On this date, 110 years ago . . .

[digitS']

President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII:

the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.



Steve
who lives in a house that predates that radio message

 

[hoodat]

President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII:

the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.



Steve
who lives in a house that predates that radio message

Knowing Teddy it was prbably something like,"Told you not to mess with us. NEENER NEENER."

 

[NwMtGardener]

Knowing Teddy it was prbably something like,"Told you not to mess with us. NEENER NEENER."

wow Hoodat, i think you just dated yourself...OHHHH, you didn't mean you knew him personally...

 

[baymule]

Knowing Teddy it was prbably something like,"Told you not to mess with us. NEENER NEENER."

wow Hoodat, i think you just dated yourself...OHHHH, you didn't mean you knew him personally...

 

[digitS']

Dad has always seemed proud to say that he remembers Coolidge before Hoover became president.

I think it gives him some sense of power over Hoover and what happened in 1929. However, Dad was only 11 when the stock market crashed. He saw the entire Depression as just a young guy. A future must have seemed no more than a promise for an awfully long time. It isn't so that I know what Dad thinks about much of anything now.

Of course, I remember Hoover. But, not as president, I hasten to say. When Nixon was nominated to run against Kennedy, I could hardly believe that Hoover was there. It was like a nail in the coffin for that candidacy. And then, Kennedy just barely won! Shows you what I knew.

Oh my God! This has turned into something political!!! Look! I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. And Senator . . . .



. . . Church was the Senator who represented Idaho!!

digitS'

 

[so lucky]

When I would ask my parents what they remember about the depression, they would say they didn't realize they were in a depression--they were so poor, there was no difference.:/
One of these days, I'm gonna write a book about how things were in the '30s. Both my grandmothers were basically single parents for long stretches while their husbands looked for work, or worked the sawmills, etc. How did the women feed all those children? Not passing judgement, but I think I know. (Just adding a little diversity to the family gene pool)

 

[digitS']

Mom said the same thing, So Lucky.

Dad, however, was from a "landed" family. Owning a farm right along, they seemed to have felt they had to make it work. Still, my grandfather would take the team and go off to build roads for the county so as to pay his property tax. I forget what they called this but the work was in lieu of taxes.

When his sons were old enough, there was little work for them on the surrounding farms. They had migrated out of the Dust Bowl pre-Dust Bowl. How's that for being preemptive? Still, farm products brought very little income, in New Mexico or anywhere else. Most of the sons joined the mass of migrants in southern California.

Mom's family had left the farm and were off to be urbanites! That didn't work . . . It sounded like they ended up buying a little farm just to keep themselves fed. I grew up in Mom's country. They had left here, where I now live, and gone off to small towns in southern Oregon and northern California. When my grandfather lost his policeman's job, they climbed in a wagon and went over the nearest hill. Their "ranch" wasn't much of a ranch but I saw all that as a kid. No one lived there by then but everything was still there and you had to walk in about a mile to the old farm house, barn, spring house, etc. The one-room school house was back in a grove of trees on the road. Everything was still there. Two, two-holers out back . . . We even found a library book with one of my uncle's name on the card. They were the last students to attend.

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

While the story of The Grapes was going on there were 10 million other similar stories very real, not as fancy or smart or so well organized, but happening.

Along the coast of Northern California, Sonoma County had its share. Stories never told in words, but stories that left shadows. A very old cabin with faded newspapers glued to the walls for wallpaper in the hills behind Freestone tells a shadow story. Look at the dates on the wallpaper nade of newspaper and you find 1938 on some. Behind the peeling paper you find some that say 1933, and there are peeling pieces unreadable behind that. Why the enamelware soup pot under the rusted bedframe? Berries and Ivy entirely growing over this little home. Somewhere under those berries maybe those pieces of wood barely visible are what's left of an outhouse.

You walk another mile, the path becomes what's left of a 2 rut road, and you come across an abandoned farmhouse that looks like it was made post wwii. Go in and you can tell the last occupants were hippies. Faded and cracked rainbows on the peeling walls. Some stories just don't have words or anyone telling them.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

If my dad was alive he would be 103 this year. My parents were born in Oklahoma and lived through the Depression. Very interesting stories.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, there are a lot of stories out there, many lost forever. It's hard to even know where to start on this. Maybe a story my grandfather told me about his grandfather and father. During the Civil War a Union prisoner of war escaped and was trying to make his way back to the Union fort at Cumberland Gap. He stumbled onto my Grandfather's Grandfather's farm worn out and hungry. He was fed and sent to bed. My Grandfather's father, still a fairly young boy, was told to climb a tree and look out for rebel patrols. Far as they knew, he made it back to Union lines. That farm near Cumberland Gap is still in the family. My uncle lives there.

That story is not written down but I've orally told my kids. Maybe it will make it another generation or two.

In many ways I've been lucky. My second cousin wrote a geneology book and included my family line in it. The first of my line in this country came over from Dublin through London to Maryland in 1635. She managed to find many stories of my ancestors and included them. One of my ancestors served in the Delaware legislature before the Revolutionary War. At that time he was not a Patriot but to be fair, that was several years prior to 1776.

There was another book written about that area. Some of my uncles, cousins, and other relatives and just friends of the family contributed stories about growing up in that area. I know why my grandfather did not like bumblebee honey. That story was from the 1890's. Another story was how my Dad's uncle taught a young male school teacher that you don't have to be a bully to teach country kids. A little respect both ways goes a long way.

Something else was that some of my kids had teachers that required them to get stories from their grandparents as class assignments. One of my boys has written instructions of how to make Lye soap from my mother.

I've written a little on what it was like growing up on a subsistence farm in rural East Tennessee in the 50's and early 60's.

I've got a small book collection about that area where our families (both Mom's and Dad's side) are mentioned. I'm also keeping a collection (a box, not a scrapbook. I know I should organize it better) of photos and stories that will be passed down. I think two of the three boys will be very interested.

That's enough fom me.

Nice topic Digits. It bought back memories. Thanks.