Lost Items, Lapses of Memory, and Not Seeing What is Right in Front of Me

Posted on November 13, 2012 by kathy

I found it.

I couldn’t find this picture when I was writing Little Rockers. My pictures are a mess.

Holding Cousin Cherie

And I found this picture of Grandma Abbie after I published Amana Rocking Chairs.

Abbie in her Amana rocker

It was taken when my grandmother had moved to an assisted living apartment. She usually smiled for pictures. I don’t think she was ready.

I’ve been corrected.

When I wrote about My Big Tall Italian Wedding Cake, I made at least one mistake. Dad(Jim) tells me that, although he was already in Odessa, TX at the time of my wedding, Mom and my sisters were still in Clovis, NM, which makes Mom even more of a super mom – driving my wedding cake and my three little sisters the six hours to Waco during the time she was preparing to sell our house and make a move. Dad drove in separately.

And on the subject of faulty memory…. I write many of my personal memories here. I believe them to be true. Maybe they’re not. You might want to read You Can’t Trust Memory! from the Heart and Craft of Life Writing blog.

I’ll just keep writing like I remember it. I hope people will comment or otherwise tell me their version of the story!!!

Here’s the picture to prove it.

The day Dad(Jerry) and I were in Bethel Cemetery, we couldn’t find the headstone for Ann Rutledge’s mother. Dad returned a few months later with cousins Alice and Adele and they found it right off the bat. Here’s a picture they took.

Grave of Ann Rutledge, Bethel Cemetery, Van Buren Co., Iowa

I know I looked on that row. How could I have missed the tall headstone with a GAR marker?

The sun was really bright that day.

Sepia Saturday – One Moment Please

Posted on November 9, 2012 by kathy

Launched by Alan Burnett and Kat Mortensen in 2009, Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images.

My Grandmother Abbie was the oldest girl in a large family, and many responsibilities for the care of her younger siblings fell to her. As an older teen, she was eager to find employment to get herself out of the house. Her first job was at a grocery store, then Fuller Brush (I believe this was a store front – not door-to-door sales), and finally the telephone company in Fairfield, Iowa. My Dad says she liked working there and was delighted when she earned enough money to move out and live on her own.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of her working at the telephone company, but I did find this picture of the Fairfield Telephone Co. building which housed a Turkish restaurant as recently as 2009. Not sure of the status today.

Here is a picture of Grandma Abbie talking on the phone…

In an earlier Sepia Saturday post, I shared pictures of the Hedrick Y, near Hedrick, Iowa, where my grandparents owned a truck stop/cafe/grocery store. Most of those pictures were of the original building, but the bird’s eye view was taken after construction of a new building in 1956. My grandparents’ home was in the building that housed their business. When they tore down the business, they also tore down their home.

Since I spent many Saturday’s at the Hedrick Y, the deconstruction/construction site became my playground.

In both pictures, I see what looks like an old wooden crank-style phone near the working phone. It makes me wonder if it was jerry-rigged to provide an extension so they could use the phone without the building.

Don’t be shy – call on the other Sepia Saturday bloggers and see what they have done with today’s prompt.

Rainbow Fliers from the 1940 Presidential Campaign

Posted on November 5, 2012 by kathy

With the presidential election on everyone’s mind, here is a bit of memorabilia from the 1940 presidential campaign.

This first scan is the Reorder Blank for the First and Second Flights of Rainbow Fliers in support of the re-election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

These came from the papers of my grandparents, Eveline Coates and Thomas Hoskins. As you can see above, the Rainbow Fliers were from the Women’s Division of The Democratic National Committee. At the bottom of the order form is the suggestion: if this second flight of fliers is assembled in sets for distribution, the most pleasing effect can be obtained by arranging them in the order in which they are listed above.

Mine look a little drab. Surely this rainbow was brighter in 1940.

Rainbow Flyers were fact sheets on colored paper used in the fight for women’s suffrage. They were handed out at events, left in mailboxes, or otherwise distributed to promote the cause of a woman’s right to vote. This approach was successful in the suffrage movement, and was adopted by women working in the Democratic party in subsequent presidential election campaigns.

I don’t recall hearing my grandparents talk about politics or their voting habits. Perhaps these flyers were left in their mailbox, but that doesn’t seem likely since it is a complete (almost) set including a reorder blank. Maybe Grandma went to a meeting and picked up a set… Maybe Grandma picked up several sets to hand out to her friends and neighbors… Maybe one of Grandma’s friends tried to entice her to get involved and left her with a complete set to study… I’ll probably never know.

First Flight: