We Are Family

The search for family history in Wisconsin continues:

A trip to Milwaukee, when one has never been, can hardly be considered a waste of time but, for the purpose of this trip, it offered no information for me.  Since I had found nothing more on Uncle Charlie in the Milwaukee Public Library, we opted for a trip to Appleton which is where he had lived and worked.  Appleton was much closer to our Green Bay base so the decision was easy.  Charlie was a baker and I found a number of newspaper articles from the mid-twenties describing problems with his neighbors who were none-to-pleased to find out he had been granted permission to expand the bakery he was running from his home.

Monica and Alton wandered the weekly Farmers Market while I hit the adjacent library, combing through Polk's City Directories for bakery addresses as well as more info on Charlie.  No luck beyond 1930.  What the heck?  He wasn't in Appleton and he wasn't in Milwaukee.  Now what?!  I WAS able to find and print the obituary for an aunt whose birthday had evaded me, giving me fodder for Ancestry.com searches so the trip was not a waste.  While we further pondered the expanding (or at least NOT diminishing) mystery of Charlie, we headed to neighboring town, Neenah to make the first of many cemetery visits to my aunts and uncles.  I had already been given the general vicinity of the "drawers" where I would find my Aunt Betty and Uncle Bernie so Monica and I began wandering.  In the process, she spotted the familiar last name of one of my cousins - Charlie's daughter!  The stone had both birth and death dates of her husband but only her name, indicating she was still alive, information I hadn't been able to confirm and was excited to learn.  

After a quick trip south to Oshkosh to take a picture of little Alton in front of the water tower wearing locally named overalls, we sat alongside the Fox River, watching dragonboat races, eating cheese curds and pondering our next move.  Through the miracle of the smart phones, we found a phone number for Alice and, at Monica's urging, I made the call.  How do you announce yourself to a person who doesn't even know you exist?  Happily, Alice recognized my mom's name and invited us to her house but, truthfully, I was a little concerned that she did so since we may NOT have been who we said we were.  I'll allow her own children to do THAT scolding.

When Alice answered the door, it was clear we were related and she said the same...we laughed at our similarities and, when I took my mom's photo albums out, she marveled at how much my mom and her older sister looked alike.  Since my mom was the youngest and Charlie was the oldest, his daughter and his youngest sister were just three weeks apart.  It turned out that Alice had only minimal contact with her father from the time she was born as her birth coincided with their divorce proceedings.  She had little information and we were careful to not bring up dirt I had unearthed but, when Monica asked just the right question, she casually mentioned that Charlie had changed his name.  He what?!  "Alice, this is HUGE!". That tiny piece of information made a world of difference to this trip and the research I was doing.

It turned out he had returned to Appleton for the last few years of his life, information known only by one of my aunts.  Alice was only told at the time of his death.  Charlie had chosen a new name from one he saw on a sign, presumably to keep himself off the radar of creditors. His new wife and son had taken the new name and Alice, when asked where he was buried, suggested we try the tiny community of Medina (Ma-DY-nuh), where his wife's family had lived. 

That night, I checked the Find-A-Grave website and confirmed there were relatives of the second Mrs. Charlie buried in Medina.  The next day, we decided we would start at the cemetery in Medina, then to neighboring Hortonville cemetery should we not find Charlie at the first.  Medina was a leisurely twenty mile drive on a beautiful little two-lane highway 96 and we had no problem finding the town's cemetery.  We wandered the rows and easily found the missus, with her new name, but were still trying to find Charlie when a car pulled in and parked near us.  A nicely dressed lady, fresh from church, walked over to us and asked if we were looking for anyone in particular.  It turns out she was the secretary of the cemetery and knew everyone in town.  When I told her, she knew exactly who I was talking about.  She knew Charlie.  She knew his son, Jack.  She knew Jack's son "who lives in the white house over there around the corner...".  "Wait, I have Jack's phone number at my house; I'll be right back".  With that, she drove off, leaving Monica and I standing there, stunned.

As we waited, surrounded by the grave stones of the residents of this town, it occurred to us that some were OUR family members.  That name change started a new line of a new family, forever breaking their link to the family name but their blood was our blood.  As we pondered this, the lady we now knew as Evelyn returned.  She popped out of her car along with a young women.  "I got Jack's number but I did one better...I brought his granddaughter."  Seriously?  This beautiful young lady, about Monica's age, was really Jack's granddaughter.....my uncle's great-granddaughter? We hugged.  We laughed.  We agreed to meet at the town's tavern, once run by her mother's family, for lunch.  

When Nicole arrived, she was soon followed by her mother and the four of us spend several hours filling each other in on family history, previously undiscovered by either side.  She had no idea that her great-grandfather was born with a different last name or that he was one of nine children.  We had no idea that Charlie's son had also grown up to be a baker and he had worked at that very tavern when he was married to Nicole's grandmother.  And Nicole knew where Charlie was buried.  I got names and dates to add to my family tree and, after lunch, we headed to the Hortonville cemetery to finally visit with my uncle.  

The visit ended up being somewhat anti-climatic because there was no stone to mark Charlie's final resting place.  There had been a temporary marker but, since he had passed in 1969, the marker had become brittle and was nowhere to be found.  Nicole had been there before and knew where he was so I spent a little time wandering the bare lawn, finally at the end of this search.  I had figured out where my Uncle Charlie ended his days and our journeys both ended in Hortonville, Wisconsin.  

The next morning, found us on the road east, heading to Eau Claire, the city where my mom was born and raised.  Mark and I have seen much of the country's perimeter but the midwest had never been on the radar except for the fact that it was my mom's home.  The four-hour journey across a state was beautiful.  Flat.  Farms.  A bald eagle.  The changing colors of the trees that warmed my soul almost as much as the ocean.  In Eau Claire, we tracked down the rest of my family's graves, including my grandparents whom I never met.  In the process, we drove around the same town my mom had driven around with her friends.  We couldn't find the family house but found out since that the house was renumbered so that will be a visit for another day.

On the return trip from Eau Claire, Monica again urged me to make a phone call, this time to Jack.  He at least at been warned about us by his granddaughter who had called while we had lunch.  He gave me directions to the house and, in their home on a very dark Wisconsin highway, I made the acquaintance of another cousin, one whose name had been changed when he was six years old and who had no real information of his father's family.  Again, I shared my mom's photo album and plan to make some copies to send him.  

When I started making plans for this trip, it was pipe dreams.  I had originally planned to stay in Eau Claire but changed to Green Bay when it because obvious that finding my Uncle would require research in that eastern part of the state.  I came for family.  I found family.  I had planned to go alone to eliminate the need to drag others along which I attended to the drudgery of library research.  I invited Monica and Alton to ensure I ventured out to see some sites outside of the library and maybe try a midwestern microbrew.  It proved to be a good decision since Monica encouraged me to take chances with making those phone calls and Alton, like all babies, was a great ice-breaker.  Although he won't remember the trip, the photos we took were memorable and he'll know he was a part of it. 

Monica decided that the word for this trip was "serendipity".  The serendipity of her spotting the grave marker with Alice's name.  The serendipitous visit from an angel named Evelyn who stopped by the cemetery to see what the work party of the day before had wrought and, instead, facilitated a family reunion.  There was also a black swallowtail butterfly that fluttered by us at the cemetery that Monica plans to add to the ink butterflies she collects.  Serendipity indeed.

I Belong To You..You Belong To Me

Sitting in a motel room in Green Bay, Wisconsin pondering the plans for our first really somewhat normal day.  It should have been yesterday after a Wednesday night arrival. Unfortunately United had other plans.  

I lean towards patience with companies that function at the mercy of weather and such but sitting in Cleveland, awaiting our last hop to Wisconsin, only to be told our flight was cancelled because the crew had "timed out"? Really?  A half hour before takeoff and you figure this out? There were eight of us and we were tired. To the airline's credit, they bought us a night at the Howard Johnson but when the "shuttle" arrived at the curb, it proved too small for all of us, let alone luggage and the stroller/car seat contraption that the Toppings are dragging about plus one seat didn't have a seatbelt..."no no no...it's good" "But there's no seatbelt and my son needs to be buckled in'.  'No no no...it's good". "NO!...I'll put in the other seat".  "OK OK OK..that's good".  So Monica rode to the motel sitting in the seat with no belt.  We slept fast and were up prior to the crack of dawn for a seven o'clock flight replacement to Green Bay, then had our rental car and were checked into our real hotel by nine in the morning.

After settling in and gathering our thoughts, we headed to the University of Wisconsin so I could start some research that will help me locate information on two of my mom's siblings.  No luck on the sister for whom I lack a birth date in order to choose the correct documents on Ancestry.com but I hope to find something when we go to the research center in Eau Claire where the family lived.

Uncle Charlie has proven to be more interesting than expected.  I came across the court documents for his divorce proceedings including the transcript where much dirty linen was aired.  On a high note, the documents included paperwork showing where he was working when wages were attached for child support he skated on....*sigh*...THIS I didn't expect.

When Charlie's brother, my Uncle Joe, died in 1954, the obit referred to survivors and mentioned Charlie as being in Milwaukee.  This was today's project, drive to Milwaukee.  We tracked down the library and searched through death records and city directories with no luck; no sign that Charlie had ever lived there.  The library was fabulous, a glorious limestone building with amazing marble staircases so much like Hogwarts that I expected the stairways to swivel and deposit Harry Potter.  Even the unsuccessful research was worth the trip to this building.

We spotted the original Pabst Brewery so wandered the area a bit to check out the buildings before tracking down a brew pub and have dinner and a tasty ale before heading back to Green Bay.

The title song has been popping into my head these last few days and, after I thought about my family connections, it just fit.

Like A Boat Out on the Ocean I'm Rocking You To Sleep

Really? Finally! I’m going to be a Grandma. My first-born is having her first-born. Mark and I have watched with a bit of envy friends who have grandbabies. Mark does love to hold babies. For ages, long after our babies were no longer babies, he would come home from work and tell me “I held a baby today”. Maybe a co-worker brought in a newborn or a customer needed a hand to hold that papoose while they paid their bill. I always found it amusing since, and I don’t think he’d argue this point, he was never REALLY ready for parenthood.

We got married very young - at least I was very young. I wasn’t yet 18, he was 20. We were even required to go, along with my mom, to meet with a counselor at Juvenile Probation to be sure we were aware of what we were getting into. Of course at the time we were SURE we knew. After more than 37 years, I can tell you we didn’t have a clue! It should be noted that we were NOT pregnant at the time - just wonderfully, blissfully head-over-heals in love (and perhaps lust). In fact, it was more than five years before Monica blessed our lives with her arrival and I still remember the deer-in-the-headlights look Mark had on his face when I told him about his impending fatherhood. Even after five years, it was a shock.

Out of fairness, he was not raised with younger siblings nor did he babysit as I had. He did a fine job but I believe he was often overwhelmed, and perhaps still is, though dealing with adult daughters takes a little different skillset and he is probably a little more equipped to deal with grown up issues. But babies....they smell nice, except when they don’t. They love you unconditionally, kinda like a puppy. And best of all, we get a chance at do-overs but DON'T have to be the disciplinarians. I suspect I wasn’t the most patient Mom even though I would have liked to have been. But we did read to our kids. And we made them nap (for their sake and our sanity). And we used a play-pen so they could play and we could get something done.....sometimes the playpen would be in the yard while I gardened. Sometimes Mark’s daddy time involved a baby in a play pen at the wrecking yard while he worked on his race car. Some people see play-pens as baby cages but, when I see parents trying to wrangle a kid, I see a play pen as a little rubber room to keep us all sane. We didn't beat our girls but, in fact, were often asked how often we beat them to make them so good. In hindsight, we did okay and you'll never find those welts!

And now we have a grandbaby on the way and have to, once again, think of baby-proofing. And replacing carpet that just won’t NOT smell. And think about my bowls of seashells. And plants on low tables. And stairs...yikes, I forgot about the stairs! And, what do we want to be called? Granny? No! Nana? Nona? Gramma? I so look forward to sharing tidepools and gardens and chickens with this baby. And sharing smooshy cute, chubby little baby cheeks and (personal fave) baby feet to EVERYONE who follows my Twitter feed and Facebook. I can't wait to do the spoiling and have secrets just between us. I can’t wait until July (or now, June) when Monica and Gabe's little Peanut arrives and I am "Grandma". Let the spoiling begin, huh Papa?

Buzz Buzz Goes The Needle

Although years and miles kept them from being as close as they might have been, they were still brothers. They were six years apart and Chuck had joined the Navy right after graduating high school, did his stretch on a nuclear submarine or on base in Groton, Connecticut, then moved to Washington to work for Lockheed after discharge. More than the six years, 700 miles separated them. There were occasional phone calls to talk about motorcycles, their one common bond. When Mark found out his brother had gllioblastoma, a nasty form of brain cancer, it hit him hard. We made a family trip a year ago November, taking his mom and our girls up to eastern Washington to make contact. The Topping boys fried the turkey and compared haircuts. Their kids and our kids connected. Mark connected with our nieces and nephew as the only brother of their Dad. Chuck's grandkids didn't know what to think of Mark or even what to call him since he looked so much like their Grandpa but we decided against "Uncle Grandpa" when we realized how much it sounded as if the family tree didn't branch.

Chuck's health declined in the next year so and, when it became clear he wouldn't survive and his time was short, Mark and I took his Mom to visit early this year. Chuck still had control of his faculties and even his sense of humor though morphine had dulled his reaction time, sometimes requiring patience to wait out the response. We talked about the holidays and the visits from his four children and their babies. I commented that it must have been noisy and he said..."family is always good".

The family took turns sitting with Chuck, chit-chatting about the past. No real talk about the future, except plans for eagle tattoos for their Dad who was devout and inspired by a cross stitch above his bed: Isaiah 40:31 "but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles" . Chuck may have been a sailor but had no tattoos and didn't quite "get" the concept but it was something they had all decided. Kids spent time while they had it with their father. His brother and mom with their only connection to their past together.

"As the ink and the blood mix with pain"

Chuck lost his battle with the cancer in February and we made plans to head up for the services - one on each side of the State. The first service would be in Kent at the Tahoma National Cemetery where he would receive full military honors. Tears flowed as the old soldiers and young sailors paid respect to Chuck's military service. The 21 guns were fired. The flag was handed to the widow. We asked the groundskeepers if they would mind our watching as they prepared the site where Chuck's ashes were to be placed. Though unaccustomed to being observed, they dug the hole and treated the ground with honor befitting the veterans interred there, even as they placed the soil and pounded the stake for the temporary marker.

In the week after Chuck's passing, his children visited tattoo parlors to have an eagle inscribed on their skin as a memorial to their dad. Even his wife, who previously had no interest in ink, had an eagle permanently placed on her body. Mark was waiting for the right design to dedicate to his brother and finally had the work done this week. Max at Sailor's Grave did the honors.

"each drop of blood is a token of love"

She's Leaving Home....bye bye.....

So many changes have been taking place these last few weeks with all three girls in transition - one daughter is in the metamorphic stage of ending a relationship, another moving, yet again, this time back from McKinleyville into Eureka. And now, the old man and I are contemplating a life as empty-nesters as the youngest princess is embarking on a move out of the castle.

In a perfect world, we would return to something akin to our early days, the five child-free years between wedding and Ms. Monica when we could do what we wanted when we wanted...and do it naked if we cared to. If that included a spontaneous amorous encounter on the sofa, so be it (different couch entirely girls so get over it). Unfortunately, as boomers who chose to spread their child-bearing over a number of years, we're not as amorous, nor as limber as we once were. Our new life, once the urchin vacates, will probably involve eating what we want, when we want.... and that's about it.

Now that Glo is gainfully employed, her plan is to move in with her boyfriend. The conversations regarding our "no revolving door policy" have fallen on deaf ears as they have in the past with her sisters and she has begun to pack for this new phase of her life. No anger involved, just excitement on her part and sadness on ours knowing our baby has grown up and old enough to survive on her own. We remind ourselves (regularly) that I was younger than her 18.25 years when we got married and I left home. I survived. She will survive. And we will begin the transition to speaking to her as an adult rather than the child she remains in our minds.

When we were young and unencumbered by offspring, we considered no one other than ourselves. When he worked on City buses and had to run a bus from Santa Cruz to, say Watsonville to exchange for another in need of service, I would go along for the ride. Just two of us alone in a 50-passenger transit bus, cruising Highway 1 at sunset. Now, I will probably accompany him to tow a bike after he closes the shop and perhaps we'll grab dinner instead of cooking. And our dinners will probably include more sausage and pork and other things kids don't like. And we may return to a life with a little less structure and a little more spontaneity. We'll probably bicker more but...hell, maybe we'll bicker less.

Of course, the kids have lived for fifteen years in this huge rattle-trap of a house with peeling paint and sub-standard bathrooms and now that we're finally fixing these things properly, they're gone (not their fault we took so long). The goal is to finish it all, enjoy it for a time, then move to a smaller place without stairs in deference to our geriatric knees. and it will be in town so I can still get around when they rip my driver's license from my wrinkly little fingers.

Perhaps I'm thinking too far ahead; after all, Glo hasn't even emptied her closet and that alone could take a while.

I'M MOVIN' OUT

This cartoon has been on my frig as a bit of an inside joke. Mark’s Mom lived with us for awhile after selling her house in Carson City. Mark and I came back from a trip to the east coast to find she had moved out after some unpleasantness with our girls for which they were not responsible. They purposely didn’t tell us until we were home so that we could enjoy the trip.

She’s been up in Washington for almost two years but it appears she's coming back. She will live near us but not with us due to aforementioned unpleasantness. Besides, our weather makes her unhappy. She has health issues caused by smoking. She has financial issues brought on by her steely determination to compensate the tribes for the past, one nickel at a time. I hope that the girls will eventually be able to develop a positive relationship with their one remaining grandparent after their previous falling out. I’m just saying that it would be nice if he got me loaded.

They Say It's Your Birthday....

What must it be like to be a fourteen-year-old boy, having survived your early teens with two sisters only to find out your mother is pregnant! Small children see only the wonder of their mother’s growing belly and the prospect of a new playmate. A teen, however, KNOWS how mom got that way. In my mom’s case, I was told it was a deadly combination of a Knights of Columbus convention and the rhythm method. Or maybe that was my younger sister. Either way, at 38 my mom delivered me unto the world. And Greg’s life has never been the same.

I remember it was hell to wake him up. Once when I was about six, my big sister Carol and I couldn’t wake him so we dribbled water on him then put ice on his chest. When that failed, we tickled him with a feather, ANYTHING to rouse him. Disturbed just enough, his arm swung out to stop the nuisance he didn't know was his sisters and I took it in the stomach. He never woke up and I learned to move much faster. Tell him to be up at three in the morning to go fishing, however, and he’d beat you to the truck.

I learned a lot from my big brother. When I called my best friend in kindergarten a “little fart”, an endearment I learned from Greg when he would toss me in the air, I learned that my Mom told him he'd be in BIG trouble if I ever repeated that...and she was right! He taught me how to hold his full coffee cup steady while riding next to him in the truck on a road trip. You hold your arm a little loose and let it bounce as the truck goes down the road. This skill is no longer required in a world of “travel mugs” but I was very useful as a child. I also learned not to EVER wash the cup.

My brother is a spring baby, born on the Vernal Equinox. This week, he has a huge milestone birthday, so huge I can hardly count that high. He’s a man’s man. He owns a tractor; actually, he has LOTS of them. He hunts and fishes (or at least he used to). He smokes cigars and drinks coffee out of a cup glossed brown from the caffeine. He broke his neck at 17 when he rolled his beach buggy on Santa Cruz beach. As an adult, he was thrown from his horse when some kids tossed a firecracker. He was on a freeway overpass and was damn lucky to not be thrown over the railing. He is one tough cookie. He would have to be. My parents had one more child after me making Greg big brother to four younger sisters; Val just 13 months younger, Carol, five years later then, we two "whoops" babies. The picture of my family is pre-Katie with me in my mom’s lap. Greg was never a bully or a tease…well, maybe there was a little teasing. He is a kind, gentle man. If you piss him off big time, you’re nothing more than a “horse’s ass”. He reminds me of my dad. He gives big hugs so I’m sorry he’s all the way in Idaho. Happy Birthday big brother. I miss you.

TURKEYS, REDWOODS AND SURFERS

This has been a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and I am appropriately grateful for where I live and the people I live with.

After making pie crusts and an apple pie on Wednesday night, I put the pie punkins in the crock pot to cook overnight (BTW, whoever invented the Crock Pot should be knighted). On Thursday, after an early rise and some more meal prep, including turning that punkin into a couple of pies, we (the dog, the girls, Mark and I) loaded into the Xbox and headed to Pepperwood to the old bridge where we took our Thanksgiving picture about seven years ago. We had the late great 100-pound Grizz with us then and Mark wanted to recreate the photo with Vince in Grizz’s place. Nice walk, if a little short. Photos were taken. Lunch was eaten – a traditional Thanksgiving lunch of Ritz and Easy Cheese on the river bed. We returned home to the heavenly smell of turkey. Food prep was completed. Guests arrived with more food. Turkey was carved. Grace was said. Room was saved for dessert. Tryptophan coma to follow.

Yesterday, the girls joined the hoards at o-dark-thirty for the Black Friday traditional storming of the stores. I, on the other hand, took advantage of a weekday off to comb the thrift stores which I don’t often get to do. I came home empty handed which seemed a little odd – I almost always find SOMETHING I can’t live without but I’ve been going through a purging mode of late so I suppose nothing looked important enough to bring back. Not a bad thing. I did find that the ridiculously early holiday decorations and news stories were getting me a bit stressed….How can I already feel behind and it’s just Thanksgiving?! I’ve had to prioritize lately, putting homework near the top and moving anything else that can wait down the list. Unfortunately, if I wait until the end of the semester to shop and get at Christmas cards, nothing will get out in time. So, I calmed myself by hitting a couple local stores for gifts which put me mentally “partially done”. Sounds silly but it worked.

Today, back at homework but managed to treat myself to a trip to the beach. I checked the magic seaweed website and it seemed as if seas were up. Cowabunga! I’m not a surfer but I do live vicariously. I grew up in Santa Cruz and, in days when drive-ins were just that, it was common for my mom and dad to take us to Foster Freeze to pick up burgers then we’d head out to Pleasure Point or Steamers in our baby blue 59 Fairlane to watch the surfers while we ate. There was always a pair of binoculars in the car so we could get in closer when the surf was good. I still find it one of my favorite pastimes. So, I headed up to Camel Rock. There was not a parking spot to be found, it was so crowded. That was a good sign. I drove up to Lufenholtz and managed to find a spot and walked back and down to the beach. Surfers were running out so as not to miss a single wave and the waves were awesome, at least to my eyes. Got some good pictures. There are times I would love to be out there….then I see someone go ass over tea kettles into the salt and remember body surfing as a teen and that sandblasted sinuses thing when you got tumbled. Nope…I’m good on the shore with my lens.

Oh, Hope did a beautiful job on our family Thanksgiving page so please check it out.