If I ever decide to shave my beard - Stories for my grandchildren

I have 3 items that belonged to my father, and to his father before him, and perhaps his father's father.

All three are intended for tonsorial purposes [adjective | ton·so·ri·al | from the Latin verb tondēre, meaning "to shear, clip or crop].

 The provenance of these items is a bit vague; my faulty memory promotes the idea that they originally belonged to my father's grandfather, James William Anderson, who lived his life (of 97 years) in Bedford County, Kentucky. However a look at William's picture suggests that he had no use for instruments of this type.

His son, Jessie Virgil - my grandfather - however, was a clean-shaven man.

It is much more likely that these barber tools belonged to him.

The actual implements themselves beg for a little background research, and while I can find many similar items listed on eBay, the actual history is thin. The Crown Razor Hone was a product offered by the Crown Razor Company of Boston, a company that existed only from 1900-1930.

The Western States Cutlery and Manufacturing Company has a slightly richer history, in that it was started by H. K Platt, formerly of the Platts and Case company, a renowned knife manufacturer. H. K. moved west for his health and started making knives and razors in Boulder in 1911. He moved the company to Denver in 1920, so we can establish the age of the razor with some certainty.

I regularly use the hone to sharpen my kitchen cutlery. It works great. I have no intention of using the razor. It. Is. Sharp. How sharp is it? I could probably cut myself standing a foot away from the blade! It stays in the box, where it has been for about a hundred years.

Monday Meanderings - 11.28.2016

Pecan season is all but over, and our pecan gathering yard gnome has almost ended her daily visits. Almost. The other afternoon the doorbell rang - and rang - and rang, and I stomped angrily to the door to see who could be so annoying, and there was our pecan gathering yard gnome, with a big bag of... oranges. Or maybe tangerines. I can't quite decide.

 She wordlessly handed me the bag, pressed her palms together in a thankful gesture and left. I wonder from whose yard she gathered the oranges? Did she give them a bag of pecans in thanks? This is Austin and I haven't noticed any orange groves. Curious.

The clan gathered again to share in the blessing of family during Thanksgiving. We wonder each time where everyone will sleep, or find space to sprawl, or if there is bandwidth enough. There is never any doubt about enough food. Never a doubt.

This was a birthday Thanksgiving. Luke and Jason share the 24th, and periodically this date is also Thanksgiving. Unbelievably, this was Luke's 16th (and Jason's..... well, it was his birthday too). We celebrated with a UT-themed cookie cake.

UT-themed because his gift was tickets to the Texas-TCU game on Friday (something he had been shamelessly campaigning for for months).

Happy 16th, Luke!

And thanks to the Clan, for the blessing of coming, and sharing, and being.

Born under a wandering star - Stories from the Family Tree - Reprise

 

My father's grandfather, Thomas Starnes, looks pretty relaxed in the rocker above, but he was actually quite a wanderer. Born in 1854 in Green Co., Tennessee, he stayed there only until he was 16, and then headed to Texas. That was just the beginning.

He landed in Johnson Co., Texas but by age 24 had courted and married 18-year-old Eudora Elliott in Palo Pinto County in February, 1879.  Their first child, Maude or "Sister" was born there in 1880; likewise my grandmother Beulah, in 1883.

The next child, Earl, was born in 1886 in Henrietta, Clay Co., Texas, a few miles east of Wichita Falls; the family lived there and in Bowie, Texas, 30 miles down the road for a few years, but by 1889 had made a giant leap to White Salmon, Washington!

Lewis and Clark gave the name White Salmon to the little Indian village on the banks of the Columbia River, just across from Hood River, Oregon and it wasn't long before a full-fledged town sprang up. There, Thomas worked as a nurseryman, raising and selling fruit trees for one of the town's leading citizens, A. H. Jewett. Evidently, the letters sent back to Texas really promoted the region, because a few years later Dora's father, Samuel Elliott, and sister Sally and husband Billy Brooks arrived in White Salmon.

Thomas and Billy went into the nursery business together, in competition with A. H., but evidently were poor businessmen and today the main street of White Salmon is named Jewett Avenue - not Starnes Avenue. Defeated, the family, with the two children born in White Salmon, Lester (1889) and Archie (1893), headed back to Texas. They were back in Johnson County when Virgil was born in 1896 but the 1900 Census found the entire family - except for yet-to-be-born Loren - in Sherman, Texas. You can only wonder why they were there.

The appeal of wide open spaces was strong for Thomas. By 1905 the family was back in Indian territory again, this time in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where the last child, Loren, was born. Sometime in this period they also lived briefly in New Mexico.

By 1910, Thomas, Dora, and some of the children were in Ontario, California. Thomas purchased some land and tried hard to be a farmer, but the call of the wild was too great. While Dora and Loren were in Texas in 1913 on a visit, Thomas sold out and he and Virgil - 17 years old at the time - took off for British Columbia Canada, expecting his wife to follow him. Dora had visited Canada previously; a manifest of Border Crossings from that period lists Thomas, Dora and Loren entering Canada from Sweet Grass Montana , but she preferred to live in California, close to where several of her children lived.

My grandmother said, "She would write to him like she was expecting him back any day and he would write her and tell her how to come to Canada; it went on that way for about two years, I think. They decided that there wasn't any use in that any longer."

Virgil describes the journey:

"We left Ontario, California, sometime in May 1913. Arrived in Edmonton, bought oxen, a wagon, and about half a ton of supplies and shipped it to Edson. There we loaded up and headed up the old Edson Trail, to the first place we had picked out on the map - Moberly Lake. 

After about two months of traveling through muskeg [bog land], up and down hills, and across rivers, so on and so forth, we arrived on Pouce Coupe Prairie. It would be late in July. After a couple of months of... travel over the old Edson Trail — building corduroy [roads] and pulling people out of mud holes, and getting pulled out in turn, mosquitoes and a few other things – the prairie looked like a wonderful place; we had no idea there was such open wonderful land in this remote country. 

So after a lot of consideration and scouting around we decided to give up going to Moberly Lake that year. Picked out a piece of land, well up on a knoll, and homesteaded. Put up a little bit of hay here, with the assistance of Mr. Timothy O'Callaghan, for our oxen, to carry us through that winter. 

Well, the funny part about it. After starting for Moberly Lake, I never got there until forty-two years later, and we drove in with a modern vehicle." 

Thomas must have at last found peace for his restless spirit; there's no evidence that he ever left the area again - not even to winter over in Dawson Creek, as so many of the prairie-dwellers did. He lived the remaining 29 years of his life in Pouce Coupe (French for "cut thumb" - ouch!) on that knoll, which is known today as Starnes Hill. He died in 1942 at the age of 87. Virgil also remained in British Columbia, marrying a Norwegian woman and spending the rest of his active years hunting and trapping - I previously told one of the family stories about him here. Dora, true to her word, remained in California until her death in 1948.

Monday Meanderings - 11.21.2016

The pecan gatherer/yard gnome has a new trick. She fetches the paper. Picks it up off the ground and places it on the cover of the recycling cart parked outside the garage. Or maybe it is just her way of indicating just what she thinks of the newspaper.

Update on the Mexican food restaurant that warned us about poor service and bad tacos. When I checked my credit card balance a couple of days later, there was a credit from the restaurant for the entire cost of the meal. I guess they were really, really sorry.

We got one of those reverse 911 calls the other evening - first one of those we have ever received. The message said they were looking for an elderly gent in our area who had wandered off. I tried to tell them I was fine, but since it was a recorded message, I don't think they were listening.

The clan is gathering for Thanksgiving. We're checking items off the list: Turkey; check. Fixings; check. Bake sweet potato pie; check. Clean house,; heck; Plug in device charging outlets; check.

Not kidding about the pie.

The Postcard Series, Part 3 - The mystery card

Delving through the postcard collection curated by my Aunt Ina, I came across a mystery card -- from Ina to Ina, in a round-about way.

The message is: "Dear Ditto, we saw this yesterday morning. It just goes straight down. We took a picture of it looking down. Hope it's good. Saw sun rise on top Pike's Peak yesterday. Wish you were with me. Ina"

A card from Ina to Ina? It appears this card was initially intended for someone else, but instead was mailed home. Not carried, as a number of the cards in the collection were, but mailed.  It is someone else that Ina wishes "were here with me." And who is Ditto?

And why address the card to Williams Court if she knew the post office - or some family member - was going to forward it in care of my parents in Fort Stockton, Texas? I'm pretty sure that Ina knew where she lived at the time.

But that partial address in Tyler got me to thinking. A math professor is bound to know her own house number, right. It's a number, right, and my aunt was crazy good with numbers. This card was addressed, and therefore most assuredly written by someone other than my aunt, whose name is also, perhaps, Ina.

The "Ditto" salutation is another clue. Ina and her major professor collaborated on a math work book published by the Ditto Corporation in 1934 - some 4 years prior to the postmark on this card. And finally, I have a number of examples of my aunt's handwriting, and a comparison removes all doubt. Another Ina, or perhaps an Ima, wrote and mailed this card.

Now the only question is, why was the card forwarded to her in care of my parents, who were living in Fort Stockton at the time? To my knowledge, Ina never lived with them. Perhaps it was expected that she would pass through there from some journey and pick up her mail, or perhaps she was there on an extended visit - she was a school teacher, with summers off, and the card is dated August.

I love a good mystery.

Monday Meanderings - 11.14.2016

The latest development with our Vietnamese lady pecan-gatherer (apart from being such a fixture in our yard and flower bed that I fear people will start mistaking her for one of those yard gnomes) is that she now rolls the trash cart from the street to the house after the trash trucks have emptied it. I wonder if I put a lawn mower out, would she start mowing the grass to make it easier to search for pecans? Maybe I should try that. I'll keep you posted.

My primary care physician is changing his practice to a "boutique" or "concierge" style, which means I had to scramble to find a new primary care doctor. I was able to sign up with a doctor that I really like, and as part of the process she needed to get my records transferred to her. I'm not sure what she will do with them - I took a look at some of the office visit notes, and I can't make out a single thing he wrote down, and I know what the visit was about! Here's a sample:

I'm pretty sure my new doctor is going to have to get a pharmacist to read this. I know I can't.

Had an unusual experience in a Tex-Mex restaurant (NOT Chuy's, BTW); the manager came over to warn of us slow service and to warn us that they had tried a new tortilla recipe and the result was that "our tortillas are not good today." Gotta respect that.

Leon Russell died this past week. Leon's music was sort of an acquired taste, but I have a couple of his songs on my "135 Best Rock Songs" playlist. I met Mr Russell once,  at - of all places - a computer expo in Dallas. I was wandering the back aisles of the exhibit hall and came across a small booth manned by a white-haired, long-bearded hippy who looked very familiar.

I commented that he was out of place, and he laughed and said that he was just baby-sitting the booth for some friends. Turns out that Leon had gotten interested in micro computers (what we called the devices before they became personal computers) while passing long hours on the tour bus. We chatted about computers a bit and about Austin a bit (he performed here often in those days), and I moved on. RIP Leon.

The Postcard Stories, Part 2 - The folks back home

This post springs from the box of 600 or so picture postcards that my Aunt Ina collected and that have been passed to me. The story focuses on 3 cards that my Aunt Lou Amma mailed back to her sisters on two separate occasions.

The first two cards were mailed by Lou Amma from Mexico, specifically Villa Acuna, Coahuilla, Mexico. They are addressed to her younger sisters, Ina and Cora Bramblett, my aunt and mother, respectively. The date, as near as I can tell,  is August 8th, 1921, just over 95 years ago. Ina was 12 years old at the time she received this card. My mother was 14.

 

The message is: "We slept on Devil's River last night and are now in Old Mexico.We drove out in the hills about 10 miles. Have much to tell about our trip. Love, your sis, Lou Amma"

The message is: "We are lunching in Old Mexico having the most wonderful time. Are leaving for San Antonio shortly. Be sweet, Lou Amma.

The questions that come to mind are, "What is Lou Amma doing in Mexico, and who is she with?" I'm guessing that she and her companions camped at Devil's River; it's still fairly undeveloped, some 60 miles from the Texas/Mexico border. In 1921 Lou Amma was 21 years old at the time, and single, since she didn't marry until she was 32.

It was about this time that she began working for the Canadian (Texas) Orphan's Home, which later became Tipton Orphan Home. Perhaps this was a "Trip abroad" before settling down.

Still single in 1928, Lou Amma must have had a yen for travel. This card was postmarked July 11, 1928, in Cody Wyoming.

The message is: "Say Ina, how would you like to be along with us? We are ready to go over the Beautiful Cody Road into the park (Wed noon). I can't begin to tell you what a big time we are having. The picture on the face of this card is of the Wind Canyon that we came through yesterday. Love, Lou Amma"

These cards are especially interesting to me because they show me an aspect of a family member that I was never aware of. When I was growing up, Aunt Lou Amma and her husband, Benny Armstrong, were down-on-the-farm people. Literally. It was a big deal to carve out enough time to come spend a couple of days with my parents. There were cows to be fed, chores to be done. No time for gallivanting around. Or so it seemed.

Monday Meanderings - 11.7.2016

One more day of this nonsense - and then we start a new period(s) of nonsense of claims, counter-claims and uncertainty. Sigh. Oh, and of course this aggravation is compounded by dumping a time change on us. How did I spend my extra hour? Hunting down and changing all the clocks!

I have mentioned the Vietnamese lady who comes regularly (multiple times a day, as of late) to search for fallen pecans. It hasn't been a big crop year, so finding any pecans at all is a long, repetitive process. We  have learned that we want to be cautious about opening the blinds - even slightly - when we first arise of a morning. Like as not, she's in the flowerbed in front of the window searching for roof-roll pecans, and one might just get a hearty hello wave from 3 feet away!

She elevated her game this past week. Barb had been shopping and when she returned, the lady approached her and pantomimed a raking motion, but it was not clear to Barb what she wanted. Remember, the lady has NO English other than Hello, as far as we know. Barb went in the house to put her groceries up and looked out to see that our visitor had snagged a lawn rake from the garage (kept right inside the door) and was raking all the leaves in the yard and driveway to uncover more pecans!

A little later, Barb was back outside and the lady pantomimed that she wanted to bag the raked leaves. This time Barb caught on quickly, so she got a couple of trash bags, which the lady filled with leaves and put in the trash before departing for the day! At this point we are wondering if we scattered some pecans throughout the house, could we get the lady to come clean our house!

The Postcard Stories, Part 1 - “Wish You Were Here”

I recently inherited two shoe boxes of postcards that were originally collected by my Aunt Ina. If you follow this blog, you know that I am fond of the stories that are preserved in letters and cards;  a few of those stories are here, here, and here.

As I thumbed through the 600 or so cards in this collection, it struck me that there were multiple stories to be told here. The first is the remarkable history of the “picture postcard” itself (and its unadorned official postal card counterpart). All but extinct now as a means of person-to-person contact, the postcard was the email of the day – and the text message and Instagram. Once, people sent a picture with a note. It was fast, easy and cheap.

Today, if you get a postcard in the mail, it is probably a commercial message from the neighborhood pizza place promoting the specials of the week, or a reminder from your dentist of your next appointment (though mine emails me now). When, if ever, was the last time you got a personal postcard from a friend or relative?

The whole subject of the history and subsequent collection of postcards (called “deltiology”) is fascinating. Like stamp-collecting, there are avid collectors and many specialties. For example, check out Austinpostcards.com. But the subject of interest right now is the card collection at hand, and the stories found on those cards.

Most of the cards feature a scene, or building, or vista of some vacation spot – the type of card you gather up at the souvenir shop and send to the folks back home with the “Wish you were here” message. More than a few promote hotels and motels  – probably available for free at the front desk.

And an interesting group of cards were from churches Ina visited in her travels. I guess you would classify these as “Glad you were here” cards.

My aunt was well-traveled, and quite a few cards contain messages from her back to family members, which were then passed back to her for curating. She had many friends through her years of teaching at TCU and involvement in numerous professional organizations, and I believe that everyone she knew sent her cards as they traveled the world. I briefly thought about compiling a list of pictured locations, but gave that up as too much work.

What about a list of foreign locales? After logging Jerusalem, Mexico City, Montreal, Hawaii, Quebec, Nassau, Hamburg, Virgin Islands, Panama, Jan Juan, Moscow, Canterbury, Amsterdam, Zurich and Kowloon - and less than 1/3 of the cards searched, I gave that up too. Suffice it to say that there are lot of locations represented.