mother and my father (by virtue of his absence). Wanting to write a positive piece, I chose Mammaw, my maternal grandmother; any shred of positivity in my genetic or environmental makeup came directly from her.

It would be easier--and a much better story--to copy and paste here what I read aloud in yesterday's class, but privacy concerns tell me that's not a good idea. What I think I'll do instead is omit the warm and fuzzy story part of the homework piece and concentrate on the research part, information gleaned from family documents, genealogy websites and Internet maps, and tell how Mammaw got from where she was born to where she died. That means there will be approximately, oh, one person, my sister Judy, who will be interested. Maybe not even Judy. The rest of you have probably read as far as you'll want to, although you might enjoy the cool pictures, and you might learn something about the process of genealogical research.

*****

First of all, here's a little map I've put together of where Mammaw lived over the course of her life. She started in Southeast Kansas and ended up in Southeast Texas:

Mammaw was born Lola Fern Elliott on July 8, 1896 in Scammon, Cherokee County, Kansas (the uppermost red star on the map above). She was the first child of the marriage between William Joseph Elliott and Dora Belle Hetherington.

William Joseph "Joe" Elliott and Dora Belle Hetherington Elliott

Wedding Day - July 18, 1895

Lola Fern Elliott - Age 2

By the time of the 1900 United States Census the small family had moved about 35 miles away to Shoal Creek Township in Newton County, Missouri, where they lived in a house next to Dora's parents, Anna and Alvin Hetherington. Joe Elliott was farming, probably on Hetherington land. This is where they lived when Lola's baby sister, Cleda Opal, was born in October of that year.

Mammaw spoke several times about her experiences while traveling with her family in a covered wagon when she was five. That would have been in the latter part of 1901 or the early part of 1902, when the family moved from Shoal Creek to Maryville, Nodaway County, Missouri. She told us her parents owned a store in Maryville. Two more children were born to Joe and Dora while they lived there:  a girl, Ruth Irene, in April of 1903 and a boy, Loren Lester, in December of 1905.

Dora Elliott with Cleda and Ruth at their home in Maryville, MO - May 1905.

(If you click to enlarge the photo, you can see that Dora was pregnant with Loren.)

Sometime between the end of 1905 and 1910 the family made another long distance move. The 1910 U.S. Census shows them living in Cullen Township on the edge of Waynesville in Pulaski County, Missouri. I don't know the means or logistics of that move, but I'm sure Mammaw would have mentioned it if there'd been a second covered-wagon trip.

Ruth and Loren Elliott - circa 1910

Mammaw completed two years of high school (according to the 1940 census) and reached maturity in Pulaski County. We know from a notation on the back of the next photo that she worked as a telephone operator in Waynesville in 1917:

Lola Elliott - Waynesville, MO - 1917

Two years later Lola was in Springfield, Greene County, Missouri, attending business college. She wrote about that in a letter to my daughter Kim in 1984, adding, "...a girlfriend ask[ed] me to doubledate with a boy just home from the army (WWI) and we went to a show, that was on the 10th of July and the 1st of Oct. we were married... ." That "boy" was my grandfather, Lewis Ames Saunders. They married in Ozark, Christian County, Missouri, on October 1, 1919, when he was weeks short of being 31 years old and Lola was 23. Lewis's sister Evelyn and her husband, John Barkman, were their witnesses.

Photo of Lewis and Lola's original marriage certificate,

which I'm fortunate enough to have in my possession.

Lewis and Lola Saunders - circa 1920

The 1920 U.S. Census shows Lola and Lewis living on Mt. Vernon Street in Springfield and lists Lewis's occupation as stock clerk in the retail furniture industry. Lola was not working outside the home. In November of that year she gave birth to their first child, a son they named Neale. Their second child, Wanda, my mother, was born in Springfield in August of 1923.

Neale and Wanda Saunders - about 1927

By 1930 the Saunders family had moved to a rented house on West Madison Street in Springfield and Lewis was a shipping clerk, still in the furniture business. According to census data collected that year, the family did not yet own a radio set.

A 1932 Springfield, Missouri City Directory shows the family living at 427 Ildereen Drive and Lewis working as a warehouseman at Turner Department Store. (Judy, remember? Ildereen is the street Mother asked us to look for when we visited Springfield in 1996.) Neale was 15 and Wanda was 12 when Lola learned she was pregnant again. The new baby boy, named Joe (after Lola's father) was born in January of 1936. Judging by the house number in the photo below, the family still lived on Ildereen as late as 1937 or '38.

Joe, Wanda and Neale - abt. 1937

By the time of the 1940 U.S. Census they had moved about 15 miles to the small community of Center, Missouri, still in Greene County, where they lived in a rented house and Lewis worked as a sharecropper on a nearby farm. (The community identified as Center in census records seems to have disappeared--or at least to have been renamed. There's another town in Missouri named Center now, but it's nowhere near Springfield.) Those were lean years. The family took in a lodger, a female abstractor named Ruby Reed, to help make ends meet. This is where the family lived when Wanda graduated from nearby Bois D'Arc High School on May 15, 1941.

Wanda's graduation announcement.

The facts get a little fuzzy now because the online city directories for Springfield are missing for the early 1940s. It's possible they didn't even print them during WWII. Anyway, I don't know for sure when the family moved back to Springfield. I do know that Neale enlisted in the Army in November of 1941, and Wanda married my father, Paul, in January of 1942. Paul lived in Springfield, but they eloped and married in Marshfield, about 30 miles away in Webster County. I was born in November of 1942, and Paul shipped out with the army three months later. Sometime in the early 1940s Lewis and Lola bought a two-story, five-bedroom house on East Madison Street in Springfield. That's the house I still think of when I hear the word "home."

City directories were back by 1947, and the one for that year shows that Lewis was working as a warehouseman for Martin Bros. Piano Co. My sister was born in January of 1947 and our parents divorced in July of that year. We moved in with Lewis and Lola, as did Lola's mother, Dora Elliott, who'd been widowed since her husband Joe died in 1933. Young Joe Saunders was still at home, of course. That left one upstairs bedroom available to rent to students attending nearby Southwest Missouri State Teachers College.

When 1957 rolled around, Lewis, Lola, Wanda, Judy and I still lived in that house. Dora had passed away in 1953, and Joe had left home around 1955 or '56 to join the Army. Lewis was retired by then. In the summer of 1957, Mother remarried and moved us to Texas.

I have a copy of a real estate listing showing that Lewis and Lola listed the house on East Madison Street for sale in March of 1960. They sold it about one month later and moved to Texas themselves, where they bought a small, single-story house a few blocks away from us in Orange.

Lewis and Lola Saunders in front of their Orange, Texas home - abt. 1960

Lewis, always known as Packy to us, died in April of 1964 following a series of strokes, but Lola lived in that house for 28 years, longer than anyplace she'd ever lived in her life. In May of 1988 my daughter, granddaughter, and I drove from Louisiana and visited Mammaw in her home. She was as mentally sharp as ever but mentioned that she was losing weight and had begun experiencing some pain in her side. Here's Lola on that visit with my granddaughter, her great-great granddaughter:

Later in 1988, some time after Mammaw had been diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer, she was given hallucination-inducing pain medication, required around-the-clock care that exceeded Mother's capabilities, and eventually entered a nursing facility. She died at the age of 92 on December 4, 1988. She was buried in Orange County--the lowest red star on the map at the beginning of this post. 

*****

I've changed my mind and will add just a couple of paragraphs of personal remembrances from yesterday's Life Writing assignment:

"Lola and Lewis, by then known to me as Mammaw and Packy, made their home ours. I grew up knowing that Packy was considered the head of the household, but it was clear from early on that Mammaw was the one who kept everything going. She was the one who cooked three meals a day, cleaned that five-bedroom house, did the washing on Mondays, the ironing on Tuesdays, shopped for groceries, saw that the bills were paid, tended her flower garden and potted plants, canned home-grown vegetables, made jellies and jams, crocheted and tatted doilies to protect the highly polished surfaces of her furniture, and hummed pleasantly to herself while she did all of it. She went to Sunday school and church every Sunday and took us with her. During the Christmas holiday season, she worked part-time at the Busy Bee Bargain Store to earn extra money.

Lola Saunders, 5th from left

"If she ever met anyone she didn’t like, she certainly didn’t say so. She was friends with all the neighbors and belonged to what she called a club, a group of ladies who took turns hosting lunch once a month in their homes. She was the kindest person I’ve ever known.

"Mammaw was our family’s rock. She was the caretaker of her own confused, elderly mother, the behind-the-ear scrubber of her six-foot-tall teenaged son, the calm after my mother’s temperamental storms, the one who tucked a sick granddaughter into her own downstairs double bed and tended her with hot tea and buttered toast cut into finger-sized strips. In the 1950s, when we teased Mammaw about the lyrics of a popular song, 'Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets,' she said, 'I always do get everything I want, but I always know just how much I can want.'”

*****

Digging up old documents and photos of our ancestors helps us piece together the facts and the journeys of their lives. If you didn't already know--and if you've bothered to read this far--I hope this post has given you some ideas about how to put together your own family puzzles. The truth is, though, that facts like these tell only part of the story. The most important part is what the ancestors you knew personally meant to you and why. Write it down, people, while you still remember. 

Legacy

“Write as though you were writing about yourselves to your great-grandchildren.” Those are the words I noted about this week’s writing assignment, so that’s what I’ll do. If you’re reading this because you want to know about where I grew up, what things I did as a child, my two marriages, my thoughts about religion and politics, or my hopes and dreams, I’ve already written about all that, and you can read it on the Internet. At least I hope you can; surely some version of the Internet still exists in your day and time.

But if you are my great-grandchild or another direct descendant, then there’s really only one thing that’s important for you to know about me:  I love you. If you are Owen, whom I’ve held in my arms and watched grow almost too big for them, I hope to show you enough love that you’ll feel it, if not remember it, even after I’m gone. If you are another child, born too late for us to spend time together in person, then you need to know that I am madly, deeply in love with the very idea of you.

I’ve traced our family history back into centuries numbered in three digits, and let me assure you, you come from good stock. Also from some that was not so good. You can learn a lot about yourself by exploring the lives of those who came before you. You had no choice about whose genes you inherited, but you can freely choose whose behavior you want to emulate. I hope you’ll decide that the honest farmer and the hard-working country doctor are better role models than the cruel king, but that’s up to you. I can suggest that your life will be easier if you make good choices, but I will love you whatever you do.

Most of us mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers are quick to notice our offspring’s kindnesses and accomplishments, the deeds and achievements that lift our hearts and make us love you more than ever. A funny thing about us, though, is that when we see some less than desirable conduct on your part, we nearly always think the best way we can help you do better is by loving you more. That doesn’t always work, just so you know, but the occasional failure of the theory doesn’t diminish the truth of the emotion that inspires it. Either way, you are loved.

I also want you to realize that you’re not alone in either your joys or your struggles. In addition to the family you know now, there has been a large network of people who came before you who have held great hopes for you and have given conscious thought to what they could do to make the world a better place especially for you, whose name they didn’t even know. I’m only one of those people. You and I are part of a long chain, not only linked genetically, but also bonded by our shared history and by all of the emotional tethers attached to the word “family.” We are part of each other.

I am your past, and you’re my future. So, yes, child, I love you dearly.

Portrait of Grace and Elegance

One-a-Day Redux
Day Twenty-Three:  Something Old

The portrait sits on the hearth, propped against the wall in a narrow space between the fireplace and a bookshelf. I have no place to hang a portrait as large as this one, but it's too lovely to pack away. The antique wooden frame is oval shaped, embellished with beading and other elaborate flourishes, painted a copper color that has a nice sheen to it in spite of its age. The hand-tinted portrait itself was molded into a subtle dome shape, a process which eventually may have contributed to the crack across its surface.

It's a picture of a beautiful baby girl, her dark hair carefully, lovingly parted in the middle, her blue eyes open wide, the third and fourth fingers of her tiny right hand lifted delicately as they might be one day when she grows up to hold a cup of tea in the company of other elegant ladies. That baby was Hazel Belle Willis, who grew up to marry my great-uncle, Loren Elliott. She was born in September of 1906, dating this portrait at about 1907, one hundred six years ago.

Late in her life Hazel told my mother, who was admiring the portrait, that the dress she wore in it had been borrowed, that her family was too poor to buy a dress as fine as this one with its ruffles and lace, its petticoat peeking out from under the skirt. That may have been true at the time, but Hazel's lot in life improved after her parents divorced and her mother remarried a man who was a better provider. Hazel was an only child, and her mother, Sadie, doted on her all the days of her life. So did Uncle Loren, when he came along.

Hazel could have easily been spoiled, but she wasn't. Instead, she paid all that love and devotion forward, making every person she encountered feel special. She was as charming and comfortable in the company of the janitor of the apartment building where she and Loren lived in the early days of their marriage as she would later be in the presence of the dignified "ladies who lunched" in Washington, D. C., when Loren's job took them there.

Here's the beautiful old portrait, the earliest picture I have of Aunt Hazel:

And here's the last one, taken when she was almost ninety years old:

She was my favorite aunt, and she was beautiful, inside and out, from beginning to end.

Tell Me a Story

One-a-Day Redux
Day Three:  Something You Adore

For as long as I can remember, I've loved a good story. It can come to me in the form of a book, a movie, a TV show, a letter, or in a simple conversation. However it's presented, the telling of it transports me right into the middle of it.

The story that's on my mind today is the love story of my Aunt Martha, who passed away earlier this week. If The Notebook tugs at your heartstrings, so would the story of Martha and Wayne and their love affair that spanned more than 70 years.

I also adore music, and a song that tells a story is one of my favorite things. One I particularly enjoy hearing over and over is this one, even though it doesn't end as well as the story of Martha and Wayne in real life or the story of Noah and Allie in the The Notebook:

The song is "The River" by Bruce Springsteen.

Thanks to dizcula for posting the song and the lyrics on YouTube.

Digging In and Digging Up

I try to post something on Audrey's Ambition at least once a week, usually on Friday. Yesterday's post, written by my grandmother, was about her lifelong interest in cemeteries. I've read that essay several times before, but somehow, in transcribing it yesterday, I became determined to locate the small Missouri cemetery where her grandfather was buried. I've looked for it previously, but I finally found it yesterday as a relatively new entry at findagrave.com.

Genealogy is a bit like I'd imagine panning for gold to be, in that the discovery of one little nugget sets off a big burst of energy and a flurry of activity, just in case that one nugget signifies a brand new vein to be mined. After a few small successes yesterday, I was back at it early this morning, digging--and frequently finding--photos of ancestors' graves.

In the case of Audrey's grandfather's gravestone, his original stone was evidently replaced after his wife died twenty years later. She was buried next to him, and the new grave marker had her name as well as his on it, along with the dates of their births and deaths. This would seem unremarkable to most people, but seeing it struck me funny, because my first thought was that Audrey's grandmother must still be rolling around in there. She was a spiritualist and, according to another story Audrey wrote, was convinced that he was haunting her in the years after his death. I wonder if she expected her final resting place to be right next to his.

**********

Since I've spent the better part of the last two days poking around in online graveyards, I picked a Saturday Song Selection to fit that theme. This is a rather nice one:

The song is "Dig Two Graves" by Randy Travis.

Thanks to Ralphy Boy for posting it on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Happy St. Patrick's Day Anyway

All week long I've planned that today, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I'd post a photo of my stepfather's Irish mother, Agnes Blair Hofmann. This morning it occurred to me that Agnes wasn't Irish; she was a Scotswoman. What had I been thinking?

Never mind. Agnes is all I've got for today. She was lovely, and my daughters and my sister have never seen her picture, so Agnes it is.

The Shinier Side of the Golden Years

If you're a frequent visitor here at Velvet Sacks, I have good news for you: You can save yourself ten minutes by skipping this post. This is what I wrote for homework for my second Life Writing class, and most of what's in it you already know. Oh, it's all been totally rewritten, so it isn't as if I'm serving up leftovers. It's just that there are no new dishes on the menu. 

On the other hand, if you want to check it out anyway, maybe I can spice it up for you by adding some links and photos to the text I read aloud in class. Here goes:

**********

To my mind the phrase "golden years" implies that if we only live long enough, we’ll reach a point at which we’re free to kick back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Frankly, I find this stereotype offensive. This is exactly why so many young people view us as selfish old coots, dilly-dallying our over-extended lives away on their FICA-tax dollars. There’s so much more to us than that. What about the person who ends up being a full-time caretaker for a spouse afflicted with Alzheimer's? What about the elderly couple who find themselves raising grandchildren because their own grown children aren't stepping up to the job? What about those who worked hard all their lives at low-paying jobs, unable to save for retirement, and now live at or below the poverty level? Do you think those people believe these years are "golden"? 

"Okay, then," you may ask, "what’s been your personal experience with the so-called golden years?" 

"Well," I'd have to admit, "I'm, uh, kickin' back. And relaxin'." And sometimes I feel really guilty about that, as if more suffering on my part would somehow make it up to those who aren’t as fortunate. I'm well aware that a financial or medical emergency could upset my rosy retirement years in an instant, but for right now, things are pretty good. 

I find that the great gift of the golden years is time: time for doing and time for just being. Conscious that most of my life is behind me, I penny-pinch both time and money. No longer concerned about making my money grow, I worry about making it stretch. I try to stretch out time, too, but it keeps ticking away no matter what I do. The best I can do is draw interest on each minute by spending it in a way that gives me my moment's worth.

Through the gift of time, I finally have more than enough of the solitude required to nurture my introverted soul. I'm able to stay in close touch with what I think and feel, no longer needing to run away and hide from the hustle and bustle to regroup. Now that most of my time is spent in serenity instead of in chaos, I can fully delight in the company of other people without feeling that they are sucking away my last ounce of energy. Ironically, just when it’s become easier for me to play well with others, I find myself without playmates. Most of the friends I've made in recent years have been people I met at work. Most of them are younger than I am. They still work.

My closest companions these days are my dogs, Levi and Gimpy. They’re Goldendoodles, big, blond, and curly. My stepsister calls them "lion dogs," an apt description, except that if lions are kings, these two dogs are court jesters. They keep me laughing. They also keep my sense of responsibility acute. I need them to know they can depend on me. Sometimes that merely means feeding them on schedule or letting them outside when they need to go. Other times it means whacking their tennis ball out from under the coffee table with a broom handle, over and over, while my favorite TV show is on.

Muddy-footed companions:  Levi (left) and Gimpy.

I’m close to my family, too, but we don’t spend a lot of time together. They don’t have the free time that I do. I remember being where they are now and understand the pressures of jobs, chores, and relationships. In between planned family get-togethers, my daughters and I stay in touch through phone calls and daily texts. I keep up with my grown grandkids on Facebook. The fact that I don't see them more often makes all of our face-to-face visits more meaningful, more memorable.

Typical family get-together.

Those children and grandchildren may not realize it now, but one day in the future, one of them or one of their children will become curious about their roots. Our family history has been a long-time passion of mine and will be my legacy to them. I've worked on it for 24 years and still spend hours each week collecting names, dates, and places, connecting the people of one family to those of another, following the trail of men, women and children who moved over the sea in ships and over this land by covered wagon. I'm writing down stories that were passed down by elders, and I’m puzzling out and piecing together other stories through long hours spent poring over old documents. I'm gathering and labeling family photos, providing a visual reference through which a widow's peak or a distinctive nose can be traced through time and history.

This photo from about 1930 shows four generations.

The little girl in front is my mother.

Old photos aren't the only ones that interest me. I take new pictures almost daily, capturing as much of the beauty around me as I can. Photography is a hobby I discovered late in life. It's taught me to look at the world differently, to pay attention to details, to notice color and texture, light and shadow. Film and prints were expensive when my children were growing up, so photography was reserved for vacations or other special occasions. These days, with a digital camera, I can take a dozen pictures of an interesting weed if I want to.

Random sample of digital photos.

I share some of my photos online, posting a different one each day. While I work with the images, cropping one to keep only the prettiest part of it or digitally erasing power lines from an otherwise lovely landscape, I listen to music. I never imagined that music would be as meaningful to me in my post-retirement years as it's turned out to be. My relatives are generous with iTunes cards on gift-giving occasions, and I've used those cards to compile the soundtrack of my life. I listen to songs I remember hearing as far back as the 1940s and new songs that speak to me when I hear them for the first time now. From country to classical, I'm moved by a melody, reminded by a snatch of lyrics, transported to another place, another time, another experience.

Random screenshot from my iTunes music list. (You know

you can click on all these images to enlarge them, right?)

Books transport me, too, allowing me to travel to places I'd never be able to visit, get to know fascinating characters, and experience adventures that the kind of cautious person I am wouldn't dare seek out on her own. Books have been my best friends for as long as I can remember. I'm protective of them. If I lend you a book, I'll think about it every time I see you until you return it. If you forget to return it, I won't badger you, but I'll obsess about it quietly until, finally, out of a need to preserve the friendship, I'll buy myself another copy of the book.

As an avid reader, I have the utmost respect for the authors who write the words that expand my thinking and engage my emotions. I value the content and caliber of their work more highly than ever now that I write for publication, too. Publication seems much too grand a label for what I'm doing, but I am expressing my thoughts and feelings in writing, clicking my computer mouse on a button that reads "publish," and setting my words free on the Internet. There they can be accepted or rejected by anyone who happens upon them. Knowing that someone, somewhere, will read my words makes me care a great deal about the way I present them.

Screenshot of Blogger's "compose" page for the post you're reading right now.

I started writing a blog because I wanted to leave something of myself behind when I die, a way for my daughters to find me at those moments when they need their mother, and a way for younger generations to get acquainted when or if they're interested. I feel lucky to have lived at the center of seven generations. I had a relationship with my great-grandmother, and I'm building one now with my three-year-old great-grandson. That sense of continuity is comforting to me, and I think of my blog as a bridge from one generation to another.

Dora, my great-grandmother - about 1950.

Owen, my great-grandson - Nov. 2012.

I didn't know when I started writing online that I'd be entering a diverse community known as the Blogosphere. I've learned not to be offended that some people take one look at what I’ve read and move on. The readers who come back again and again do so because they like what they've read there, and those are the people I want to reach. Many of the readers write blogs of their own, so sometimes it's nothing more than mutual admiration of the written word that brings us together. Sometimes it’s shared values. Sometimes real friendships form. It’s gratifying to live in an age when people from different parts of the globe, people of different ages, ethnicities, and lifestyles, with different religious and political perspectives, can forge a bond because a string of words written by one of them has struck a familiar chord with the other.

Those are the ways I spend most of my time. When I need a little variety, I squeeze in a puzzle: crossword, logic, or jigsaw. I'm trying to learn how to paint. I watch some television but almost never in the daytime. I cook or clean or grocery shop when I have to, and I like the fact that I don't have to do those chores on anyone else's timetable. I've learned that a minute of reverie can be just as enriching as a minute of activity; the key is to pay attention to it. 

The truth is that the quality of my life feels richer and fuller now--and freer of aggravation--than it did before I retired. My health is better, too. In that positive light I can see why some people call these years the golden ones. That being said, I'm ending this piece now and crossing my fingers that the gods of perversity don't read all this happy-sappy stuff and make me sorry I wrote it.

Bound for Beaumont - The Epilogue

For those of you who wanted to know what happened after the conclusion of yesterday's post, here are a few more paragraphs that were included in my first draft. Once I remembered that the assignment was to write about the trip--not about everything that came afterward--I had to brutally chop off this ending.

I'll pick it up with the last sentence of yesterday's story:

**********

. . . I didn't know that our summer vacation would turn out to be a life-changer.

My sister was happy to have a daddy at last. I, on the other hand, was convinced my life was ruined. I cried for days. It turned out that Judy was right and I was wrong. School started in late August, we made friends, and by the time 1958 rolled around, we had all adjusted remarkably well. In the spring of 1960 Mammaw and Packy sold their Springfield home to Southwest Missouri State University, which was expanding its campus. They followed us to Texas and bought a small house a few blocks away from ours. Judy and I, along with our new stepsister, Donna (Tommy's daughter, a year older than Judy), and our new baby brother, Joe (born in the summer of 1958), grew up, got married, had children of our own, and survived our joint and separate struggles with as much grace and dignity as we could muster.

Judy and I are now best friends. The events that followed that trip to Beaumont set us on different geographical paths, but the bond between us is strong. Twice we've traveled together back to Springfield. Twice we've stood side by side, remembering, on the university tennis court that now covers the ground where our childhood home once stood. Judy still lives in Texas; I've been in Louisiana for the past thirty-six years. Each of us is surrounded by children and grandchildren; both of us are happy where we are.

Yet both of us, after all these years, still call Missouri home.

**********

UPDATE:  Feb 23, 2013, 6:53 PM:

Having once again realized at the last minute that it's time for a Saturday Song Selection, I checked to see what was the number-one song at the time of our 1957 vacation to Beaumont. I learned that the most-played, most-sold song from before our trip until after Mother and Tommy's wedding was Elvis Presley's "Teddy Bear." I had it on a 45 rpm record back then, but it wasn't one of my favorites. I much preferred the flip side of the record, which also happens to be more suitable for a post about one romance beginning (Mother's) and one ending (mine).

The song is "Loving You" by Elvis Presley.
Thanks to mountain824 for posting the video and lyrics.

Bound for Beaumont

The following is what I've written for my first Life Writing homework assignment, which was to write in detail about a trip. It's my understanding that I'm supposed to read this aloud at our next class. (Note to self: take water bottle.) You'll have to read it to your own self if you're interested, but I'll make it up to you by throwing in some pictures at the end.

**********

There were five of us packed into my grandparents' maroon-colored 1949 Chevrolet Coupe that summer we went to Beaumont, Texas. It was 1957, I was fourteen, and I was the only one in the car who had never seen the ocean. The aunt and uncle we were traveling to see had promised us a trip to the beach, which would have excited me if the prospect of being away from my 15-year-old boyfriend for an entire week hadn't made me so gloomy and grouchy.

Our trip had begun at home in Springfield, Missouri. I was born in Springfield, as was my sister, Judy, four years after me. About two years after our father came back from fighting in World War II, when I was five and Judy was one, Mother and Daddy divorced. Mother took Judy and me with her to her parents' home, and we'd lived there ever since.

Mother was doing most of the driving on our way to Beaumont. Packy, my grandfather, rode shotgun. He never was a big talker, and on this trip he seldom spoke up at all except to tell Mother what she was doing wrong. Packy's name was Lewis Saunders. Martin's Furniture Company had made him retire from driving their delivery trucks when he'd turned 65, but he still considered himself an expert driver. "Wanda," he'd say, "you ought not to be so close to that center line. Get over." Or, "Wanda June, slow down, now."

Mother had a quick answer for every one of Packy's driving tips. Mother was smart. She worked for B.C. Christopher & Sons, a brokerage firm, where she spent much of her day standing on a step-stool in her high-heeled shoes, transferring stock prices from ticker-tape to chalk numbers on a blackboard. She was beautiful, too. She would turn 34 a couple of weeks after this trip, but she regularly lopped seven or eight years off her age. She could get away with it, at least until I showed up next to her, skinny as a rail but as tall as she was, and called her "Mother" in front of everyone. It hurt my feelings how much that annoyed her.

Judy sat on one side of the backseat, and I slumped on the other side in a deliberate demonstration of my abject misery. Mammaw, our grandmother Lola, rode between us. Mammaw was a peacemaker, a happy person who appreciated the grace of God, the beauty of nature, and the goodness she believed was in the hearts of all people. Judy and I needed that buffer. We had a classic case of sibling rivalry, fussing and feuding over everything from toys to clothes to the nuances of each word that poured forth from the other's mouth. Mammaw would keep us from sniping at each other and from leaning into one another's space, even if it meant riding for twelve hours with her feet straddling the drive-shaft hump in the floorboard.

The '49 Chevy was a two-door car, so no one could get out of the backseat unless someone first got out of the front. I felt trapped in there. The July temperatures only made it worse. We couldn't have survived the heat with the windows up, so Mother and Packy kept theirs rolled down, creating enough wind in the car to keep our hair blowing over our eyes and into our mouths. The little windows next to the backseat were small, triangular in shape, and could be opened about three inches by sliding them back. Judy and I opened ours as wide as they would go and pressed our faces against the open spaces. We deemed the additional air movement worth the price of getting peppered with road grit and smacked by the occasional flying insect.

We drove straight through from Missouri to Texas without stopping to spend the night. Occasionally, between restroom and gasoline stops, Packy would take over the driving so Mother could get some rest. She slept with one eye open when he was at the wheel, her opinion of his driving being at least as critical as his opinion of hers. Somewhere along the way, after hours we'd spent napping, complaining, heaving dramatic sighs, and consuming homemade sandwiches while the wheels kept rolling, the hills of the Ozarks gave way to the flatlands of East Texas. I saw my first mirage on a two-lane Texas highway and was mesmerized as I watched what appeared to be water in the road disappear magically at our approach. That may have been the first moment it occurred to me that this vacation might not be all bad.

Eventually we pulled into the driveway of my aunt and uncle's single-story, white-painted-cinderblock house. Their sons, Gary, Lew, and Kenny, spilled out the front door to greet us. The boys were stairsteps--eight, seven, and five years old, respectively--and were much taller than they'd been the last time I'd seen them. The whole family had lived down the street from us in Springfield until a couple of years earlier, when they'd moved to Texas to be near my aunt's brother.

My uncle, Neale, was Mother's older brother. He was a quiet, gentle man. He smoked a pipe, handling it in a way that gave him the appearance of being lost in thought, though if he ever had a deep thought, he didn't express it. In Springfield Neale had worked at the U. S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. Now, in Beaumont, he worked as a television technician at an appliance store. That seemed to me like a smart career change: the new job was safer than the old one, and television was getting to be a really big thing. At home we could  already get three channels.

Neale's wife, Yvonne, had grown up in Beaumont. Later she'd been a member of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and had served in England during World War II. That's where she met Neale, who was also in the service. Now her full-time job was reining in those three boys. Yvonne was rather plain in appearance, except for her pretty eyes, and I'd once overheard Mother uncharitably questioning her intelligence behind her back. Yvonne's strengths were kindness (unlike Mother), tolerance, and resilience. Whatever happened, she rolled with the punches.

Once, during our visit in Beaumont, my uncle invited his boss home for supper to meet the Missouri part of the family. Yvonne baked a cake for the occasion. Unfortunately, ants found the freshly baked layers cooling on the kitchen table and quickly swarmed over them. Yvonne was unperturbed. Judy and I were shocked to see her scrape off most of the ants with a table knife, hand-pick the stragglers, and proceed to frost the cake. When she produced it at the end of our evening meal, we kept our mouths shut and politely declined dessert.

The highlight of our vacation occurred a day or two after our arrival in Texas. Mother, Judy, and I piled into the car with Yvonne and the boys, all of us in our bathing suits, and drove to the beach at High Island. I was impressed by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico that seemed to go on forever. The beach itself didn't live up to the expectations I'd built up based on beautiful pictures I'd seen. Hurricane Audrey had slammed into the Gulf Coast only a month earlier, and the shore was littered with driftwood and other debris washed up by the storm. Everything looked dirty. The exposed particles of broken shell in the sand made me uncomfortable about walking on it in my bare feet, but I managed to tiptoe into the water with the others and stay there long enough to be able to tell my friends I'd been swimming in the ocean. Not that I really knew how to swim.

Thinking we could at least go home with genuine southern suntans, we spread our blanket on the sand, ate our picnic lunch, then stretched out on the blanket. We'd been sunbathing longer than I considered fun when a car pulled up beside us, a convertible with three men in the front seat. They stopped to talk to Mother and my aunt, asking where we were from, how did we like Texas so far, all the usual questions one would ask of strangers meeting for the first time.

The men were headed to a seaside restaurant/bar that we could see from where we were standing. They invited us to join them for a cool drink, and Mother surprised the rest of us by accepting their invitation. The restaurant, which I believe was called Breeze Inn, was nearly empty inside. I was happy to be out of the sun. We sipped our cool drinks--soft drinks for the women and children, beer for the men--under breezes stirred by ceiling fans. While the adults talked and laughed at one big table, we kids sat at a separate one nearby, keeping a watchful eye on the restaurant owners' enormous, sleeping dog, the first Great Dane I'd ever seen.

Everything was different after that day at the beach, and I don't remember much about our activities after that. I'm sure we must have done some sightseeing, but I couldn't tell you what sights we saw. I mostly remember that Mother was spending every evening with Tommy, the man she'd liked most of the three we'd met at the beach. He'd pick her up when he got off work, and they'd be together until after the rest of us were asleep. Mother seemed to be having a great time, but Judy and I were left with our grandparents, aunt, and uncle, none of whom shared Mother's energy or zest for fun, and three cousins who had always driven us crazy merely by being boys.

Our trip back to Missouri was much like our trip to Texas a week earlier. We were headed in the opposite direction, of course, and some of us had sunburns that itched like crazy. There was also a new tension in the car. Mother was quieter. She'd cried when we left Texas, and I couldn't understand why. She'd known Tommy less than a week, so it couldn't have been about him.

Back home in Missouri, I was happy again. My boyfriend came over on our first day back. He sat with me on the front-porch swing and seemed glad to see me. We had the whole rest of the summer ahead of us. Except for the sunburned skin that was peeling off my body in sheets, everything seemed to be back to normal.

I didn't know then that Tommy would call Mother long-distance every single night or that he would come to Missouri and marry her on the 8th of August, three weeks from the day they met. I had no idea that the day after their wedding we would pack up everything we could fit into a small trailer, say goodbye to everyone and everything familiar to us, and move to a little Texas town near Beaumont. I didn't know that our summer vacation would turn out to be a life-changer.

This is the 1949 Chevy when it was new, parked in front of my

grandparents' house. Several years later 
Mammaw and Packy bought it from Mammaw's sister Cleda
 and her husband, Ernest. Cleda is pictured here at left with her
daughter, Nadine, and Nadine's daughter, Kathy.

Springfield, Missouri, about 1949.

Our cousins, (L-R) Kenny, Lew, and Gary.
Beaumont, Texas, July 1957.

My uncle, Neale, and his car, which was the one we rode in to the beach.

Beaumont, Texas, July 1957.

My aunt, Yvonne.
High Island, Texas, July 1957.

Linda (me) on the left, my sister Judy at right,

Kenny in front, Gary in rear.

High Island, Texas, July 1957.

My mother, Wanda, with her nephews, (L-R) Gary, Kenny, and Lew.
High Island, Texas, July 1957.

Mother and Yvonne.
High Island, Texas, July 1957.

The men from the beach. That's Tommy in the middle.

High Island, Texas, July 1957.

With Packy and Mammaw (Lewis and Lola) in front of

the home we'd be leaving a day or two later.

(L-R) Linda, Packy, Mammaw, Judy.

Springfield, Missouri, August 1957.

Surprise! Everything turned out okay!

Standing (L-R): Linda, Wanda.

Seated (L-R): Donna (Tommy's daughter), Tommy, Judy.

Orange, Texas, November 1957.

A Labor of Love

It's a glorious Sunday, cold but sunny, and I've appreciated it mostly through the windows. A couple of days ago I got new genealogy software in the mail, so today I sat down to copy the data on 7,900-plus close and distant kin from one program to another. So far it looks like everybody made the journey unscathed.

I made the switch in preparation for posting our family tree online, something I didn't foresee when I started gathering information twenty-four years ago. Because I expected to keep everything private, I felt free to cut and paste notes from all over the web, sometimes making notations about sources, sometimes not. Oops. I guess we learn as we go.

A couple of members of my extended family have already started online family trees, but I think they're doing it the hard way, entering a few people at a time. I'm hoping to be able to upload the whole shebang at once. (Don't worry, family; Ancestry.com doesn't publish any details about living people, not even their names.) Before I can do that, there's some clean-up to be done.

Today I worked on eliminating duplications that the new software brought to my attention. That happens when John Doe marries Jane Smith, who, unbeknownst to either of them, is his fourth cousin. (Or maybe they did know it; I'm not one to judge.) If I enter John's family history, going back generation by generation, then do the same for Jane's, sooner or later, bingo! We have a duplication. The same thing happens when siblings of one family marry siblings of another, possibly their nearest neighbors on the same side of the mountain. Or the bayou. It's going to take me a few days to straighten it all out, but it'll be nice to have it done.

Of course, no genealogist can complete a lengthy family-history task without taking a break to do a quick search in the hope that some new nugget of information will pop up to be admired and savored. Today's nugget was this photo I'd never seen before:

The couple at the far left of the photo are Martha and James Barclay, my great-grandparents.  They had twelve children over a span of twenty-seven years, my grandfather being third from the youngest. Martha passed away in 1915 at only fifty-six years old. I'm not surprised. Click on the picture and see how tired she looked.

And so it goes. I find them, catalog them, and send them a little love with every keystroke. I don't know who will pick up this torch when I'm ready to pass it, but I work with confidence that someone, somewhere, will be as happy to know about these people as I am. It's just a matter of time until somebody else gets hooked.

Old Documents and Flesh and Blood

Today I want to tell you a story about a woman I once knew and a girl I never met. The woman and the girl were the same person. The story is pieced together from memories and from a string of documents gathered over the years on a genealogy website. This week a page from the 1940 census inspired me to dig deeper, to find out more, and made me long to travel back in time and wrap my adult arms around that girl and tell her--even if it would turn out to be a lie--that everything would be all right.

The girl was born in 1923 in the same East Texas town where she would die, too young, in 1972. Her father was artistic and made his living as a sign painter. I found his World War I draft registration online, and I imagine (don't know for sure) that he met and married the girl's mother, who was born in Wales, when the war took him to Europe.

I've learned from an old city directory that in 1929 the girl's family, including her paternal grandmother, lived together in the Texas town where she was born. The girl had an older brother. Their younger brother had passed away in 1924 at the tender age of six months.  In 1929, probably about the time that city directory was distributed, a fourth child, their baby sister, was delivered stillborn.

Months later, at the time of the 1930 census, the family--minus the children's father--lived in a different house. I've never been able to determine where the father was or why he was absent. The girl's mother had bravely returned to work after the loss of her two babies, working as a saleslady at a variety store, but by the time Thanksgiving of 1930 rolled around, she herself had died. She was only 31 years old.

A 1931 city directory shows that the girl's father and his mother were living together again. I assume the children lived with them. Then, in April of 1932, the grandmother died. How much loss can one child bear? The girl would have been almost eight at the time, her brother only eleven. Ever since I discovered those documents I've wondered what happened to the children. Oh, I know they survived, because the girl grew up and married my uncle, and I know from published records that her brother survived to the age of 73. But what about those interim years? Was their father able to care for them? I've learned that he lived long after his children were old enough to be on their own, so maybe he did. At the time of his death in 1949, he was unmarried, residing in Louisiana, and still painting signs.

By the time I met the grown-up little girl in the late 1940s, she was already my uncle's wife. Both of them had joined the military in World War II, and they met and married in England. In the early 1950s they and their three young sons lived just three doors up the street from us in Missouri.

I probably saw my aunt at least once a day in those years, but it never occurred to me that her life had been anything other than ordinary. The only tragic thing I ever knew about her childhood was that she had been attacked by a dog when she was very young. It was a German Shepherd, she told me when I asked out of childish curiosity about the scar that began above one eye, crossed at an angle over the bridge of her nose, and continued across the opposite cheek. I never thought to ask another question, and if she ever told any other stories of her early life, I don't remember them.

We still lived in Missouri when my aunt and uncle and their boys decided to move away to the East Texas town where she'd grown up. A few years later we took a road trip to visit them there. It was on that vacation that my mother met the man who'd soon become my stepfather and changed the geographical course of my own life.

Time passed, and on a late-spring day in the mid-1960s, when I was a young mother with two babies of my own, one of my aunt's sons called me on the phone. "I just wanted to tell you we have a new brother," he said. He went on to explain that a young man and his wife had surprised my aunt with a visit a few days earlier--on Mother's Day. That young man, in his 20s then, turned out to be my aunt's first child. My cousin stated matter-of-factly that his mother had gotten pregnant when she was young, that her baby had been adopted at birth, that my uncle had known the whole story since before they married, and that their whole family was thrilled to welcome the young man into their midst. My cousin also said--I remember this clearly: "She says they forced her to give up her baby for adoption." That part of this story did not have a happy ending. My aunt's firstborn son, lost to her for so many years, died of leukemia about a year after their reunion.

My first marriage ended not long after I was told about my aunt's long-lost son. Later, during my second marriage, my  husband's work kept our family moving around the country. During those traveling years I rarely saw the Texas portion of my family, and I never saw my aunt again. She died at the age of 48 from a brain hemorrhage, I believe it was. The exact nature of her illness didn't stick in my mind as soundly as the fact that it had gone largely untreated. A few years earlier my aunt and uncle had become involved in a religious movement that forbade medical treatment. My uncle would follow her down a similar path six years later.

And so we leave the story of the grown-up aunt, knowing what ultimately happened to her, and we return to the story about the girl. I found that girl this past week in the 1940 census. That year she was 16 years old and living in a convent in Houston, Texas, with eight nuns and 103 other girls and women listed in the census as "charges." Through further research I've learned that the nuns who ran the convent were from an order known for its work with "wayward girls and fallen women." Given the circumstances of my aunt's early life, I find it difficult to think of her as wayward. Or fallen. Broken maybe. Lonely, for sure.

I will probably never know, nor is it any of my business, the circumstances surrounding the conception of the child born to the girl. That act may have been tragic, too, but until I learn otherwise I will refuse to think of it that way. I want to believe that the girl met a boy, her first love, someone who would finally hold her close and make her believe that good times lay ahead of them. Maybe that's wishful thinking. If not my aunt, though, then certainly there were others among the "charges" in that convent whose stories began with love and ended in loss and shame because of the mores of the time. So many young women. So many different stories.

Life can be cruel sometimes.

*******

And what of the boy, the father of that baby? When a certain old song shuffled up on my iTunes playlist this morning, I thought for the first time about his role in this story. Except for the fact that my aunt's name was not Joanne, the song made me imagine that boy as he might have been in later years, grown well into manhood and maturity, remembering the young girl and wishing he knew what had happened to her.

______________________________________________
The song is "Joanne" by Michael Nesmith.
Thanks to Margaret Chaplynski for posting this video on YouTube.
Click here to read the lyrics.