Barbara Rogers - Chapter 4

 Looking back, stories of the elders and ancestors.

I'm trying to answer some of the questions I wish I'd asked my grandparents.

Years 1964-1969

Buying our first house. 

We lived in an apartment for the first year in Hartford CT. Then found a nice little house, almost new, in a suburb of Hartford, Thompsonville CT. Our parents both chipped in to help us have the down payment. My husband was happily employed by Traveler's Insurance and on the cutting edge of use of computers to do things. My parents had moved to be 1. closer to their grandson, and 2. to work for the Christian Science mother church in Boston MA. I think actually the latter was the highest factor, but having my sister move with them and not having completed college herself, I dare say she didn't want the move as much as they did. They lived in town in an apartment for a year, then bought a house in Framingham MA. My sister went to Boston University or maybe Boston College, for a year or maybe 2. She visited us once with a boyfriend who had actually been one of my heart throbs in highschool, and we had an interesting mix of emotions with our 2 relationships as adult women as well as my little one year old son.

Religion was not part of our early marriage, since we'd both left Christian Science when we left Principia College (located on the bluffs of the Mississippi in Elsah IL.)

If you've ever had a one year old, you know that your life revolves around his needs. I didn't make any friends, and even had a miscarriage before he was 2. Not really being myself at all, just a baby-mother, I think.

And my mother-in-law was alright, with her doting on her first grandson, and trying not to be too critical of my lack of housewifely skills. I was glad there were magazine articles telling how to deal with everything in the home. But I thought I was independent and could make my own decisions (a trait I've carried all my life I'm afraid) so I know I made mistakes...both as a wife and mother, and certainly in the housekeeping department!

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Having our second son, while my husband was out of town on the only "out of town trip" his work had ever sent him on. I was due to have this baby in mid-September.

So the day of Aug 15, 1967 a friend of my husband's drops in (after calling and finding out Doug was in New York on a "work out of town trip"). This male friend had lived in the same household as I had when I met Doug in college, thus he was an "old friend." He had been in the area as a marksman at some competition, (following his Army training) and hoped to see us all, the family of 3-1/2. I invited him for dinner, but he didn't have a place to stay, so I offered him the couch. We had never never had any interest in each other romantically (at least as far as I knew, and I figured my 8 months of pregnancy made me pretty unromantic anyway.)

The next morning with a little boy waking at dawn, we all took turns in the bathroom. I was wearing my nighty and a robe (in August it's hot in Connecticut). And the baby was kicking up a storm. So "Knades" which is his nickname, asked if he could feel the baby, so I let him put his palm on my big belly. He then left and later when Marty was napping, I was lying down in bed, and felt something very wet between my legs. It was gushes of blood.

So, I got on my bedside phone, after grabbing the biggest towel I had to put under me...called doctor, neighbor, mother-in-law, and husband's work to notify him I was going to hospital. Doctor's office said go to ER right away. Neighbor's husband drove me in his Cadillac with white leather seats, and his wife came over and got Marty to come to her house until mother-in-law could get him. 

So we ran a few lights, and when I arrived at St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in Hartford, having sat on a towel to not damage the upholstery, my neighbor husband was asked if he was the father by the nurse. He beamed and said no. He was beaming because they had just adopted after not being able to have their own children.

Then I lay in a bed on a monitor for a while...maybe a few hours with nothing happening. No contractions, no more bleeding, until suddenly I passed a clot. They wheeled me into surgery to have a C-section. I remember with my naivete' I said to be sure that if there was a question of which one of us, me or the baby, were to be saved, I wanted it to be me. I must have read a novel where Catholics would save the baby over the choice of the mother's life. They assured me that all would be alright. I doubt that got in my chart however!

I think as I was wheeled into OR, my mother-in-law appeared and said Doug was on a train back right now and would be here soon. And I was delivered of a healthy little boy, named eventually Russell, who was about 5 pounds and some ounces. It had been a placenta previa, where the placenta had been near the mouth of the womb, and started to separate as the baby got into position to be born. He was able to nurse and had a bit of jaundice, but after 4 or 5 days I think, we were able to go home. 

Doug did see me maybe in recovery, but definitely in my room, and had seen our new little one in the nursery. Remember how great it was to have a big window and be able to see all the babies? We hadn't decided on a name at the time of his birth, and that was our big project the next day as they wanted it for the birth certificate. There was discussion of naming him after my doctor who had saved both our lives, Victor. But fortunately we had some others to consider, and his middle name went with his father, Douglas, since our first son included my maiden name Rogers as Roger Martin. Doug also had Martin as a family last name somewhere. I really don't recall that there was anyone named Russell. And sometimes the nickname for Russell is Rusty, but he was a curly blond as a kid, then just a regular brown haired young man...not at all Rusty in complexion, so liked to be called Russ.

    

Our little family in Thompsonville, CT.

Russ around 2 years

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What were couples activities in the 60s?

Around 1967-9 we joined a Presbyterian Church, since it was led by a bearded minister who gave more modern sermons than we would have expected, Doug and I started a couples club, to get together with other young couples and socialize. I joined the choir. And I remember making lots of crafts for the various bazaars. The church also had a social justice orientation working with other organizations to help blacks have housing integration in our mostly white community. This was a big thing around Hartford's suburbs. We joined Housing Now, and our branch was named for Enfield, the town where we met and we also met some blacks who wanted the housing. There were busses to various places for demonstrations in 67 and 68. I never did that part, but I was active in another way.

I would get the ads and start calling owners about low cost apartments, saying what I wanted, based on a real black person's identified needs. I'd make an appointment to see the apartments, pick up the black lady, and we'd go see if it was what she wanted. Usually it wasn't, being a upstairs small unit in an old warehouse building. These days they probably are premium places, if the buildings haven't been torn down. I never had any confrontations with whoever was trying to rent these places, but neither did I ever find anything that would meet my "client's" needs. She needed to have transportation to work, which suburbs just made difficult. We moved before I felt I'd made a difference for anyone, which was disappointing.

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Buying our second house.

Well, there are always going to be geographical attempts to solve my problems (throughout my life.) But I tend to think of them as leaps into an unknown which Might Have been the Answer. (Right!)

We moved to be closer to town, a nice little house in Windsor. After my first son had been born, I worked some year or another in a department store. Another time I worked as a temporary employee in a new credit card department. The Connecticut Bank was sending out complete credit cards to a list of customers. It included someone making the actual plastic cards, collating, envelope stuffing etc. I became the supervisor of the temporary women, and liaison with the male computer programmers who had the lists of customers.  But since I was already pregnant at the time, I only stayed there a couple of months.

In Windsor we no longer went to church. We were kind of friends with our next door neighbors, one of their kids was about the age of one of ours, and the man of whom was a car salesman, so he helped us get a few almost new cars. I then worked on the staff of the Hartford Art School, which had just opened as part of the Hartford University. I wished I could have been a student actually, but did enjoy the atmosphere. I had another miscarriage when Russ was 2-1/2 so I quit working again. 

We painted the outside of the house a blue with white shutters. It had been tan and that reminded us of how we'd painted our first house dark brown with tan shutters. I don't know if that was the reason, but about the time we finished, I'd miscarried, and as a couple we were having a lot of problems together. I remember just taking a bus to another town one day, after the children were in childcare of course, and just checking into a hotel. I called my sister and said to tell my husband if he calls that I'm with her, but don't want to speak to him. I went home the next day, after walking around a new town and just feeling so "unencumbered" by responsibilities. And I continued the charade that I'd visited my sister in Boston.

Doug was the one who could certainly take responsibility and shrug off the irritations, at least it seemed that way to me. But he was seldom emotionally expressive (except good in bed obviously). We just didn't fit in the way married people were supposed to fit. I don't know if we tried couples therapy, which was a new thing in the late 60s, but maybe we did. See, how it impressed me?

Russ and Marty at our second house (in Windsor CT)

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So the next thing to happen was my mother-in-law having cancer. It was still whispered and used the initial "C" to talk if at all. After her mastectomy I visited her a few times, and of course she loved seeing her grandchildren. But I was asked to give her a bedpan, and that was the second time in my life a medical condition in an elder gave me a challenge and I failed completely. Well I did as she directed. But much as I wished her a good recovery, I was very afraid of her maybe dying soon. Time to move on!

I asked Doug to find a place where there wasn't snow. I'd had a skidding accident hitting head on into another car on ice before the second miscarriage. Since it was a few days later, I never put it together that it might have actually caused it. Anyway, Doug and I perused maps and Triple A stuff about Arizona, Florida and New Mexico (remember this was way before the internet!) He was pretty sure he could get a job in most places with his skills.

So Doug put out some feelers for various jobs that were in those areas of sunshine. When he was interviewed in Tampa, they hired him, and we took a month to sell the house, then live a week in his parent's basement before the papers were all signed, and then take a week to travel with the boys along the east coast on our way to the sunshine state in October 1969.

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I need to let you know the first time I was confronted by elder's disease was with my paternal grandmother in Houston, while I was visiting her from Corpus Christi with baby son Marty. Doug was on one of his Coast Guard trips, so my neighbor and her baby girl, and myself and Marty drove to Houston together, and then to Port Arthur where my friend had a relative she wanted to visit. My grandmother and I shared Thanksgiving together.

 And then the next night she groaned all night, and I couldn't figure out how to help this Christian Scientist. She would accept glasses of water, and spent a lot of time in the bathroom, but I never heard any vomiting. Anyway once the daytime came I had my son to care for (remember babies under 1 year?) Nearby wife of my Uncle Chauncey came over and worked with my grandmother in the bathroom. But the next day was horrible, as I'd barely slept, neither had my grandmother and her moans continued. I finally called my cousins who also had children and asked if I could come stay with them. They helped me rest a little, and I was able to drive to Port Arthur to get my friend and then back to my grandmother's to say farewell. She had had a practical nurse hired by then to help her (which was ok for Christian Scientists I guess.) I held my baby and said good-bye from the doorway. I was so afraid of her looking like she was about to die. I was not equipped at 22 to deal with death yet!

We drove back to Corpus Christi, our husbands returned home, and a few days later I got the call that my grandmother had died. 

So my parents drove down from St. Louis (they had done so in May when Marty was born, and now it was December.) Doug and I and Marty returned to Houston for the funeral. That was the only time I've been to a viewing, and the body just looked plastic, so I've avoided that ever since. The children were all being baby-sat at one of my cousin's houses, so the cousins could also be at the funeral. I felt like a failure to my grandmother, but she had one belief for physical care and I'd just moved into finding medical treatments but didn't know much yet. I hadn't been around anyone to give supportive care, since I was raised without much myself. Whatever problems my parents had, I never knew. There was a big DENIAL of anything physically wrong in their existence. And Doug didn't give much emotional support, just good responsible reliability!

There certainly were some good times in our life together, and I am focused perhaps on the challenges today. Once we took a spontaneous trip with newborn Russ and Marty to the Pennsylvania Dutch area and visit Delaware Water Gap. We went on at least one camping trip with a rented trailer to Sandwich MA. And we visited the newly opened Old Sturbridge Village, which I loved. We went to many movies that were indicative of the times, less romantic musicals and more thought provoking.

More about the next chapter of my life in Florida.

Barbara Rogers - Chapter 3

Looking back, stories of the elders and ancestors.

The Ford Fairlane and me, with the Corpus Christi apartment no. 2 upstairs background

From single to married to motherhood.

It was busy, interesting, full of excitement, boring at times, challenging, disappointing, and full of mistakes, mostly unintentionally.

I'd met my fiancé' while a freshman in college, as he was a friend of the college household where I was living that year. Doug was riding a motorcycle, which I thought to be great fun (never having been on one) and for our first date we drove down from the campus to the nearby town for pizza. (There may have been a movie also.) We kidded around and he left to go to California to join the Coast Guard where his older friend, MacMillan had also joined. Since Doug had quit college before graduating he became an enlisted 'Coastie' while Mac became an officer. I didn't meet Mac until after I'd married Doug.

In the meantime we corresponded for several years. He was stationed for a year in isolated duty in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, back when the cold war still made it imperative to know what the Soviets were doing (before satellites there was LORAN, long range radar.) 

What's amazing to me, all these years later, is that Doug saved my letters and sent them to me when he finally downsized from his house to move into a senior living apartment a few years ago. I'm slowly transcribing them, as I edit out many of my silly comments. And sorry, I don't have his replies still. But in the early 60's I see I was clearly flirtatious, romantic to a fault, and always teasing about who I'd marry (since that was the goal of my friends and myself apparently.)

So of course he knew about my failed romance and how I'd become a stewardess living in Miami. And I invited him to come visit when he got his month long leave after isolated duty. Of course he took me up on that, and we spent an intense week or more together, before he returned home to Connecticut where his parents lived. I managed a flight in that direction to meet his parents. He met mine before when I lived in St. Louis, but I don't remember that, however I mentioned it in one of my early letters to him!

A tangle develops now. First we are engaged, and I meet parents. We rushed to get to a beach before he went home because. honestly, he had no tan yet...because we spent a lot of time being intimate. But it was not enough and he still wasn't tan...we said it had rained a lot! Then his next posting was in New Orleans, but somehow I had his car with me in Miami. So when I was dearly missing him and thought I'd have a long Labor Day weekend without any flights, I drove nonstop to New Orleans. Put that long drive on top of probably coming down with tonsilitis, and I fell into fever and non-stop crying. I decided to quit flying in order to live with Doug. We found a small efficiency in the French Quarter. But by then I'd probably given the bug to Doug, and he felt pretty bad but made it to work for a few days. However when I called to quit at Pan Am they told me I was supposed to be on a flight that day to New Orleans. I didn't have my uniform with me, and they didn't exactly want me to get on the flight, since they'd found a replacement. So I drove back non-stop to Miami, and quit in person. The driving was not on interstate highways most of the time, so today's 13 hour trip must have taken quite a bit longer.

Then packed up all my worldly goods into Doug's car, and arrived back in New Orleans. I was still feverish and  didn't know what that was all about really (due to being raised in Christian Science.) I finally went to a doctor who said I no longer had any tonsils, that they must have been removed. I said no, but I sure had had a sore throat for a while. They said sometimes they burn away with a fever...so I guess that happened.

I then decided to go home to St. Louis and we could plan a December wedding. So I flew home to my parents, with engagement ring, no longer a stewardess after just 7 months, and no tonsils. Little did I know, I was already pregnant!

Then Doug got transferred to Corpus Christi. This may have been the result of either my moving in with him in New Orleans, or his being sick, or I don't know what. However he called that he was going there on the ship, and could I come back and drive his car to his new posting from New Orleans.

So I flew back, and drove his car to Corpus Christi, and we looked into seriously living together by apartment hunting. By then we knew I was pregnant, though didn't have a confirmation (there weren't those little sticks back then, it had to be a bunny test). So we made up a story that we'd already secretly married in Sept. in New Orleans, at about the time I would have gotten pregnant!

And after the Dr. said for sure we were expecting, then we went to a church and really got married, just the wrong month. We took a few pictures, and sent them to parents on both sides, and my folks made an announcement for the St. Louis papers reflecting the Sept. date. We found a little apartment and dealt with becoming a domestic pair, when he wasn't on long trips for the Coast Guard. We did travel by train for the Thanksgiving holiday in St. Louis where my folks gave us a wedding announcement reception and the only new clothes I had were maternity garb. That made everyone know just what was what of course, though I was only 3 months along! This had all happened in the year 1963...my life did many turn-arounds that year!

I found out the woman across the hall from us was a hooker, and other things happened (late night parties?) so we moved to another apartment above a minister for the Bible thumping church across the street. They also made lots of music (drums, tambourines, horns, guitars) but it was on Sunday mornings, and maybe a few evenings too. I got to know another woman across the way in another apartment.

 And we had our first child in May of 1964. I've written about that experience which was never to be called a blessed event by me!  Here.

When Doug's enlistment period was over in January of 1965 we took little one by car first to St. Louis...though my parents had visited us when he was born. I didn't really want to live where I'd be constantly in contact with my mother (a bit domineering I thought.) so we decided to move to Hartford CT to be near his parents. Oh boy, fun with a mother-in-law now, and again being disappointed that all my romantic ideals were just ideals, not real life.

More to next chapter! Fortunately, I don't think I ever again did as much as I did the year I turned 21.

Barbara Rogers life story - Chapter two

Looking back, stories of the elders and ancestors.

1950s -1960s

 Living in St. Louis near our private school, my sister and mother and I would walk the 8-10 blocks over to the campus of Principia. It housed a girls dormatory, Lower School (up to8th gr.) Upper School, Administration building (an old converted mansion) and a gym building with boys and girls gyms, and a pool in the basement. A tree filled campus located on Page Ave. in an area of town that had been quiet and somewhat genteel. But by the late 50's there were changes in St. Louis and the trustees of the school located a new campus area where we would all move in the beginning of my last year of school, 1969-60.

Our family seemed pretty stable, but there were lots of whispered conversations, and no sign of emotion either for positive or negative. My mother was not only working full time, but kept house of cooking, cleaning, laundry and shopping on her own. Laundry was done in the basement, either hanging clothes there in the basement or outside in a tiny back yard. I think I had some simple chores by the time I became a teenager...ironing my father's shirts (all white) and handkerchiefs (also all white). I also did dishes or dried them probably, for which I received maybe a quarter allowance.

I'd gladly take my allowance to the corner grocery, and sit in front of the comics for sale and read my favorites...then purchase my candy. I loved sweets. I never wasted my allowance on comics or magazines. And that carried forward till the time when other girls had record players and records, I was happy to have a little radio that I could listen to for hours.  My love of sweets meant poor teeth, and yet going to the dentist meant not having novocaine thanks to my mother's strict Christian Science ethics. I think she may have relented later after I was miserable when a tooth had to be pulled. I never got braces either, probably not something even considered by my family.

My 11th birthday...myself, cousin Claudette, Mary Beth, cousin Sandra, and my father, George Rogers.

We moved to St. Ann, a suburb of St. Louis, and then all had to drive together into the school. Probably about that time my father was also working there. There were evening activities at school for me, which meant he'd drive back in and park until I was done learning how to dance with young men, then bring me home. 

I got an after-school job when I was 12, just doing some collating and stapling with my mother's office for a while. Then I tried learning the switchboard for all the people running the school. I may have done that just a while, as I think I made some errors as to who was who's secretary...all people I didn't know!

Lily Tomlin giving parody of the many women who did operate switchboards.

Ok I just realized I'd better fast forward so I don't end up having over 8 chapters, since I'm 82 when writing this.

Teen years were hard for me, though I excelled in school. I didn't have that many friends, though later in 2001 I would reconnect with 2 of them for a surprising enjoyment of internet emails almost daily for a while. Besides my love of candy, I devoured books. By the time I was in 7th grade I'd read everything in the Lower School (K-8) library and was given permission to go to the Upper School library (9-12th grades.)

I learned to drive, and my parents each were sure the other didn't do the teaching right. I never had an accident as a teen, and that included when our car had some steering difficulties. I didn't mean to say my mother did all the work of the household, because my father had his tasks as well. He finished building a rumpus room in the basement of the house in St. Ann. He mowed the lawn all summer with a push mower. He took care of all our Studebakers (a Rogers family thing until they went out of business.) And shoveled the walk and driveway when it snowed.

Sophomore in college I had a minor part in "The Boyfriend," and a crush on my partner. I read lots of romances, and had no idea what really happened in relationships between men and women, just lots of sighing, groping perhaps, and promises of things to come! TV shows and movies also gave that same view of relationships.

I was brides-maid to my friend Rosie, who later became my email pen pal.

I went to William & Mary College the summer of 1962 in order to be near my boyfriend in the Coast Guard, who was driving this MG-TD.

My last year in college before quitting in spring break of my junior year, 1963. That was based on my heartbreak from my first true romance, which was doomed from day one. But I was still a very romantic young woman.

I left college, became a stewardess for Pan Am, and dated and traveled in Latin America.

More on that story HERE.

I learned to kiss boys at 14, and loved it. But I stayed a virgin until I was 21 and living on my own in Miami as a stewardess. Let me just say that I had a very healthy sex life for not having any birth control available. Fortunately I was engaged when I did get pregnant. We married soon after finding out and welcomed our first son, Marty into our lives.

Time to go to the next chapter, my married years and becoming a mother.

Barbara Rogers life story - Chapter one.

Looking back, stories of the elders and ancestors.

Earliest home, Meredith, Dallas TX

My mom, expecting me, on running board of Studebaker while Poppy and Gummy hoe a Victory Garden the summer of 1942. I may have been conceived after Pearl Harbor, being born on Aug. 23, 1942. The little two bedroom house had a room for me, with low window sills, so I could wave goodbye to Daddy as he backed out the driveway to go to work at North American Aviation as a bookkeeper. He'd say Cherry-O, but I don't remember what I said, at 2-3 years old. I do remember a linoleum rug on the floor with blocks and animals on it.

Ada PS Rogers (Gummy) my Daddy (George Elmore Rogers Jr.) and Poppy (George Elmore Rogers Sr.) I would have been George III if I'd been a boy! They came from San Antonio to Dallas, and are probably standing by my father's car. I don't think either of them drove, at least in my memory.

As 1946 came along, I then had a baby sister on Feb. 3, Mary Elizabeth Rogers, who we called Mary Beth.

Being born at the beginning of WW II, my life was somehow influenced by the drive to collect metal to be used in the war. So children's toys were not made of metal as much as before the war. I had a wood wagon full of wood blocks, and 2 small chairs, one a rocker. And a little wood cradle for baby dolls. I had been 4 months old for my first Christmas, and I'm guessing this is my second Christmas in Dallas TX.

I loved the nesting blocks (cardboard with pictures from fairy tales on 5 sides of each one.) I probably made some towers with both these colorful blocks and the wood ones which were to teach me the alphabet and numbers. It sure was fun to knock them over and see them scatter, and make a big sound.

Taken from an old 8 mm film shown on TV...my father and myself age 3

I think this is before Mary Beth turned one since its in warm weather. I would have been around  4. We called the contraption she was in a "go-cart." No strollers then!

 

These girls are all cousins, and it was my little sister's frowning first birthday in a little swing. Standing behind her is the oldest cousin, Claudette, then myself in the middle, and Sandra in sweater on right. Claudette and Sandra were sisters who lived in Houston. We moved there about that time.

We lived in Houston in a nice house on Cumberland and I had a set of roller skates and had a friend named Katherine. About that time my cousins' Claudette and Sandra's father died, my father's brother. I didn't understand what was happening as I just went and stayed with neighbors while my parents went to a "funeral."

In Houston, Christmas outfits by Grandmommy Mozelle Miller Munhall

Then a big event was one summer (1948or9) driving two Studebakers with my parents, sis and I in one, and my grandparents, Gummy and Poppy with my Uncle Chauncey driving and Claudette and Sandra in their car. We went through Louisiana and Mississippi and Tennessee, so Poppy could see some of the areas his family were from. We stayed in these cute little cabins in motels along the way (no interstates yet in 1949!) The Studebakers had trouble in the Smokeys and their radiators boiled over. We visited my Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Dotty in Stevens Point Wisconsin, and met cousins Pat and Chris. Then I think my parents went to St. Louis to visit Principia, the Christian Science School, but I'm not sure Uncle Chauncey's car went that direction before heading back to Houston.

In Steven's Point WI, Sandra, Patricia, Barbara, Mary Beth and Claudette.

My parents were impressed with the school, in spite of my falling off the swings and bashing the back of my head when the wood swing came back behind me. They then moved our little family of 4 to St . Louis in  the summer of that year. Perhaps the visit to Wisconsin and St. Louis had been the summer before that...not clear. 

Barbara and Mary Beth, 1950 with the current family Studebaker. Clothes were made by Mozelle Munhall.

So my sister and I were enrolled in Principia, (me in 3rd grade, sis in nursery school) and my father was looking for a job for quite a while, it seemed to me. My mother began working (maybe part time at first) at Principia, which covered our tuition at this private school. She worked there until my sister left college in 1963. And before that my father had also become the comptroller of the school. At one time I think he sold shoes before that, since St. Louis is known for shoes. I had my 8th birthday in 1950 the summer we moved to St. Louis, and it was cold, so we tried to light newspapers in the fireplace, but didn't know about flues and such, so we just smoked up the apartment on the second story of an old house on Cates. (It was no longer there when I took my sons through St. Louis in 1975, it having burned.

The big snow of 53 (St Louis MO) may have been 12 inches, or maybe that was another one. We got a sled, and learned what being cold felt like. Most children don't know when to come in out of the cold. But put mittens on a radiator, and that smell will remind us all of how our feet and fingers burned as they warmed up.

I was happy to get a doll (as usual) for Christmas when I was probably 8 or 10. (I think she marked the wrong date on this one.) Little sis also had a new doll. I'm thrilled to see what knick knacks my mother had on that non-working mantel.

Here are more Christmas dolls (or the same?) and we girls have poodle skirts, with matching collars. I was likely 11 (again her dates might be within a year or two.) This was our second apartment in St. Louis, again upstairs, on Clara St.

Though it looks as if we were with cousins by these photos, we only saw them very infrequently, since we lived so far from each other.

More will follow soon...after all, I'm already a grandmother when writing this. Before the blog lost what I had as premise for this post, I'd asked myself what questions I wish I'd asked my grandmothers. There were some interesting ones, and I'm not sure my story will answer many of them.

 

Some new old photos

 New to me at any rate...

Congratulations to 750 Sepia Saturdays! It's been such a fun place to read other's posts mostly on the meme suggested (except for me usually!)

Miami FL 1965

Miami Beach 1925

New York Times Square, 1936

A taste for Oriental decorations. The Casa Bruno Cuadros of Barcelona, known by locals as the Casa dels Paraigües (House of Umbrellas) since 1883

Paris 1900

Musicians touring the countryside by bike, outside Paris, France, 1920’s - Photo by Henri Roger-Viollet

Crossing Cumberland Mountain (between Virginia and Kentucky) before Highway 25E. Garnett Robinson

A family at their cabin home in West Virginia, 1900.

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Today's quote:

D.H. Lawrence said, "If there weren't so many lies in the world, I wouldn't write at all." And, "The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread."

Some stories from the past along the Blue Ridge

   First, I want to honor another ancestor in my own family. Today I give the portrait of Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers (1886-1964). Here she is candidly walking with her youngest son, James, in 1936...showing her strong determination which she lived daily. She was extremely dedicated to Christian Science and her family of four young men with an extremely smart husband.

Now let's drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway...before the leaves start to turn colors and learn about some old tales.

This is the valley today.  Pretty agrarian.  I guess losing the last buffalo isn't on anyone's mind, until they stop at this "overlook" and think about it.

But there are more stories than just a sign. From Google I discovered this interesting article, which is a bit convoluted.  I believe it's likely several pieces were cobbled together.  Remember a couger in North Carolina was the same as a panther, or mountain lion, and often called a Painter (thus the name of my own cat.)

Bull Creek Stories

by Rob Neufeld

Joseph Rice, bison killer; and children of conscience

            When Joseph Marion Rice claimed his two hundred acres of Bull Creek bottomland in 1792, he had few European American neighbors.  The Rhiems (Reems) had settled north beyond Craven’s Gap.  The Davidsons were in the Swannanoa Gap.  The Gudgers were down the wagon road near the Swannanoa River.

            Several years earlier, after The Treaty of Paris, Rice had sat down with the Cherokee around what has become the Dry Pond at the end of Parker Road.  According to a family history by Holt Felmet, Rice “was granted, by the Indians, a sun of land…what he could walk around and stake between sun-up and sundown.”

Samuel and Margaret Brank Hughey after the Civil War, Photo courtesy Frances

   Rice began building a community.  In 1799, work started on a road connecting Beaverdam and Bull Creek.  One day, a shaggy bull bison made its way up its old path toward Craven Gap and ultimately into history.

             “The last buffalo seen in this locality was killed nearby in 1799 by Joseph Rice, an early settler,” a sign reads at the Bull Creek Valley overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

            In a version of the story fictionalized by great-great-grandson Rex Redmon in “Bits of Beaverdam,” the bison “had searched the valley of the Shawano an entire day seeking others of his kind.”  His lonely bellowing attracted the attention of Joseph Rice, who shot it for its meat and hide.

            Rices have long responded to historical forces with a sense of remorse.  Joseph’s grandson, John Longmire Rice, opposed the Civil War, but, according to history passed down to Felmet, John “agreed to serve in the army, but would not bear arms.”  In charge of the horses in Will Thomas’ Legion, he got sick, and was sent home.  He arrived just before Christmas, 1864, suffering from black tongue, malnutrition so serious that he could not be fed.

            John’s brother, James Overly Rice, whose cabin in Beaverdam is a historical landmark, had helped round up Cherokee women and children for the Trail of Tears in 1838.  Redmon recalls that his grandmother and great aunt “remembered hearing that the forceful removal of the Indians, against their will, from their ancestral homes was more than my grandfather could bear.  They said he cried when he told the story.”

            “According to oral tradition,” Redmon relates, “James Overly entered the military in lieu of a Creasman man to whom he was indebted.”   He died Mar. 8, 1863 from measles contracted in camp.  He is buried in an unmarked grave with 138 other Confederate soldiers in Ringgold, Georgia.

            James’ cousin, Margaret Brank, (pictured above) whose mother, Elizabeth Rice, had married into a Reems Creek family, had inherited a slave, George the Tanner, from her grandmother, Margaret Young.  After the Civil War, Margaret’s husband, Samuel Hughey, told George, “You’re free to go, you can go live with your people,” according to Ray Rice, Elizabeth’s thrice-great nephew.

            George went, and came back a few weeks later.  He told Hughey, “I want to live the rest of my days right here with you.”  He is buried in Rice-Hughey Cemetery.         

A healing happened in Bull Creek,

but Rices still hear cries from the past

            When the last bison of the Blue Ridge revealed itself to Joseph Rice on Bull Creek in 1799, it seemed like an American prophecy.  In his ancestors’ homeland, hunting had been a restricted privilege, but in the New World, game offered itself up to men.  

            In a Cherokee story of origin, Kanati, the “happy hunter,” rolls back a rock to emit just one wild creature, which he shoots.  Rice shot his solo offering too, but it was a different era.  The American belief in individual rights and unlimited bounty had begun to produce some ill omens.

            Rice’s paternal grandmother, Ann Cooper, had been born in the Virginia Colony, one of the world’s first corporate ventures.  His paternal grandfather, Richard Rice, had come from Dingle, Ireland, where his family had been dispossessed of its estate.

            Retaining a landed self-assurance through moves to Virginia and North Carolina wildernesses, the Rices wedded themselves to a mountain identity.  In 1840, Joseph Rice joined fifteen Revolutionary War veterans in supporting the Whig candidate for president, William Henry Harrison, against their likely allegiance to the Democrat, Martin Van Buren.  Mountain loyalties ruled.

            Advertising in Horace Greeley’s publication, “The Log Cabin,” they rallied for Harrison, after a Baltimore journalist had sneered at Harrison’s alleged preference for a barrel of hard cider, a log cabin, and a pension instead of the White House.  

            Elected, Harrison soon died from pneumonia, caused by his tendentious inauguration speech in 16 degree weather.  John Tyler took over, fulfilling the reason he’d been selected as Vice President, to attract States Rights supporters.  The coming storm, caused by westward expansion and the formation of pro- and anti-slavery states, would put a generation of peaceful Rices in Confederate graves.

            James Overly Rice, Joseph’s grandson, enlisted at age 43, and died of measles in camp.  His son, William Philetus, died in battle at Chickamauga.  Another son, John Marion, got sick, received a furlough, and died at home.  

            The 1840s produced another legacy.  James’ cousin, Rebecca, daughter of Elizabeth Rice and Robert H. Brank of Reems Creek, conceived a child out of wedlock.  “Miss Rebecca has a baby,” Robert Brank Vance (future Brigadier General) wrote his younger brother, Zebulon (future Governor), in 1843.  “It would have been better for her if she had been in her grave but I must stop.”

            Rebecca’s baby, Eliza, grew up to marry a man twice her age, Leander Stewart, a “Northern minister,” whose Swannanoa church split over the slavery issue.  Refused a separate house away from a crowd of Stewarts, Eliza took her son, Chester, back to Reems Creek.

            Reems and Bull Creeks cradled a healing.  A Reems Creek Church commemorative program honored both General Robert Vance and 89-year-old Rebecca Brank in 1894.  In Bull Creek, Raphael and Frank Rice, James Overly’s great-nephews, bedded down in the loft of their father’s sturdy house, listening to the cries of a figure from the past: Uncle Joe Ray, a seven-foot tall Civil War veteran, suffering from gangrene in his house through the woods.

The pathway and the panther

            There’s a path that leads through deep woods over Craven Gap, connecting Bull Creek with Ox Creek.  Today, the Blue Ridge Parkway bisects this passageway, the mounded median of which betrays its use as a stagecoach road two hundred years ago.

            Joseph Marion Rice, first settler, had run a stock stand alongside it, providing a rest stop for drovers headed to South Carolina markets.  During the Civil War, two of Joseph’s great-granddaughters, Sarah Rosey and Mary Matilda Rice, set out one morning from Beaverdam and headed into the Elk Mountains to deliver canned goods to their aunts in Bull Creek.

            “You may stay and visit for the day, but you must be home before dark,” their mother, Mary Wolfe Rice told them, according to an account passed along by Rex Redmon in “Bits of Beaverdam.”  Mary also instructed her daughters not to accept any food in return, regardless of their aunt’s wishes.

            As in fairy tales, the girls did not heed the warnings.  They left late and took cured meat.  Two miles from home, they heard “the nerve-shattering cry of the big black cat,” and managed to save themselves by stalling the panther with meat tossings.

            There is much history in this story.  The girls’ father, James Overly Rice, had migrated to Beaverdam to build a now historic home.  James’ sisters-in-law, Martha Stephenson, wife of John Longmire Rice, and Rosannah Ray, a widow, resided in Bull Creek.  Nestling in coves, pioneer communities maintained communication via woodland paths.

         

A party sets off from Riceville for an excursion in the nearby mountains, c. 1920.  The man is Arthur Lee Hughey, great-grandson of Joseph Marion Rice.  To his right is his neighbor Mary Crichton

   James and John were away with the Confederate Army, and took their horses, which is why, in the story, the girls ride a mule.  Yet, there is much myth in the story as well, and it is significant.

            It is the cougar, not the black panther, that had made the southern mountains its stalking ground; and, according to scientific accounts, it had been extirpated by 1800.  Furthermore, Redmon notes that his father’s mother had told him that it had been her father that had encountered the panther.   But family tradition favors the girls, which is a better choice.  It brings in the effects of the Civil War, and creates a sense of vulnerability.

            Another part of the family mythology—flight from Europe, where hunting grounds had been gated by aristocrats—calls for a panther tale.  William Gilmore Simms in his novel, “The Cub of the Panther,” portrays a Boone-like Western North Carolina hunter who is upbraided by a lady for trespassing on her estate.  He responds that he’s saving her from varmints, for “an old painter…wouldn’t stop to ax ef the woman was a fine rich woman.”

            The romance of wilderness is real.  Ray Rice, great-grandson of Rosannah Ray, used to go up into Riceville forest to fox hunt.  It was not unlike the hunters Fred Chappell portrays in his novel, “Brighten the Corner Where You Are,” in which storytelling was the hunters’ object—until the hero’s father prods his fellows to confirm the treeing of a devil-possum, which turns out to be a bobcat.

            Ray, as a teen, had listened to his uncle, Carrol Hall, and his fellows, tell tales by a campfire while their dogs announced their exploits in woods now threatened by development and timbering.  The stories are forgotten, but they seem so consequential today.

 
(Source, Google)

Blue Ridge Parkway

Sharing with  Sepia Saturday this week.

I had already compiled this post before Hurricane Helene arrived, which meant I couldn't update my post to Sepia Saturday until now, Mon. 9.30.24 evening. I've evacuated to a cousin who lives in South Carolina and will share more on my "When I Was 69" blog soon.