Quick trip to Indianapolis

Saturday we had a quick trip (80 mph on a moving parking lot all the way) to visit my sister-in-law Jean, and a few other relatives.  We went out to eat at her favorite restaurant, Sero's, a Greek family style restaurant that serves breakfast all day. Indianapolis Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner Restaurant | Sero's Family Restaurant (serosfamilyrestaurant.com)

  

Enjoying lunch at Sero's

Visiting at Jean's home

Our Joan is home, finally

"After a 10 day hospital stay; I am thankful to know the great Physician, for God’s healing and for all the prayers that were and still being lifted up for me. I praise God for His love, healing and mercy on me. I thank the Lord for the wisdom he gave to the medical doctors and for each nurse and tech, that cared for me. Thank you, Lord, for bringing me home."

In the past two weeks, we've had 10 relatives diagnosed with Covid, and five have been hospitalized (none in our city).  All are at home now, recovering.  Still quite sick. We'll continue the prayers and God's protection.

A good week-end with the family

Our niece and nephew, Joan and Dan, from Indianapolis drove over to spend time with Phil this week-end, and we also were the beneficiaries.  First we knew Phil was in good hands.  He and Joan are just 2 years apart, and spent many holidays together as children.  Dan and Joan are strong Christians and also people who work and play hard--I can think of no one I'd rather spend time with if I didn't feel social!

Second, we got to have dinner with them and our daughter and son-in-law, sort of a second Christmas as we still had all our decorations up and used the Christmas dinnerware. On Sunday we had someone to attend church with, and then out for brunch at Bob Evans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khkJkR-ipfw

We move forward; we don't move on 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trxw9wqKSHI

I am a survivor

My summer of 1958, part 4

What does an 18 year old do for a social life while living on a farm with her grandparents?  Not much except spend time with adults.  See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 for the story about why I was living on a farm the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. Transcribed from my diary!

Perhaps it was a good thing, but my boyfriend had to go to Minnesota for the summer of 1958 for civil engineer camp. According to my diary, he called about 11:30 on June 6 and said he would stop by before leaving, so I grabbed a pail of water to wash up, put on some clean clothes and we said good-bye before he left. Going after the mail, either walking or driving to Franklin Grove, was a favorite activity and I got my first letter from him on June 9. I would often stop at the local drug store to get a Coke and read my mail the diary says. I mentioned letters from college friends, some other boys I’d dated, and my great uncle Edwin who lived in Ohio.

On Saturday June 14 I was picked up by a relative so I could go to my uncle’s wedding, which was a lovely event and I sat with my other grandmother (groom’s mother). I spent the night at my parents’ home and my brother drove me back to the farm after church with them.  That Sunday afternoon Aunt Muriel and Uncle John came down with my cousin Gayle and we girls had a good visit.  By this time, Grandma and I were wearing on each others’ nerves, and I noted in the diary I started to read Norman Vincent Peale’s “Power of Positive Thinking.” I was probably acting like a normal, self-centered teen-ager, which I’m sure was difficult for her. I didn’t sympathize then, but for her age and declining health, the stresses in her life and still being in deep grief over the death of her sonin WWII, she was doing better than I realized then.

The big activity of June 16 was cleaning the house and ironing clothes and in the evening I walked in the bean field and watched the men making hay. I’m sure I wished I was at the skating rink or movie, although I didn’t write that. Finally, someone my own age showed up.  On the evening of June 17 friends from high school/college—Sylvia, Sharon and Lynne drove down from Mt. Morris to see me and I wrote we had a lot of fun talking.

Uncle Leslie and Aunt Bernice would come out from Chicago about once a week and all of 5 of us would go to Dixon to eat and shop for groceries, and Bernice and I would chat while Leslie talked to his parents.  She often brought cake or cookies with her.

One rather interesting “social” event was meeting a woman, Mrs. Sharkey, on Sunday morning June 22 when I drove to Dixon, and I attended a Catholic Mass with her at St. Patrick’s  (my first and only until 2017) and she loaned me her prayer book.  She was a widow and invited me to her apartment for coffee, and I note in my diary that her china was the same pattern as Grandma’s.  In late summer 1960 I went to Dixon to the store where she worked and bought my everyday china from her. A sweet memory of a dear Christian woman.

It’s not clear from my diary why I was in Dixon on a Sunday morning, probably looking for the Church of the Brethren thinking I'd see friends from college, but later that day I drove to Mt. Morris, had supper with my other grandparents because no one was home at my parents.  Perhaps I just wanted a bath (we still had no indoor plumbing at the farm).  I recorded that my Aunt Lois (who died this last December at 91) had a baby girl the day before (that would be cousin Rhonda) and that I drove my Dad’s new red Ford Ranchero.  Dad never removed the keys from his cars, so I suppose I just hopped in and went for a joy ride stopping to talk to people I knew!

On June 25 Grandma wanted to see Dr. Boyle in Mt. Morris so we drove there and I had a chance to visit with my girlfriend, Lynne.  On many days I wrote that I walked down the lane to the neighbors after supper. Often they would give me fresh produce from their garden which I would work into my menus  Addie and Dale were 38 and 39 (died in 2016 and 2017),  had four adorable children and were fun to be around.  I also went to church and their Sunday School class, really old folks like 30 or 40, and I don’t mention meeting anyone my age.  I also visited an immigrant couple, Dora and Zieg, down the other lane who were learning English by watching TV (my grandparents didn’t have a TV).  On June 30, two sisters-in-law of my boyfriend stopped to visit me at the farm.

On July 4 after baking a cherry pie, making a big dinner of meatloaf and baked beans and sprinkling the laundry (no permanent press then—wash, starch, dry, sprinkle, iron), I walked to the neighbors down the lane and Martha Brumbaugh came by and offered to take me to Mt. Morris, so we went after supper and I caught up with high school friends Nancy, Priscilla and Lynne to attend the July 4 talent show in Mt. Morris. Sylvia drove me back to Franklin Grove that evening. Rereading this, I am surprised at all the driving back and forth and I seemed rather casual about the transportation  arrangements.  If Sylvia hadn’t offered, how would I have gotten back to the farm? It’s about 19 miles, with hilly, winding roads, and a long lane off the high-way, or about 40 minutes. Did it ever occur to me at 18 how many people I inconvenienced?  If so, I didn’t mention it.

On July 5 I wrote I had a 4 page letter from my boyfriend and I was beginning to miss him!  How shallow is that? He’d been writing several times a week. Also I went to the garden and picked over a quart of raspberries and some rhubarb.  Then I made 2 pies.  Aunt Muriel, Uncle John, their daughter Dianne and my mother came down in the evening.  I hope I served them some pie, although I didn’t write that in the diary!

         

I don’t have a photo of my cousins and Aunt Muriel from 1958, but this is 1959 at Gayle’s wedding. Aren’t they lovely!

From July 7 through the 11th my entries are very short.  Sylvia and Dave came to visit, I went to the neighbors to help with a birthday party and got home at 1 .m., I cleaned a lot, baked a lot, took a pie to Dora and Zieg.

July 12 is my last entry in the diary of my summer at the farm. I baked a blueberry pie that day, Uncle Leslie and Aunt Bernice came and we went to Dixon where I bought a wedding gift for my high school friend, Tina, who had moved to Florida after our junior year.  And I mentioned no one would want this job. . . nothing I did was right, and there are no other entries.  I think my father picked me up the next day or within a few days, and I spent the rest of the summer in Mt. Morris.  And I was probably much more appreciative of my own home, my mother’s cooking, and just doing what teen-agers do.

A very successful trip to Illinois

We had our fall Illinois Indiana trip this past week, celebrating my birthday there and seeing our cousins and siblings.

On Thursday we went to the lovely home of cousins Dianne and Frank for a tasty breakfast, after which we went hunting for the Nachusa Prairie Grasslands near Oregon and the bison (that adventure will be another post).  On Friday we drove to Dixon to see my cousin (once removed--my grandmother and his father were siblings) Chuck Ballard to catch up since college days at the University of Illinois, where he attended after a stint in the Navy. I think I last saw him in 1983, and we are both interested in genealogy. We had actually met a good friend of his when we were touring Ireland over a decade ago. Friday evening we had dinner with our Illinois siblings and spouses with a long chat afterwards.  On Saturday the members of my graduating class (1957) got together at the Campus Cafe across from the campus in Mt. Morris.  That afternoon we drove to Winnebago to visit with my cousin Judy Buffo, but as it turns out, that was her mailing address but she lives much closer to Pecatonica. so we drove around a lot in that area, and were just about to give up when I found a clerk at a gas station who had a smart phone and wrote down directions for me. We had a nice 2 hour visit.  I think I last saw her in 1996.

Early Sunday morning we started out from Mt. Morris  for Indianapolis arriving about 1:30 and had a good visit with our sister and brother in-law and our niece and nephew and dinner and dessert.

   

 

 

  

Happy New Year 2018

Have to learn to write a new date.

 Pete and Peg are my in-laws once removed, brother and sister-in-law of our son-in-law

I don't plan to do this, but thought it was funny.  Everyone is dieting.

Everything changed after 1995--Monday Memories

The pre-Christmas holiday in 1995 was wonderful at my sister-in-law Jean's home in Indianapolis.  Even Bob's brother Jimmy DeMott was there with his girlfriend, Nancy, and his children.  My mother-in-law June was doing well considering that the year before she had almost died of a bleeding ulcer and her husband had died in October.  We were, of course, sad at the loss of my father-in-law Jim DeMott that holiday and we had been making weekly trips that fall to Indianapolis to be with Bob's mother. But it was good to have everyone, including lively little Caleb and Jake, together.

Yet, after that holiday season, with the warm "Christmas card" memories, everything seemed to change. It was one funeral and life change after the other, like someone wound up a toy too tight and it spun out of control.

In less than two months, my sister Carol Yoder died of a diabetic stroke and most of my family made the trip to Sarasota to say good bye and then to Mt. Morris for burial.  We helped my parents move from their home of 38 years a few blocks away into a retirement apartment at Pinecrest in Mt. Morris.  Bob's Aunt Babe died in May 1996 and my Aunt Marian died in September of 1996.  Then I was hospitalized and diagnosed with a heart problem.  Sam Calabretta, the architect who brought us to Columbus in 1967 and changed our lives, died in January 1997.  My mother had surgery for colon cancer in June and I hurried back to Illinois.  My boss at the OSU Libraries, Jay Ladd, died that summer.  Our daughter had surgery for thyroid cancer in February 1997.  My mother-in-law June moved into assisted care, then a nursing home, and died in September 1998.  My Uncle John Dickson died in January 1999, and Bob's dear Aunt Roberta DeAngelis, his father's older sister, died in July 1999.  Our son Phil got married in February 1999 and my sister came back to Illinois to marry in August 1999 as my parents also celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary.  My Uncle Leslie, Mom's brother, died that November.  Orville Ballard, Dad's dear friend and also his uncle and best man in his wedding, died in January 2000.  It just a few weeks and then my mother died on January 24, 2000.  Aunt Esther Corbett, whose nick-name was PeeWee, died a few weeks later in California.  In February 2000 divorce stole a beloved nephew of 16 years from the family. Then we returned to Mt. Morris to help Dad move again after he bought my grandparents' former home, a Lustron, in April 2000.  It was there we celebrated our 40th anniversary in September 2000 as I retired from my library career at Ohio State University.  In January 2002 we moved from our home of 34 years on Abington Road into a condo, same community, but a few miles north.  Then I had a heart ablation to correct the problem diagnosed in 1996 while we were unpacking.  In April we moved Dad to a care facility in Franklin Grove, IL because his congestive heart failure diagnosed in June 2000 worsened, and he died May 18, 2002. In 2003 we traveled to California to celebrate with the Bruce relatives and siblings Dad Bruce's 90th birthday, and he died in April 2005.

In ten short years we had become the older generation of our extended families.

The day we moved Dad into the Lustron

Invites to join Facebook

This morning I received an invitation from the fourth wife of the first husband of my sister-in-law to join her friends group at Facebook. Very nice lady. In my husband's family it really is until death do you part. Even if they get a divorce they still are welcome at the family events, which makes it nicer for the children who get to see their former step-parent occasionally. But I prefer blogging. I did go in and follow her link, however, and saw two other recent invitations (don't know how long that shows) and one has nine followers, the other has 109. The one who has 109 has never met a stranger, and she travels a lot. Long before e-mail and Facebook, you had to take a number to visit, or go shopping, or out to dinner. I don't think I even know 109 "friends," and I'm sure I don't want to go through junior high school again with people de-friending or refusing to even respond to my invitation to come to the party.

As it is, I'm on a number of e-mail discussion lists all sent and managed by men--four by guys who were in high school with me, and one from my husband's Wednesday morning men's group (he doesn't do e-mail). And they say women like to talk. The men do catch up.

How to update your Christmas card list

I saw this at Shirley Hornbeck's Genealogy Tips, #2:

FINDING LIVING RELATIVES:

To contact a living person whom you have lost, write a letter to the person, be sure to include your address and telephone number in the letter. Send the letter in an unsealed stamped envelope, along with a cover letter to the Social Security Administration, Letter Forwarding Unit, 6401 Security Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21235. Include in your cover letter as much as you know about the person: Name, Social Security number, birthplace, birth date, name of the person's parents. You do not have to know all of the information, but the process will be quicker if you give more identifying information. If the person you are seeking is listed in the SSA files, the letter will be forwarded to them and it's up to that person to contact you.

If they owe you money, don't hold your breath.