I didn’t intend to go so long between blog posts, but life happened. I’m writing this on the plane on the way home from a week-and-a-half of emergency Granny Duty in Austin, helping our daughter tend her tots after a serious knee injury, while her husband was out of town.
Chasing up and down endless flights of stairs after an 18-month old streak of greased lightening and her 3½ year old big sister is enough to fill nearly every minute, but I did manage to squeeze in some precious family history research time in Austin’s magnificent history centers and archives, and in my last hours there, I hit a vein of pure gold.
I’m blessed with a number of colorful ancestors, but the story of my mother’s mother’s mother Tilly has especially caught my fancy. Two months before she turned sixteen, Tilly married Robert Roberts, a thirty-nine-year-old widower with two young children. She bore him five more children before he died ten years later at the age of 49. Four years after that, she married my great-grandfather and her life underwent a radical change, sadly not one for the better.
In the past I’ve left the research on such matters to the team of cousins who have been doing genealogy research for decades. They have documented most aspects of her life with my great-grandfather. This time it was my turn. We’ve always known that Robert was the son of Texas Governor Oran Roberts, but we didn’t know much about that family, or about Tilly’s life during her years as part of the Roberts family.
I began by reading up on the Gov, finding him to be a remarkable man who instituted a “pay as you go” policy in Texas, restoring (or perhaps establishing) fiscal responsibility. He was instrumental in founding the University of Texas and vastly improved the state of education at all levels throughout Texas. When his terms were over, he founded the Law School at UT, and for ten years he served as one of the initial two Law profs there.
It’s easy to find out about the Governor, but his son Robert has always remained obscure. For decades the only information anyone could get was derived from his absence from the Austin City Directories and a couple of obscure news clippings that turned up in online searches.
This time I began searching indexes to find the record of a property transfer a cousin mentioned in an email. To my amazement, I learned that Robert was an active real estate trader. He bought and sold dozens of parcels, and he did it as R.P. Roberts and wife. As recently as the 1960s a married woman in Texas didn’t even own the clothes on her back, so the fact that he included his spouse, who was not yet legally an adult, is truly amazing.
I was not able to retrieve all the property transfer documents. That will have to wait for another trip. But I am totally hooked on this new level of mystery and piecing together her history from these obscure tidbits of information.
As I ponder the clues, I can’t help but think how thrilling it would be if she had left behind a journal, a collection of letters ― anything to give insight into the nature of her life and thoughts. It wouldn’t even need to be a polished story. Anything at all would be treasured by all of us. Please use this account of my search to encourage your family members to join you in creating a legacy of life history for your family.
Write now: jot down the facts you know about one of your favorite ancestors and make plans to acquire more information so you can write about this person before every information source is erased by the tides of time.
Showing posts with label sixties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sixties. Show all posts
The Turkey Farm
Who would think that a lifestory or memoir would be co-authored? Rather surprisingly some excellent ones are. I recently finished reading The Turkey Farm – Behind the Smile, a gripping memoir about Jennifer Keefe’s life. Jennifer survived, among other things, the brutal murder of her mother, being raised by the hippie farmer and occasional drug dealer her mother didn’t get around to marrying after she divorced Jen’s alcoholic father, early exposure to drugs, endless betrayals by family members and her first husband, and facing down her mother’s murderer. In the end, it is a story of triumph. You can read my formal review of the book on the Story Circle Network book review site.Quite aside from the content, this memoir is worth mentioning for many reasons. Among them is the fact that it is co-authored with Cheryl Archer, Jennifer’s best friend, whom she has known since grade school. In an account on Citizen.com, the electronic arm of The Citizen of Laconia (NH), the women tell of their adventures in writing the book.
The idea began when they were nineteen and wanted to capture Jen’s “stranger than fiction” story on paper. It took over fifteen years and lots of additional life experience to come to fruition. Jen still had a lot of life lessons to learn, and in the process of working with Cheryl to clarify things in her past, the story became a “journey to forgiveness” rather than an expose.
That’s not to say the story treads lightly on any topics. As you’ll read in the review, Jen’s stepfather sued unsuccessfully to prevent the book from being published, and her birth family members surely squirmed when they read it. For various reasons explained in the book, none were willing to take Jen and her brothers into their homes and raise them after their mother died. Her disclosures are brave and true, written from a witnessing point of view rather than one of blame. It took guts to go public with that material in any circumstances, and hopefully her courage will inspire others.
Jennifer’s life was changed by insight and forgiveness as a result of her collaboration with Cheryl, but Cheryl found reward enough of her own. What could be more rewarding than to see your best friend “wake up”, confront the demons of her past, and triumph over them to become radiantly happy, with a plan for her future. “It was the best gift I could give her,” she says. And perhaps the best gift she could give herself.
This book, which can be ordered from this webpage, has many lessons to offer, and for our purposes here, I’ll highlight these:
- The healing value of life story writing. The entire writing process was valuable, and an impromptu writing tip Cheryl gave Jen led to the final resolution of her anger and allowed forgiveness to rise from the ashes of her despair.
- The value of teamwork. Although anyone can write something, and anything you write is better than writing nothing, some are endowed with a more powerful gift for writing than others. Cheryl has far more of this gift than Jen. Jen lived the story, Chery put the pieces together to “find” the story.
- The power of persistence. Although it took over fifteen years, and countless obstacles arose, they never gave up.
- The satisfaction of helping another. Cheryl has seen the transformation of her best friend, and what could be more satisfying than knowing she played such a role in bringing that about? Cheryl is continuing to write other things now.
Write now: some memories and thoughts about someone you care deeply about, friend or family member, who may benefit from your help in getting their lifestory written. Is there some way you can share your gift for writing to help this person tell his or her story?
One Memory (Link) Leads to Another
Not long ago I discovered Write Your Life, written by Seniorwriter, aka Marlys Marshall Styne. (I just added her site to my Links list.) The post I landed on, Teddy Turns Fifty, was about a teddy bear she bought as a gift for her newborn niece, Cynthia. Cynthia and Teddy just passed the half-century mark.
The post is delightful, and so are the comments. One comment mentioned what appeared to be a pile of diapers behind a shoulder. Seniorwriter replied, “Yes, Karen, I imagine that is, indeed, a stack of cloth diapers. I don't suppose that any other kind existed back then.”
My monkey mind hopped from that comment to a personal memory about disposable diapers. I had extensive experience with cloth diapers at an early age. I was eleven years old when my baby brother was born, so I was thoroughly familiar with every aspect of changing, rinsing the messes in the toilet, washing, hanging the wet rags on the clothesline to dry, then folding them. Changing diapers can’t be avoided, but the rest of that routine was a nasty drag to be avoided whenever possible! Not long before our first child was born, I heard of disposable diapers, and found the idea tantalizingly attractive.
Our first son was born in Boston in 1966, and the day he turned four weeks old, he and I boarded a plane to fly to Philadelphia as the first leg of an adventurous trip we would undertake as we relocated from Boston to Richland, Washington. Using cloth diapers his first four weeks were easy, thanks to a generous gift of diaper service from a compassionate grandmother. The fifth week was also easy, with Grandmother’s washing machine and dryer at hand.
Realizing that cloth diapers would be a problem during the drive across the country, Hubby and I searched stores around South Jersey for disposable diapers. Both selection and stock were meager, but we found enough to serve the purpose. The day he was five weeks old, we hit the road, with Baby happily ensconced in a folding canvas car bed/bassinet in the back seat. He was no problem at all on the long drive. When he was hungry, he joined Mommy in the front seat for a soothing swig of milk while Daddy drove. How simple! (How do parents manage to get anywhere today when children must be anchored firmly in the back seat at all times when the car is moving?)
Diapers weren’t a problem on the road. I could easily change them while kneeling backward on my seat. They became a problem the evening we spent in Omaha. Fortunately, we had nearly finished eating our dinner in a family restaurant near our motel when our wee tyke answered an exceedingly urgent call from Nature. I’ll spare you the details, other than to mention that the disposable diaper he was wearing might as well not have been there. Suffice it to say that I grabbed him, Infantseat and all, and ran to the car while Daddy paid the bill. We went straight back to the motel where Baby had a bath. When he was asleep in his car bed, I hand-washed all his clothing and blanket, and scrubbed the plastic Infantseat shell and liner. (That infant seat, baby carrier of choice in the 1960s and 70s for cars and everywhere else, appears in the photo.)
Even if cost hadn’t been a factor, this single experience was sufficient to allay any temptation to bypass the washing machine. My rinsing, soaking, washing and folding expertise came into play. Thank goodness, my dryer was a welcome change, and I didn't have to deal with a clothesline.
Isn’t it funny how reading one little thing like that comment, or seeing one seemingly insignificant detail in a photo can bring back a gush of memories? I could go on for pages with other diaper stories. I share this snip of one in hopes it will trigger similar memories for you — that one memory link will lead to another.
Write now: memories of diaper-related experiences, whether they be with your own children, children of friends or relatives, children you babysat for, or anyone else. Let the memories go where they will — potty training, washing clothes, hanging them on the clothes line, types of diapers, diaper-changing avoidance, etc.
Write on,
Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal
The post is delightful, and so are the comments. One comment mentioned what appeared to be a pile of diapers behind a shoulder. Seniorwriter replied, “Yes, Karen, I imagine that is, indeed, a stack of cloth diapers. I don't suppose that any other kind existed back then.”
My monkey mind hopped from that comment to a personal memory about disposable diapers. I had extensive experience with cloth diapers at an early age. I was eleven years old when my baby brother was born, so I was thoroughly familiar with every aspect of changing, rinsing the messes in the toilet, washing, hanging the wet rags on the clothesline to dry, then folding them. Changing diapers can’t be avoided, but the rest of that routine was a nasty drag to be avoided whenever possible! Not long before our first child was born, I heard of disposable diapers, and found the idea tantalizingly attractive.
Our first son was born in Boston in 1966, and the day he turned four weeks old, he and I boarded a plane to fly to Philadelphia as the first leg of an adventurous trip we would undertake as we relocated from Boston to Richland, Washington. Using cloth diapers his first four weeks were easy, thanks to a generous gift of diaper service from a compassionate grandmother. The fifth week was also easy, with Grandmother’s washing machine and dryer at hand.
Realizing that cloth diapers would be a problem during the drive across the country, Hubby and I searched stores around South Jersey for disposable diapers. Both selection and stock were meager, but we found enough to serve the purpose. The day he was five weeks old, we hit the road, with Baby happily ensconced in a folding canvas car bed/bassinet in the back seat. He was no problem at all on the long drive. When he was hungry, he joined Mommy in the front seat for a soothing swig of milk while Daddy drove. How simple! (How do parents manage to get anywhere today when children must be anchored firmly in the back seat at all times when the car is moving?)
Diapers weren’t a problem on the road. I could easily change them while kneeling backward on my seat. They became a problem the evening we spent in Omaha. Fortunately, we had nearly finished eating our dinner in a family restaurant near our motel when our wee tyke answered an exceedingly urgent call from Nature. I’ll spare you the details, other than to mention that the disposable diaper he was wearing might as well not have been there. Suffice it to say that I grabbed him, Infantseat and all, and ran to the car while Daddy paid the bill. We went straight back to the motel where Baby had a bath. When he was asleep in his car bed, I hand-washed all his clothing and blanket, and scrubbed the plastic Infantseat shell and liner. (That infant seat, baby carrier of choice in the 1960s and 70s for cars and everywhere else, appears in the photo.)Even if cost hadn’t been a factor, this single experience was sufficient to allay any temptation to bypass the washing machine. My rinsing, soaking, washing and folding expertise came into play. Thank goodness, my dryer was a welcome change, and I didn't have to deal with a clothesline.
Isn’t it funny how reading one little thing like that comment, or seeing one seemingly insignificant detail in a photo can bring back a gush of memories? I could go on for pages with other diaper stories. I share this snip of one in hopes it will trigger similar memories for you — that one memory link will lead to another.
Write now: memories of diaper-related experiences, whether they be with your own children, children of friends or relatives, children you babysat for, or anyone else. Let the memories go where they will — potty training, washing clothes, hanging them on the clothes line, types of diapers, diaper-changing avoidance, etc.
Write on,
Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal
Buried Treasure
While I was digging through a drawer looking for something else, I found a treasure buried deep within: my first transistor radio, small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. The last time I specifically remember listening to it was the night of the Great Northeast Blackout, on November 9, 1965. I used this radio for updates on the chaos in Boston, where we were living at the time.I received the radio as a birthday gift five years earlier. Transistor radios were quite the hot item back then, much like iPods are today. I was dying to own one, and I was simply blown away when I found this dream gift by my plate at breakfast on my birthday, together with a charger and rechargeable 9-volt battery. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that my father told me what a strain this gift had placed on the family budget. “... but I knew you had your heart set on one, and I wanted you to have it.” I fondled the small blessing and thought back in time.
Compared to now, teenagers fifty years ago had relatively few possessions, and transistor radios were the first form of portable electronic gear. I took it to school a time or two to show off, but since they were banned during classes, it seldom left the house. It did return during the World Series that fall. Being a girl was a great advantage. I could hide the cord and tiny ear piece under my sweater and long hair, and listen to the game during class. What a thrill to be able to announce the score during breaks!
As the memories faded, I opened the radio to plug in a battery for old times' sake. What a disappointment. The tiny transistors, diodes, and other components have become fuzzy with corrosion. I gently snapped the back cover in place, and returned it to its leather case. The carrying strap is broken now, and the small ear piece and its case missing in action. The label from the front of the radio disappeared ages ago. If memory serves, it was a Silvertone.
Even though it no longer works, I’ll keep the small radio in my Memory Box for at least two reasons. The first is its historical significance in the parade of portable, personal communication devices. But more significantly, of all the birthdays and Christmases I experienced growing up, this was the only time I recall getting exactly the gift I’d dreamed of.
You never know when you’ll encounter something that brings a story so vividly back to mind, but this time of year is full of memory triggers. Recipes, traditions, seasonal decorations, tree ornaments that carry generations of memories ... . Be sure to keep lots of index cards handy to capture this gifts from your muse until you have time to write.
Write now: about memorable gifts you have received, early electronic gadgets you recall, or how technology has changed your life.
Write on,
Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal
Take Me Back To the Fifties (and Sixties)
One of the great things about a blog versus a print publication is the ability to include links. Today I came across a super link that’s guaranteed to bring back lots of memories for those of us who came of age in the fifties and sixties.
My odyssey began with link from Thelly Rheam in a post to the Life Story Writing YahooGroup. Thelly sent us to the When Life Was Black and White page, which features a flash video about black and white t.v. This site has buttons along the bottom that take you to lots of other memory trigger sites. The one that appealed to me the most linked to the Old Forty Fives page, which has lots of links of its own. Rather than describe it to you, I’ll simply urge you to surf on over.
As I write this The Big Bopper is on that website speakin’ about what he likes: “Chantilly Lace, a pretty face, and a pony tail, hanging down…” Suddenly I’m back in 1958 (verified by the Top 100 Songs of 1958 list on the site). I’m in my freshman year of high school, wearing a 100% wool sheath skirt (slacks were never an option for girls at our school in my day, not even on the snowiest days—but we could wear leotards to keep our legs warm), an orlon sweater and black flat shoes with no socks or hose (pantyhose and knee highs weren’t even a dream yet, and nylons were far too expensive to wear to school). I’m walking down the hall between the wings of classrooms during a break, heading to my locker to change books, and hating the stares and adolescent noises from the line of boys sitting on the window sills along the way. But I do keep my eye peeled for a glimpse of a certain sophomore fellow….
I think of fresh snowfalls in the mountains, and how much I loved the snow back when it meant sledding, snowball fights and ice skating, but not shoveling, and not freedom from school. In the mountains of New Mexico in the fifties and sixties there was no such thing as snow days. Snow was a fact of life. We put on extra mittens, head scarves, galoshes and tire chains and dealt with it. Thinking of blowing snow and winter winds, I remember my red corduroy car coat with the corded toggle button closing, my zippered three ring binder with the orange plaid cover design, and the piles of textbooks I piled atop it.
I think of the excitement of after school activities, whether that was drama club, foreign language club, orchestra or any of the other dozen things I was involved in. Then there was walking home from school, alone or with friends. This was way before iPods, Walkmen, or other personal entertainment devices (although I did get a pocket-size transistor radio for my birthday in 1959 that ran on a 9-volt battery), so I had half an hour to think without distraction if I walked the two miles alone.
Other songs bring back memories of parties, people, clothing, classes, daydreams and so much more. I nearly always had the radio on when I was alone in my room, studying, sewing or reading. I haven’t listened to it so much since, but the hit parade was a defining element of my life back then.
What about you? Did music shape your youth? What memories does it trigger for you? Find out more about music and demographic data of the times at Old Forty Fives.com, Take Me Back To the Fifties, and associated pages on this glorious site. That should get your fingers flying and ink flowing!
Write on,
Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal
My odyssey began with link from Thelly Rheam in a post to the Life Story Writing YahooGroup. Thelly sent us to the When Life Was Black and White page, which features a flash video about black and white t.v. This site has buttons along the bottom that take you to lots of other memory trigger sites. The one that appealed to me the most linked to the Old Forty Fives page, which has lots of links of its own. Rather than describe it to you, I’ll simply urge you to surf on over.
As I write this The Big Bopper is on that website speakin’ about what he likes: “Chantilly Lace, a pretty face, and a pony tail, hanging down…” Suddenly I’m back in 1958 (verified by the Top 100 Songs of 1958 list on the site). I’m in my freshman year of high school, wearing a 100% wool sheath skirt (slacks were never an option for girls at our school in my day, not even on the snowiest days—but we could wear leotards to keep our legs warm), an orlon sweater and black flat shoes with no socks or hose (pantyhose and knee highs weren’t even a dream yet, and nylons were far too expensive to wear to school). I’m walking down the hall between the wings of classrooms during a break, heading to my locker to change books, and hating the stares and adolescent noises from the line of boys sitting on the window sills along the way. But I do keep my eye peeled for a glimpse of a certain sophomore fellow….
I think of fresh snowfalls in the mountains, and how much I loved the snow back when it meant sledding, snowball fights and ice skating, but not shoveling, and not freedom from school. In the mountains of New Mexico in the fifties and sixties there was no such thing as snow days. Snow was a fact of life. We put on extra mittens, head scarves, galoshes and tire chains and dealt with it. Thinking of blowing snow and winter winds, I remember my red corduroy car coat with the corded toggle button closing, my zippered three ring binder with the orange plaid cover design, and the piles of textbooks I piled atop it.
I think of the excitement of after school activities, whether that was drama club, foreign language club, orchestra or any of the other dozen things I was involved in. Then there was walking home from school, alone or with friends. This was way before iPods, Walkmen, or other personal entertainment devices (although I did get a pocket-size transistor radio for my birthday in 1959 that ran on a 9-volt battery), so I had half an hour to think without distraction if I walked the two miles alone.
Other songs bring back memories of parties, people, clothing, classes, daydreams and so much more. I nearly always had the radio on when I was alone in my room, studying, sewing or reading. I haven’t listened to it so much since, but the hit parade was a defining element of my life back then.
What about you? Did music shape your youth? What memories does it trigger for you? Find out more about music and demographic data of the times at Old Forty Fives.com, Take Me Back To the Fifties, and associated pages on this glorious site. That should get your fingers flying and ink flowing!
Write on,
Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal
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