Dear Mother

I've been using all my spare time (at least what's left after stuff like the full-time job and facebook) scanning hundreds of old photos, and I like to try and put things back together... like a jigsaw puzzle. I came across a letter that my Mother had written home to her Mother in 1937. She would have 17 when this was written from the big city of Chicago back to rural Southern Illinois.

This letter had to put a scare into her Mother, but no more than the previous couple of years of her escapades -- running away and living like a hobo, riding the rails and falling in with bad company -- then being retrieved against her will. I guess this time her folks decided to let her go. Might as well. I don't know if this photo was taken in that year, but it looks like a possibility. I kept her spelling and punctuation intact.

Jan 4, 1937
Monday

Dear Mother,

I got here O.K. Kabella's came for me in their car. Jim didn't come to meet me. And I'm glad of it. He told Kabella's a bunch of lies about me. He told them that I slept in the woods two nights with two boy's he has got to prove it. You know what he told about getting letters every day or every other day from Francis Kabella and the girl upstairs. He denied it. He said you was telling a lie and I don't mean to call it cussing I don't mean it that way but he got mad and this is what he said "You and the whole God-Dam family can go straight to hell" and he told Kabella's that in our country there was two classes of people, the low-down and the higher class. He said my family was the lower class. I got mad and told him he couldn't talk about my family and get by with it. He told me to shut up and started to hit me and Mrs. Kabella's brother told him he'd better leave me alone. Then he told Fritz to shut up and they almost had fight. Jim drew his knife on Fritz but didn't cut him he told them he knew how to use a knife if anyone got smart. He has to leave here they are tired of him. I'm not afraid of him. You have to have license to carry a gun here. He's just blowing. He's gone now. I hope I never see him again.

He said the reason he didn't meet me at the depot is because I knew too much about him. See he was afraid I would hear about the things he told there. He couldn't face me.

Well I'm sleepy so I had better. I didn't sleep last night cause he had his knife + a gun borrowed. If he gets back and acts too smart I'll call the cops everybody is on my side they don't like Jimmy.
All the news this time I guess. Good Bye and answer soon.

Your Daughter
Lola

I worked upstairs today. I'll see about factory tomorrow. We lock bed-room door. I'm not afraid. Don't worry about me. he will get the worst end of it. You know how he is.
Big windy.

My Mother was in love with a man in Chicago, and I learned from searching out the 1940 Census forms that they lived in the same building. It was not the infamous Jimmy from the letter or anyone else in it. I won't list his full name, but she called him "Cooney." He was married. Had to be a heartbreak in there somewhere.

Smoke monster

My mother always told me that she quit smoking while she was pregnant with me. I was going through some photos in a trunk, and found some very strong evidence to the contrary!

In most of the adult photos of my mother, she is holding a cigarette. Not sure what made her start, just the usual reasons probably - trying to fit in with the other 'kids' or wanting to rebel. It wasn't really known to be dangerous when she started, probably in the 1930s or 1940s, but by the 1950s (this is taken in 1953) people were becoming aware of some of the hazards.

The others in the photo are her parents, who were visiting her in Phoenix from southern Illinois, so she is openly showing rebellion in doing it. She would tell me some stories about her father, who was a strict Southern Baptist and on many occasions unleashed fiery righteous indignation and abuse upon those within his dominion, especially the females. She told about the time, and this was as an adult after she had moved out, where she spent a very long day working in their house... sanding, wallpapering, scrubbing and painting... and when she was finished she took out a cigarette and lit it. Her dad grabbed her arm, twisted it around to her back (nearly breaking it), put his foot on her behind and shoved her out the front door. He told her that she would never light another cigarette under his roof.

She didn't quit though. She smoked for the rest of her life right up until she was in her early 70s and had been bedridden with emphysema for some time - she had the oxygen tank with her, and was pretty addled from morphine (and just lack of oxygen in the brain) so that she somehow thought it was OK to continue smoking. She started a fire in her apartment (and luckily her home nurse was there to take action) but ended up being burned in the face and all the way into her poor old already-shredded lungs. She didn't die from that, but, boy was she angry. Her burned lungs wouldn't let her smoke anymore. She had been calling smoking "her only pleasure" for years. She lived for maybe another year, and we lost her just 2 weeks apart from MrB's father who had lung cancer. They were both almost militant smokers... take the cigarettes out of my cold dead hands... that sort of attitude. (I've told some of this tale before a few years back.)

I don't think the pregnant smoking stunted my growth or anything. I was a big 9 lb. baby. As a toddler I was playing with the butts in an ashtray, and she made me eat a bite of the ashes. It worked. I never, ever, wanted to smoke a cigarette in my life, so as bizarre as it sounds, she did me a favor. Don't know if all those long car trips with both parents filling the car with smoke hurt me either. Something with surely get me someday, but I don't think it will be nicotine.

Another piece of the puzzle

As a military kid, we were constantly moving when I was growing up, and my parents also moved many additional times that were not required by the service. It was a crazy lifestyle for a kid, and I am still trying to construct my own history. It’s very difficult to do, as I do not have anyone to ask anymore (father gone 1967, mother gone 1993, no siblings). I might run across an old, hoarded and sometimes inherited piece of paper – a letter, postcard, receipt – and from that I find an address or date to help complete the puzzle. Sometimes, all I have are memories, which was the case here. I had no address, and all the landmarks had been destroyed.

Daddy was transferred to the North Pole, on the DEW Line to keep an eye out for the Russians during the Cold War (and in his case the "cold" part was literal), an 18 month assignment with no families allowed (what I know about that one deserves its own post), so my mother and I ended up waiting this one out in Carterville, Illinois. It was a really small town with a population at the time (1960-1961) of about 2,600 people. The house we lived in was a tar paper shack, which was a little wooden structure covered in a paper-based material that is tar-coated to be water-resistant. A lot of it (most of it, really) has a fake brick appearance. The house, although it was right in the middle of town, had no electricity, heat, or plumbing. I have no photos of it (Daddy took his camera with him to the Arctic) but found this pic on flickr that resembles it very much. Click to view larger at its source. Seems like our shack was in better shape, even though the front steps were rotten enough for Grandma to fall right through one of them once.

Mother would attach a water hose to the neighbor’s faucet, and ran the hose through a hole in the wall of our little cottage, that was our running water. I am assuming that she had permission to do that. There was a wood-burning potbellied cook-top stove in the house for both cooking and heat. She chopped wood for it every day. I don’t remember any furniture (I guess it was in storage). I do remember sitting on the floor playing with paper dolls while mice scampered around. I am not bothered by mice (luckily).

In the backyard, there was an outhouse, and establishing the boundary of the property in back was an active railroad track. My mother planted a food garden back there, and I remember homegrown corn and strawberries.

I tried to locate the house by looking for the railroad tracks, but Google maps didn't show any. I had to search online for an old map of the town that showed the old tracks.

On Google satellite view you can see the path going through that was left by the old railroad.

I tried locating it by finding my Grade School, seen below, but it has apparently been bulldozed as well, replaced by unremarkable modern buildings.

Look how close we were to the train!! I am amazed. The house next door to the east was even closer.

Here is the current Google street view of the place. It still holds a little house, but an infinitely better one. I got a kick out of the way the residents were captured sitting in their car, with the car parked in the yard, and one of them is sitting in the hatchback! That's a little bit hillbilly, but they've got nothing on us.

Weekend on the town, and on the other town

Been trying to finish this "Weekend Update" for several days now. We are both feeling much better and hoping the intestinal maladies don't return. I got better just in time to have about a day to prepare for MrB's mom, sis and BiL to visit. They drove down from St. Louis for a wedding south of town here, so they were not as thrilled as the locals over the *wonderful* soaking rain that started on Friday and still continues today (Monday). We had a good time. They are really nice people, and this weekend proves that political opposites CAN get along and keep things friendly (if you can manage to not discuss politics). That ugly head only reared once when BiL was shocked that there would be a street named after César Chávez - and when MrB responded it's because the population of Hispanics in this area is quite high (the most non-controversial answer possible), the question arose "are they legal?" Actually there are streets named "César Chávez" in many American cities, and a whole town named after him in Texas. I am thankful that the issue of farm labor was not brought up and hashed out in the car. I don't think that anyone wanted that.

With the rain turning that sightseeing trip to the Lake into a bad idea, We took to the shops. Friday we started out at Magnolia Café for a fantastic brunch, followed by browsing Prima Dora, Off the Wall, and Uncommon Objects on South Congress (SoCo), followed by Waterloo Records and Toy Joy. I would like to mention that Toy Joy has a vegan soft-serve that was to die for, and the omnivores all agreed. Also, if you get to visit this town, Toy Joy and Uncommon Objects are must-do experiences!

Friday night we took Mom to the movies, and we finally got to see The Descendants after illness kept us from using our Thanksgiving Day tickets. I saw fewer first-run movies this year than usual, but this is surely one of the best of 2011. We all liked it a lot. One thing I *didn't* like was the fact that when it first opened, I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR, and the guest on that show revealed a MAJOR plot point spoiler. I will not do that, but I will say that one of the things I liked about it was that it normalized the experience of living in a place (Hawaii, in this case) where the people and the culture are often stereotyped, used as a theme, and almost made cartoonish. I've lived in many places (including Hawaii) and those regional prejudices really bug me.

On Saturday the rain was still pouring down, making beautiful mud for our poor old distressed trees, and making a drive around the Lake a bad idea... still, so we went down to the historic Gruene area of New Braunfels. That town was hopping! They had a good-sized tent village of kiosk shops, plus all their regular little quaint shops. We had lunch at the Gristmill restaurant, a huge place with great views - and the server tried to talk us into the smaller order of onion rings, but we were having none of that "small" stuff, just bring us the bigguns.
. The Gristmill is right next door to "Texas' Oldest Dance Hall" Gruene Hall, which is a great place. On weekends they have music all day and all evening, (free in the daytime) so we got to listen to the White Ghost Shivers play for awhile. The place was packed! Here's a taste of the Shivers and their 20s-style Swing Jive.

Saturday night we watched an old Terrence Malick movie, Days of Heaven, on DVD. I really didn't care for Tree of Life (still, I think we can expect to see it in the Oscar lineup for this year) but have been checking out some of his other stuff, esp. since we got to see him in action with Christian Bale this Fall, so now it's personal. Anyway, we liked it (MUCH more than Tree of Life, speaking just for me).

It was a nice time spent with the folks, I hadn't seen them for about 6 years. This coming weekend we've got more stuff planned than we can cram into it. I like working but I live for the weekend.

Going back in time takes time

I just realized that I haven't posted for quite a few days. I've got a lot of irons in the fire - great at starting projects left and right - not so good at finishing them. Well, we all have our faults, and that's a gaping one of mine.

I can't open those old boxes and binders of photos and letters without getting sucked in. So fascinating, to me anyway. The past is such a puzzle. I love trying to piece it all together, and the picture gets clearer all the time.

The scanner has been fired up lately, and I have been immersed in my uncle's genealogy book -- such a hoot -- trying to put names to faces. And the names!! (I'm talking to you, Ethel Bertha) Name popularity sure does change over the years.

Here's one of the pictures I won't be posting on p-bucket, because it has "Hitler" in it and they would surely delete it, just as they deleted the photo of the Nazi pin that my dad brought back as a war souvenir. (well, hell. It's a free service and I guess they can delete whatever the hell they want.) This is a couple of my uncles hamming it up (yes, the mustache and hairstyle are part of the costume). They both enlisted and fought in WWII along with their other two brothers. The one in the Hitler getup ended up on a ship that was sunk in the Pacific, and he ended up floating for a few days out there with the flotsam, the survivors, the victims and the hungry sharks (that's the genealogist I mentioned earlier). Another brother (not the one pictured) survived Pearl Harbor.

Also, recently have found some long-lost not-very-distant relatives. Interesting...

A "Modern Spiritual" for your Sunday

Yes, DO watch it all the way to the end to hear Lawrence Welk describe it in those words. This reminds me of something that happened in this same timeframe (around 1971). I've had more than my share of really goofy aunts, uncles and cousins.

One uncle (call him "E") was quite a strong religious fanatic of the Pentecostal variety and married a woman named Carol who was made of the same stuff. She was a real corker. There she is, on the left, and don't you worry, her hair is not cut off, it's wrapped up in a bun like the Lord commanded. She went around tongue-wagging and bad-mouthing a woman, one of her cousins-in-law, for shaming herself and being indecent. The way she had shamed herself was by wearing a pantsuit - Pentecostal women were only permitted to wear dresses (and obviously this cousin was not of that strain of Christianity and was therefore of the devil). This complaint didn't sit well with much of anybody, so one day Carol was sitting in the front yard in a dress that was a little short - and my mother (who loved to stir the shit) and a kindred spirit of a neighbor across the street started hollering as loud as possible, "I see England, I see France, I see Carol's underpants!!" The other thing Carol was famous for was showing up at potluck dinners with no food - only empty containers to take food home - that, and showing up uninvited right at dinnertime with husband and 3 kids in tow. I guess Uncle E was just as much to blame for that one, but he was never quite right so we forgave him.

Some funny things from Uncle E

Once he was stopped by a policeman for running a stop sign. He told the officer that he knew good and well that he could not have committed that offense, and the reason he knew was because he was a Christian!! As the officer wrote out the ticket, Uncle E started to pray out loud "Oh Jesus!! Come right now!!"

Another time he was looking for work and had filled out some forms with an employment agency. One of the questions asked had to do with driving experience and he was supposed to estimate about how many miles he had driven. He put down "a million miles." When he got tired of having no luck in the job hunting department, he called up the woman at the agency to yell at her, and told her that maybe she should be looking for him a job on the moon because she wasn't doing him any good down here on earth!

Uncle E once showed up at our door with a religious tabloid magazine claiming that Richard Nixon was being falsely persecuted... JUST LIKE JESUS WAS! My mother had some real giggles over that one. Neither of us could stand Nixon, and my mother liked to say "He thinks his shit smells like pineapples!" (meaning Nixon, not her brother).

One day, the phone rang. I picked it up and said hello, but all I heard was that song playing, "One Toke Over the Line" by Brewer and Shipley. I held the receiver up in the air so she could hear too, and we were both very aware of the definition of 'toke' and were giggling like mad and rolling our eyes. When the song ended, Uncle E finally spoke up on the other end. He said he wanted to make sure we got to hear that song because it was about Jesus!

I still think about that and laugh when I hear that song, and apparently Uncle E wasn't the only one who was taken in by that Modern Spiritual!

Only not Lonely

With Thanksgiving nearly on us, it's a good opportunity to bring up sibling topics such as birth order. Heard this one on NPR: How Much Does Birth Order Shape Our Lives? It was a pretty good piece and very interesting, but like much of the other literature on this topic, it completely skips over the "onlies."

I guess only children are thought to be rare enough so that they get left out of the discussion... and it's easier to have the Big Three, first, middle, last. Here's another article: How Birth Order Changes Your Life. 1 - 2 - 3 - done. I think they such assume that onlies are just like firstborns. Not correct.

An entire article from the Sunday Times (UK) mentions only children just once, to state that onlies are more likely to be obese than children with siblings. They are not exactly including us in the main topic.

Aha! There's an entire paragraph for onlies in this one: First Born, Middle Child or Last Born?The one below, though, had some really valuable comments.

Birth Order
Prepared by Judith Graham, Extension human development specialist. She has referenced The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are. New York Dell Publishing. Leman, K. (1985).

Like firstborns, single children are often treated like little adults—sometimes to the point of feeling they never had a childhood. The labels describing firstborns also fit the only-born; but preceding each label—perfectionistic, reliable, conscientious, well-organized, critical, serious, scholarly, cautious, conservative—add the word super.

When the only child falls victim to perfectionism, she usually moves toward one of two extremes. Either one of these roads can lead to becoming the “discouraged perfectionist.”

He may become very critical, cold-blooded, and objective, never tolerating mistakes or failure on his part or on the part of others. Or she may become everybody’s rescuer, the one who agonizes over the problems of others and always wants to move in, take over, and solve everything. Discouraged perfectionists are usually very structured people who hold very high expectations for themselves and others.

What Can the Discouraged Perfectionist Do?

1. Start each day by giving yourself permission to be imperfect (perfection isn’t achievable). Make a conscious effort to go easy on criticizing yourself and others.
2. Learn to accept. There is no way you can change anybody else’s behavior. Stop trying.
3. Memorize “I was wrong,” “I’m sorry,” and “Will you forgive me?” and use them often.
4. Don’t be so quick to put yourself down, and when others criticize, don’t be so quick to react. Perfectionists are sensitive—be aware of your sensitivity, admit it and cope with it patiently.
5. Take small bites of reality. Perfectionists often overwhelm themselves with the BIG picture, so work at doing one thing at a time.

Making the Only Child Birth Order Work

1. Pay attention to all the ideas in Making the Firstborn Birth Order Work.
2. Exercise extreme caution. Be ruthless with yourself in regard to making too many commitments and expecting too much of yourself.
3. Make time for yourself. Is time and space for yourself really built into your schedule? Most only children are the type who need some time for themselves.
4. Choose friends wisely. As a rule, only children get along better with people much older or much younger than themselves. Try to arrange experiences with both groups because these are the personalities you are most likely to click with and the people who will give you more strokes and argue with you less.
5. Do a self-inventory. Only children are often labeled selfish and self-centered because they may never have had to learn to share with brothers and sisters. Take an honest inventory of your life. How self-centered do you act around your spouse, friends or fellow workers? What specific things can you do to put others first, help others more and be less critical of others?

The pig stays in the picture

I believe this is a photo of my dad's family, and possibly my Grandpa there in the middle in the WWI uniform. I never met my real Grandpa and have very few pictures of him, Grandma married him around 1900 but was already twice-widowed when I was born, so husband #3 was my Grandpa for all I cared (she outlived him too). Those really unhappy-looking kids are probably some of my aunts and uncles, but this was before my dad and probably a few siblings were born (there were 9 kids). I like the hats. The man on the far left looks like he's wearing an old Civil War era hat, and love that ten-gallon hat on the man next to Grandpa (with the dog)... and yes, for some reason, there is a pig in the picture.

They were from Southern Illinois around Makanda [late 19th century gallery of that tiny town] and you can see Grandpa's old Red Crown gas station circa 1924-1925, and a couple more old relics here.

Awkwardly famous

Awkward Family Photos (and who doesn't love that site?) has finally posted the pic I sent them some time back. Click on the picture to visit the post.

Also, there is a growing list of hilarious comments on AFP on Facebook.

Goodbye L

My cousin (who I have referred to on this blog as "L") has died of cancer at 60 and was buried yesterday In Albuquerque. She was as close to a sister as I ever had, even though the only thing we had in common were family-related.

She never learned to use email or the internet. She’d always call, it was not even from a cell phone. It was from a land line where she had to pay for long-distance, so I’d generally take a voicemail and call her back on my dime. She had a very childlike personality, not very bright but very loving and sweet – it’s fair to say that she said everything in baby-talk, and everything made her giggle, even bad news... and it was always bad news. New Mexico has never brought me anything happy. I lived there twice while growing up. When my dad was first transferred to Albuquerque (with the Air Force), two of my mother's siblings and their families moved there and stayed.

One was a not very bright woman who talked way too much and too loud, who was married to an abusive, racist drunk who hated everybody. This was a guy who died after a long bout of emphysema and a family friend said that it wasn't worth it to waste money on flowers for the son of a bitch. He beat his wife and kids, and once tried to run his young daughter over with the car. During one family fight, his oldest son hit him in the head with a skillet, but it was self-defense. He was fond of calling his wife a "Mississippi whore" and many other colorful names even while she was waiting on him hand and foot during his last years with the illness. Their middle child was the closest thing I had to a brother. That was one messed-up dysfunctional family, but it was not my recently deceased cousin's family. I have written about hers a few times before:

Fundie racist rightwing Christian step-mother:
Jesus loves me, but he can't stand you
Jesus doesn't need flash

"L's" story, including her escape from the survivalist husband in Wickieup Arizona.
Family Sadness (Long)
About my uncle, and her uncle-daddy, who died last year
Goodbye Uncle
And when we knew that it wouldn't be long
Sad family reality

A few months ago, around the time of that last post, she left me a fairly long voicemail, and it was basically said "I am going to die soon, and wanted to say goodbye." I really wanted to keep that message in digital form, but I was too ignorant on cell phone technology to get it figured out before it expired. Too late now (and I still don't know how to do that).

He could be his own Grandpa

Love is strange. She's 70 and he's 26. OK, who cares? Right. The other part of it is that he is her Grandson. And they are in love. And there's a baby on the way. [source link] (to which I have to ask, "Is this baby really necessary?") The article explains how the family grew up apart, so they were practically strangers. Found via Facebook, where someone pointed out that if they got married and she took his name, her name would be Pearl Bailey. Not sure if that marriage would be legal though.

This old country song explains how, in a very roundabout way, a man really can become his own Grandpa just through standard relationships. In the case above, if there was a wedding, the guy gets there in one step.


In my family we've got a few of those hyphenated relations. I had 2 blood uncles who married the same woman, so to the kids, one of them was an Uncle-Daddy. My maternal Grandpa and his brother married women who were each other's cousins, creating all kinds of brother-cousin, aunt-cousin designations. And really, who cares? Nobody got hurt by them. My major confession I will make right now is that my first romance was with my first cousin (two firsts!!!). I was 14 and he was probably 19-20 and in the Army. It was all smooching, love letters and poetry (he was the poet). It was never consummated. I suspect he was religious and wanted to wait for marriage. Then he was transferred to Germany and we both had a long time to rethink things. This affair was conducted with the full knowledge and under the eyeballs of all our parental units, and was never discouraged by any of them. In the end, I'm really glad that it didn't go any further - mainly because, knowing how I turned out, that thing would have been ill-fated. Sometimes, the right things happen - or the wrong things don't happen.

Sad family reality

My cousin, who was as close to a sister as I had growing up, is dying of cancer, and has been given maybe 2 more weeks to live. Here is my post from 2007 where I refer to her as "L," it is a long post where I tried to tell her very sad history within a blog post - from her hellish mother to the psycho, abusive survivalist she married and literally escaped from, although not without permanent injuries.

I've talked to her on the phone quite a bit, and it's really hard to know what to say to a person in a situation like this, other than "I love you". I thought about looking for a card to send, but they really don't make cards for this occasion. She has a very sweet, childlike personality, and is assured that soon she will be in the arms of Jesus. That's one way of saying that the pain will be over. I will grant that.

Her Uncle/Daddy (yes, he was both) just died this past June, the only Uncle I have ever really mourned.

Goodbye Uncle

My favorite uncle (out of 35-40 by blood and marriage) just died on Friday. That's him above, sitting on a car in the desert during a trip from Illinois. Also on the car are 1957 plates and a bumper sticker from the "Waring Auto Theatre" in Carbondale (fancy name for a drive-in!)

It was the emphysema that got him, even though he suffered through so many other things in his life he was mainly ravaged by his years as an alcoholic and a smoker, it was the tobacco that got him (just like it got so many other of my family members).

Some of the following was told to me by my mother, grandmother, and others. Some of it I know from first-hand experience.

He is the one responsible for my parents meeting each other. He and my dad (Bill) were buddies. He was in the drunk tank at the local jail, so Bill came over to the house to get his older sister (my mother, Lola) so they could go get him out. That’s how Bill and Lola met.

He was just a teenager when he moved in with his brother and wife, who was the biggest drunken whore and worst mother in ten counties. I'll resist writing more about her now, there's too much stuff to write. I will say that his brother died young, and asked him to promise to marry his widow and raise his 3 kids (since it had apparently already been consummated...). He kept his word, married his brother’s widow and stayed married to her through her natural life - 40 more years until she died (a victim of congestive heart failure and also emphysema). Both of them were alcoholics, and his wife was also a sex addict.

(When my female cousin called me to tell me about his passing, she was also calling him "Uncle" - and this is silly that I never gave it any thought before, but he was her uncle too. She said, "yup. He was my uncle-daddy." And sure enough, he was. I always thought about him being her dad, but, of course, he really wasn't.)

I spent many many hours growing up, along with my cousins from 2 other families with drinking issues, hanging around waiting in the dive bars while parents, aunts, uncles tried to talk somebody or another home from a binge. All the families I grew up around were highly dysfunctional.

The couple dealt with those issues until they were well into middle age, then his wife found Jesus and he got on board with that too, they were both needing to straighten out anyway, so it seemed to help. He wasn't one (like her) to have visions of Jesus in the cloud formations, or even to mention religion, he was just a really nice and good person who always took the hand he was dealt and played it for better or worse. He had a great deal of loyalty, tolerance and patience.

When my mother was in her downward spiral from her emphysema, she was living in the same town with him, and he ended up being a primary caregiver for her in her final years (whereas I was living a couple thousand miles away -- I could visit but was unable to bear the caretaking burden). He visited her every day, took care of her paperwork, ran errands, hired nurses, and also had to endure her growing outward hostility toward those most closely related to her. He was made of stronger mental stuff than I was, that's for sure. We comforted each other by blaming her lack of oxygen for at least some of the hostility. He withstood it, even when he had plenty of health issues of his own.

A few years after his wife died, he married a woman who was one of those extreme right-wing fundamentalists. I've blogged her in sadly hilarious ways here before [here's where Jesus appeared in her son's shower and here's a vile christian racist email I got from her] - never met her and don't need to.

She's the reason I got completely out of touch with my uncle. I never confronted her on her beliefs (what's the frikkin point of that? Is anyone going to change their mind?), and she seems to be absolutely convinced that she is God's tool and mouthpiece.

My cousin has said that she thinks the the rest of the family are not going to honor his wish to be cremated. This is one of those weird christian things - my own mother, after years of being open-minded toward all kinds of religious beliefs, became very fundamentalist at the end - absolutely refusing cremation because she was going to need her body intact for The Rapture - even though cremation was the only option that was we could all afford.

I've been busy going through the trunks looking for old pictures so I can send to my female cousin before she herself dies, she's had cancer for a couple of years. I can't get much information out of her about it, but she hasn't offered much hope. She'd love to have these old pictures - and, as much as I love them, it's better to get them sorted and circulated.

I've got up to 6 aunts and uncles left. One aunt is in a nursing home in Roswell NM. One is the above-mentioned handmaiden of the God of the white people. One more I know is alive. The rest I can't even find on Google. Almost all gone...

B-day, 6th of June

My dad was born on June 6, 1923, so today would have been his 86th birthday. He died in 1967 after spending 27 years in the military (Air Force). He was 44 (and I was nearly 14). Here he is with his sister Nellie. This was taken sometime in the 1940s. He enlisted well in time to be there for the big one - dubya dubya two - but he liked the life and stayed in. The patch on his sleeve means Corporal, Fifth Grade, Army Air Corps. His final rank was NCO, Tech Sergeant, Air Force.

He was from Makanda IL, a tiny village in Little Egypt south of Carbondale. He was the youngest in the family with 5 sisters and 4 brothers. I guess they ran out of names when they got to him, because they named him Junior with middle name Bill (as if Junior wasn't hillbilly enough, his official middle name was a nickname). He changed his name to William for the Service, but he was always called Bill. There he is in his school picture!

His father died in 1938 (he, his dad, and 2 of his brothers died in their 40s from heart attack - so I guess he was about 15 when his dad died). Above is what is probably one of the only pictures of his blacksmith shop and Red Crown gas station in Makanda. I guess you could research that car and the gas to tell when this picture was taken, but the shop was supposedly opened around 1900. [addendum: I've identified the car on this page as being a 1924 Ford Model T 5 Window Coupe. Scroll down about halfway.]

My dad is buried in Makanda with some other family members (not with my mother though - she's the one who ended up in a military plot in Santa Fe NM - but spouses do their time in the Service too).

[something] iversary

I didn't realize 4 years ago when I started this blog on May 6, that it was also my wedding anniversary! [Texas Oasis: Best wedding ever] I should be shot for being unromantic (it's my nature). The wedding happened 15 years ago, but I really think the day we met is more important to me: June 4, 1988. Besides, after you've lived together for a few years, the wedding itself doesn't bring so many changes.

Thanks for reading, guys, and a shout-out to MrB, the love of my life.

Grandma's notes to self

I've going through the trunks lately, finding all kinds of family mementos, and a lot of it is just the mementos of someone like my maternal grandmother. She kept spiral notebooks and endless pieces of paper to remind her of things (my mother did the same thing). Grandma (and my mother took after her in this respect too) was pretty much a sucker for every advertisement that came along whether it was pitched by a TV commercial, snake-oil salesman, a televangelist, the Farmer's Almanac or the Sears and Roebuck Catalog. Here's a cure for sores that apparently didn't work well enough to become popular.

Cure sores
_______________
Octagan soap
_______________
Mix with sugar

Ask Etheline about them water pills of what she ordered for me so posed to be cheaper if I can get them as I need them is trouble
____________________________________________
700 Club. Pray for my legs & the big crick in my neck. Channel 3 I think.
____________________________________________
Help in night call if need help 5493351
____________________________________________
My sores on my legs is called stasis-Deratitis

Stasis *dermatitis* is what she meant, of course. She always had some really interesting spelling. My favorites were in a letter where she wrote about translers and santa peas (tarantulas and centipedes), but she was from rural Oklahoma and "translers" was how she pronounced it.

Etheline was her niece who had a sister named Ivaline (their brother was named Otha but went also by his middle name so he was always called Otha Wayne), but the two girls went by the nicknames "Ecky" and "Toad", respectively. Etheline is the name of a Celtic Mythological figure [more info], a daughter of a demon who gave birth to a demon-slayer, but I'm really not sure if her parents knew that. They probably just liked the name.

I addition to falling for ads and snake oil, she fell for the TV preachers. There were notes everywhere throughout her spiral notebooks about the 700 Club and the various things that they could help her with (having a more direct connection to God I guess). Grandpa was no better, he would send money to Billy Graham. For him it was more about having his name on the right roster than getting a special healing for his donation.

80
15
60 yr sence I was babtized
__________________
Sweet milk [and some quantities]
______________________________
I want my neck crick healed
I want the leg trouble & artharitest Be healed
& my arthulitism
700 club channel 3
Harrisburg Ill.,
my trouble on legs, knees down to stasis deratitis

She called it sweet milk to distinguish it from buttermilk (also called "clabbered milk"), which had to be on the table at every meal for Grandpa. Once, when he found his buttermilk missing from the table set for a meal, he kicked the table over, food, dishes and all. Sometimes that good old Southern Baptist provided his own brand of fire and brimstone hell.

Chapter 3 - Oh How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo

Here's part 3 of my low-rent travelogue that follows this one. After we were denied the opportunity to join my dad at Johnston Island by the Air Force, he was transferred to Hawaii in 1956 and we were soon to follow after being temporarily stranded in San Francisco waiting on the Air Force's "ride" -- I don't remember where we stayed or for how long, but I know my mother was HOPPING mad at the Salvation Army over something, I think it was because they turned us away when we were broke. I will also never forget her story about ordering some Chop Suey in a restaurant there, seeing something in it that looked a lot like a tail, and when she asked the waitress what it was, she replied "salamander."

I was about to make my first airplane flight, and it could have ended up being much more memorable (in a bad way) because one of the engines caught fire while we were over the ocean. Somehow we managed to land in Hawaii and it was not by raft or helicopter so disaster was avoided.

The video above (which is someone's modern video, but nothing has changed about it) provides the sound track for this post, it's one of the songs (with dance moves) that I learned while living there - and I may have driven everybody crazy singing The Hukilau and Honolulu Hicki Boola Boo... or maybe not. It really was just one loooong party where people wore their swimsuits all the time and were either dancing, drinking, singing, playing an instrument, or all of the above.

Here I am trying to play my ukulele with some of our neighbors.

There's my record player on the floor, add some refreshments and some Hawaiian garb and it's a party.

We lived there no more than 2 years and I was about 4 when we left, so I don't have the usual type of touristy memories. My mother and grandmother had told me that a praying mantis would spit tobacco juice in your eyes, so I remember trying to get back to our apartment when I saw that I had to pass what seemed like a giant praying mantis, so I was frozen with fear and couldn't get past him.

More of the neighbor kids, probably other military kids. That's me sitting on the ground. I've never been much of a ham.

I also remember being absolutely horrified at the sight of hot lava. I mean, how many kids get to see bubbling molten lava in person? I developed a great fear and fascination with volcanoes. I never visited another one, but found the story of Pompeii to be one of the scariest things I ever read.

My mother at the beach, looking stylish in 1956. She was naturally very thin. I didn't inherit that trait. She actually used to drink those weight-gain concoctions but they never worked.

You had to have a muumuu. I still have this one. It's probably valuable. All I need is a buyer.

My mother, dressed up and sitting by the Banyan tree.

I very seldom saw my dad when he was not in uniform, but here's an exception.

and here's me wearing the same outfit (not just a matching outfit - the same one)

Except for the gigantic tobacco juice-spitting bugs, the bubbly hot molten lava, and getting a really short haircut, Hawaii was one of the nicest places we were assigned to live. I'd love to go back someday.

The next Chapter will be about the Florida panhandle and living on a chicken farm. For previous installments, click on the "lifestory" label.

Low rent travelogue, Chapter 2

Here's Chapter 2 of my Growing-Up-Military series, which I started last summer when I wrote about my first 2 years in Phoenix (1953-1955). After spending 6 more months in Colorado while my dad took a class, he was headed for Johnston Island and we were to follow shortly. I was a precocious little thing (disgustingly so), and managed to get in front of an open mic radio broadcast where I recited the Lord's Prayer from memory, and dedicated it to my mother and to each grandparent and to my daddy who was on his way to Johnston Island.

Johnston Island was originally used as a bird sanctuary until the American military took it over. The island was only a quarter mile wide and a mile long at the time (it has since gotten larger through dredging), so the base took up every square inch of it and made it resemble an aircraft carrier.

These scans are from an orientation booklet that they gave the guys - and I do mean "guys" because there were almost no women on the island at all - and the booklet points out in a couple of places that they can get all their necessities there - except "dolls".

My dad was very lucky that he wasn't there after 1958 because they started doing nuclear testing. The detonations were in space overhead, but there was one mishap (Starfish Prime) that caused the island to get a good dusting of plutonium, along with quite a few other thermonuclear events (Operation Dominic and others)



The base was used as a storage facility for all sorts of WMDs in the 70s, including nuke stuff, chemical weapons, sarin, Agent Orange, mustard gas... and there were a number of accidents involving those too during the 1990s (see the link). By 2003 the incredibly massive stockpiles and the facility were destroyed, and the island has been redesignated as a wildlife sanctuary, although not exactly the same condition that Mother Nature would have preferred. Below, a few barrels of Agent Orange, some leaky, from this website.

My mother and I didn't go to Johnston Island. The military didn't end up allowing us to go there, so our poverty forced us to have to move in with my maternal grandparents in Carbondale IL. They had a "room" in their basement, and those quote marks are appropriate as it was just an area with a couple of cots. The coal furnace was down there with us, and somebody had to continuously shovel the coal into the furnace to keep the heat going so it was a sooty and smelly place to live, although not the worst place I ever lived. It was very much the opposite of our next destination: Hawaii 1956. That will be Chapter 3.

[Unofficial website Johnston memories]

The Arizona years

Here's your soundtrack for this post, from 1953 - Frank Sinatra.


For my birthday (on the 24th) I put together a small collection of scans from that place and time, Phoenix Arizona in the early 1950s. We lived there until 1955, when we went to Hawaii for a short time. Click any pics to enlarge. I was born on Luke AFB, which has an awful lot to do with my life in general. People ask where I'm from... I say "the Air Force." Here's a picture of the doctor who delivered me. It's from a hardback book that is exactly like a high school yearbook (published a year after I was born). We lived in a little red trailer off-base somewhere, then later moved to a duplex.

Here are my folks with their new little bundle of joy.

I suppose I needed a bath. My mother seems to have dressed up for the occasion. I did the opposite.

Here's my mother getting a similar kind of bath. Not really. It's one of those fairground photo booths, fun for the whole family. (I more than half expect photobucket to yank this one, along with another one of these I have posted there.)

A bunch of little cowpokes from the neighborhood.

Here's a bunch of other kids playing grownup. Those cigarettes are a nice touch, aren't they? Candy cigs, I'm sure. Well, maybe not so sure.

 A hilarious picture of my mother Lola, a sausage, and a couple of my dad's sisters Ethel and Ruth. The "in-law" relations were always pretty bad, despite the smiles for the picture, but then they were smiling for their little brother.

For recreation, we would drive out into the desert somewhere and have a picnic. There's our car in the background by the saguaro. My folks drank coffee practically by the bucket, and what sounds better when you're out in the middle of the Arizona desert than a steaming hot cup of coffee? That's right. Nothing. My parents loved their coffee so much that once when on a camping trip, they boiled some hot dogs, then realized there wasn't enough water left for coffee, so they made it out of the weenie water.

For a side job to being in the Air Force, my dad was part of the pit crew at Manzanita Speedway for Tucson race car driver Bill Cheesbourg. He racked up some fairly impressive stats in his life. I don't think this is his car. The two sports I my parents liked were car racing and wrestling.

Another fun family event, visiting the carnival and watching the freaks sideshow.

Jesus, please don't leave me and let me go to Hell.

I don't remember this place, but everywhere we lived I got to spend a lot of time in the various dives, honkytonks, taverns, etc. On the back of this was handwritten to my dad, "To Bill, Just to remind you alway about the 3 Sister, July Betty & Jessie" (sic)

Hope you enjoyed the pics, there are a few more on flickr.
View all the pics in this set.