Uncle Tom's trainees

I just happened on that job of work in the side yard a few minutes ago.  Sent me looking for older pictures.

Bekka was 12 when Uncle Tom had her driving brush down the road.  She's 18 now and starts college in the fall.

Bekka, Hamilton and Laura watching Uncle Tom and Uncle Walt wrestle the last big log onto the log splitter.

Old enough to help.

Em and Laura sending it up.

And Francis was about three when he learned how the flag comes down.

Every youngster should have an Uncle Tom.

Uncle Tom

Uncle Tom trains up kids so well they don't know it's happening.  This is his third cub cadet trainee;  at nine Laura may be his youngest.  And since you have weigh enough to depress the seat to start the motor, he also has to teach them how to sit heavy in the seat.  He gets them to do it and it doesn't involve bricks in their pockets.

The stump grindings of a big ole cottonwood that had to come down this summer.

Laura's keeping track of the progress.

Start 'er up.

Engage.

Off ya go.

Good job, Uncle Tom.

Aunt Laura

A stock photo--neither woman pretty enough to be my Aunt Laura, who always wore her hair bobbed.

Aunt Laura was the oldest of my Dad’s sisters.  The one who grew up with him in the Children’s Home, for as long as he was there.  I could tell she was his favorite.

Aunt Laura was tiny and scrappy.  After the Children’s Home she took a job in Cleveland, as a switchboard operator.  One late afternoon at work her fellow switchboard worker told Aunt Laura her new date would be there soon to pick her up, so she was going to the ladies room to freshen up.  Operator Two went down the hall.  New Beau came in the door and asked for Number Two.  Aunt Laura sized him up, announced Number Two was gone, but she would be happy to go with him.  She took her coat and purse and left with New Beau.

And I have even more stories of how relatives met and married.

Aunt Laura and Uncle Frank started out in Independence, Ohio, but moved to a piece of land in Richfield, Ohio after they finished building a house.  Uncle Frank built that house out of two voting booths, put in an L shape.  I found an approximation of a voting booth on the internet to give to an historian who had no idea.  He is just too young!  The voting booth my parents used was two streets up and stood across the end of a dead end street.  It was there until I was thirteen or fourteen. The poll workers opened it on voting day and the neighborhood voted there.  It was about twenty feet long and ten feet wide.  The voting booth in our precinct had no wheels, and two doors on the long side.

The house in Richfield had a covered and screened front porch across the short end of one voting booth which was the kitchen in front and Uncle Frank’s and Aunt Laura’s bedroom in the back.  You turned right off the kitchen into the second wing of the L that ran across the bottom; it was the living room and two bedrooms for my cousins.  When I was very young the house had a pump outdoors for water and an outhouse.  All my cousins were older than I; the youngest was two years older, and he had sisters all the way up to ten years older than I was.  Until Uncle Frank put in a bathroom, he and Aunt Laura sometimes brought my cousins to our house in Akron to get cleaned up before the first day of school.

The house had no basement in the beginning, and when I was still young all the male relatives gathered and dug out the basement.  That was just astounding.  And the dirt was very red.  When I was a young married woman the L was filled in to become a square with a new living room.  The house is still there although my Aunt and Uncle have been gone many years.

Uncle Frank worked as an engineer for a company in Cleveland whose name starts with a W.  It may come to me.  He also had a truck garden and goats.  One of my Dad’s aunts would not drink the goat’s milk when she visited, and was quite pleased when milk in a real bottle came out of the ice box.  Which was the commercial milk bottle Uncle Frank and Aunt Laura used for her goat’s milk.

Uncle Frank had a wooden leg.  He lost his leg jumping a freight car when he was 12.  Can you imagine anything more wonderous than an uncle who held his socks up with thumb tacks.  Well, one sock, but he always said “socks” and for all we knew, he had thumb tacks in both legs.

Dad told so many stories about being at Aunt Laura’s and Uncle Frank’s when he was off the ships.  He’d picked a handful of cherries for his oldest neice, Kathleen, and told her to eat the fruit but spit out the pits and give them back to him.  After awhile she held out her hand to his and deposited a handful of pulp.

Kathleen handed Dad her little kitten one day and said ‘Uncle Jack, something’s wrong with kitty’.  Very wrong indeed.  The kitten had been shot through and through, Dad said with a dum-dum shell.  A tiny hole on one side and raw and lacerated flesh on the other.  He and Uncle Frank cleaned up the kitten and hoped for the best.  The kitten survived, although with no fur on one side.  They called him Al Capone.  Uncle Frank had a collie named Jigger.  When we played in the fields Jigger wouldn’t let us go past the bridge over the creek.

Aunt Laura quilted other women’s quilt tops.  Her quilting frame was set up along one wall of her bedroom.  She charged by how much thread she used.  Her quilting money was her money.  I remember her putting it down the front of her dress.

The phone was just inside the back door to the porch.

They were two shorts and a long.

Aunt Laura and Uncle Frank were always sweethearts.  They were the weavers whose equipment and looms we bought.  There are many notes in the copy of A Handweavers Pattern Book:  “Dearest, please check my threading.”  “It’s perfectly done my dear and sweet girl.”  I’m sorry I have no pictures of them, but I’ll see what Kathleen might be able to spare.

My sister's dad

My sister read the blog to date.  She tells me that’s not a bandage on dad’s foot, it’s dirt.  Lots of it.  She knows because he told her.  She also knows he was three years old in the picture and Uncle Bill is 18 months.  She knows all the stories and more.  She and dad were very close and she was one of his caretakers the last years he was alive.  They talked even more, then.  She says I need more of the stories and she’ll get the ones she remembers down to be posted.

Jan is ten and a half years younger than I.  By the time she arrived perhaps Mom and Dad were more mellow.  Or they just realized they could do things differently.  We have a joke about having two different dads.  She and Dad talked, for instance, but my brothers and I just listened.  I was in such awe of him as a person and fascinated with what he talked about I doubt I could have talked to him.  I wouldn’t change a thing about growing up; it worked out well and here I am today to talk about it.

So, Jan says from time to time there will be stories of her dad to post.  And as I can write them down, I’ll tell you some I know from Sarge and Sparks.  Do you know where to find a pie stretcher?  I do.

Last Week of Cousin Camp

Yeah--school is in the air.  At the intermediate school across from my morning post office pick-up, cars have been in the lot for more than a week.  From teachers' blogs I read, it's time to get ready.  That means it's close to time for Grandma and Aunt Janice and Uncle Tom to send them home.

Caroline is here this week and had a batik class yesterday at the Art Academy.  This teacher hadn't met Caroline yet, but had Francis last week in the tie die class.  I just didn't get any tie die pictures, but here are the three girls displaying their batik.

Emily and Laura, left and right, made houses on their fabric.  Caroline drew a geko on hers.  Emily is wearing her tie die shirt, Laura is wearing a t-shirt they made in batik class.  Then there is this batik:

This was a vinegar process.  Her cat, Kipper, is on Caroline's piece.

Other things to do at Grandma's.

I could not do justice to a picture of bike riding, so I'll just tell you.  We live on top of the hill, the first house on the road, but several lots from the main road.  The grade is down all the way, not serious until past the mail box, and then it's down hill like an amusement park ride.  With two rises in the road on the way, just for excitement.  Now, there were no helmets when I rode a bike, nor when these girl's mothers rode bikes, but this Grandma is so grateful helmets are on those little heads as they start the decline, freewheeling, screaming, and probably doing twenty mph at the first rise.  It's a half mile to the bottom of the hill.  It's a half mile walk back up the hill.  It's a fine way to stay occupied for an entire morning.

And, I am close to professional at typing around kitty legs.