Don

 

I haven’t written much about my father’s family. He died before I retired, and I didn't get to spend as much time with him as I did my mother. But even if he had lived I don’t think we would have spent our time talking about his life or his family like my mother and I did. We would probably have worked in the garden or watched a football game. My dad used to tell me stories abut his life, but it wasn't to preserve his legacy. He just did it to entertain me.

In order to avoid confusion, I need to tell you that I always called my parents by their first names, Don and Jim. It wasn’t from any lack of respect. I just called them what they called each other, and they never corrected me. My mother’s first name was James so everyone called her Jim - my dad actually called her Jimmy. It was only after I had grown up and left home that she started going by her more feminine middle name of Wenonah.  

Jim was a talker; she was outgoing; she was emotional and opinionated, but Don was just the opposite. He was always calm and reasonable. I never saw him angry, and I never heard him say anything that he would have wanted to take back later. Not many people can say that. Jim never apologized for anything she said either, although she probably should have. 
 

I drove my mother nuts because I wouldn’t confide in her. When I was a teenager she used to say, “When you were little you used to tell me everything, and now you won’t tell me anything.” Of course the reason that I didn’t confide in her was because I didn’t dare. If I told her what I was thinking, she would start to imagine the trouble my thoughts might get me into, and pretty soon she would talk herself into a frenzy. It didn’t take many frenzies to cure me of confiding in my mother. Jim considered it her duty to mold my character, and my normal teenage questioning of conventional wisdom scared her to death. 

On the other hand, I could tell Don anything, and I did. I used to tell him my problems, my hopes, my feelings. He once even warned me that maybe I shouldn’t tell him so much, because he wasn’t going to lie to my mother if she asked him what I said. That was a big disappointment to me because I liked talking to my dad. He wasn’t critical, even if he disagreed with me. He’d listen to what I had to say, and sometimes he’d tell me what he thought. I don’t ever remember him arguing with me though. He was willing to let me work things out for myself.  

I think Jim said it best. After Don died she said, “he was always on my side,” and that’s exactly the way I felt. He always made me feel like he was on my side too.  

Don came from a nice family. By that I mean that they were nice to each other. They didn’t fight like my mother’s family. I used to stay for a week or two with my dad’s parents in the summers. They were quiet and practical and easy going. My grandmother showed me how to make dill pickles, how to grow strawberries, and she showed me how to mend an electrical cord after I accidentally cut hers in two with the lawn mower.  

                                              Jesse Boyd Gunning 

Don told me a story once about his mother. He said she was riding with someone in a car – they didn’t have a car of their own at the time – and the car broke down. The men got out, looked under the hood, and decided that they could fix it, but they couldn’t find a pair of pliers. They looked under the seat and they looked in the trunk, but no pliers. Then my grandmother asked them what was the matter. When they told her they they were looking for some pliers she said: “ Well, why didn’t you say so before,” and she reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of pliers.  

I think what impressed me most about Grandmother was seeing her kill a chicken. One day she told me she was going to fix chicken for supper. I followed her as she went out to the chicken coop and grabbed a chicken. I watcherd her as she pinned the chicken to the ground by laying a board across its neck, and then, while she stood on both ends of the board, she grabbed the chicken’s feet and yanked it’s head off. That’s when I learned the meaning of the old saying, to “run around like a chicken with its head cut off.” The chicken’s body really did run around in circles, and its beak kept opening and closing like it was trying to crow. Then Grandmother boiled some water, scalded the chicken and pulled out its feathers. My uncle Jay told me that she used make extra money by killing and plucking chickens for the grocery store.   

My grandparents had a car when I visited them, and Grandmother did drive, but it made her nervous. Before we went anywhere she would tell me not to talk to her while she was driving, so she could concentrate. I was a jabberbox. 

                                          Robert Benjamin Gunning 

Grandfather was a barber, and he had a shop down town, just off the square. Enid, where my grandparents lived, had a town square, and on it was a little band stand. My grandfather played the trumpet in the Masonic band, and they performed there from time to time, but I never got to hear him. Some days I’d go down town and spend the day with my grandfather. I’d sit in his shop and read funny books. If the barbers weren’t busy they’d talk to me. I can remember them trying to explain to me how their razor strops worked. Grandfather’s partner made me a rocking chair out of a tin can. I still have it. It’s amazing.  

                                                Tin Can Rocker

Grandfather had fought in WWI, and he still had his helmet, you know the kind that looked kind of like an upside down cereal bowl, and he also had brought home an artillery shell. It was about a foot long and I’m sure it was live. I guess back in his day they weren’t particular about what soldiers brought home with them. Grandfather had been shot in the leg and you could still feel the buckshot under his skin. He was shot in a hunting accident, not in the War, but it was still impressive to me.  

My grandparents took me fishing once when I was little, and Grandmother told me to go to sleep early the night before because we would have to get up real early the next morning. I was so excited that I woke up before daylight. I went into my grandparents’ bedroom, woke up Grandmother and asked her if it was time to go yet. She told me not to worry, that we had time to sleep another couple of hours.

To be continued:

 PS: Sorry there are no pictures in this post, but Blogger won't allow me to upload pictures from my computer at this time. I'll fill in the pictures when they fix the problem.

 

Mamma's Proverbs

 

                                                 Victoria May Rosser Paul

 

Some of you may wonder why I haven't published more of my mother's stories, Wenonah's stories, in this blog. I've been feeling guilty about that, and so I may as well come clean. It's because they're in the book. When I started writing this blog, it seemed like I was almost finished with the book, but writing a book takes a long time, at least it has for me, so I'm still just teasing you with stories about peripheral events and background history. 

Now it does seem like the end is in sight. That's the reason I've been neglecting the blog lately. I've been spending most of my time editing my manuscript to get it ready to send to the publisher.  

Dividing my time between writing the book and the blog has given me an appreciation for the values of both. On the one hand, in the book I can show how the events in the lives of my mother's family fit together, how they combined to make them the people they were. It's only by knowing in detail the joys, the obstacles, and the tragedies they faced, that you could ever hope to understand them.  

I've always enjoyed listening and telling stories, but a short story only gives you a snap shot of a person. Now that I've worked so hard to tell my mother's story, I appreciate more the importance of putting stories into context. It's helped me to understand my mother better - her whole family for that matter, and I want to leave that understanding, limited as it still is, to my children, to the rest of our family, and to whoever else wants to read about us.  

Now for the advantages of a blog. The most painful struggle I've had in writing this book is having to leave things out. To me every story, every little fact about our family is interesting. I have boxes of pictures, documents, letters. I have hundreds of hours of taped interviews with my mother, and I've read dozens of books to learn about the historical, political, and social background for our story, but I just can't put all that into the book. As interesting as it all is, putting it in would destroy the continuity, the drama, but I can put it into the blog, and now that I know what's going to be included in the book, perhaps I won't be so stingy about sharing facts that are peripheral to the main story.  

Also once you get to know Uncle Haskell, or Uncle Tom, or Grandmother by reading the book, it should be more interesting to learn more about them.  

The most important person in my mother Wenonah's life was her mother, Victoria. I knew Grandmother only in her later years, and although I spent a lot of time with her, I never saw her as the inspiration, and the tower of strength that she was to my mother. Grandmother taught her children with proverbs, and I've tried to collect some of them, both proverbs and also some colloquialisms, as my mother, Wenonah told them to me.  

          Beggars can't be choosers.

          Willful waste makes woeful want. Mamma said that when Roosevelt put dye in potatoes and paid farmers to destroy hogs.

          Still waters run deep.  Refers to people who are wise but speak little.

          I did very well by my supper. Mamma would say after a hearty meal.

          When you pour, pour!  Mamma said when she was teaching me to pour.

          (My mother quoted this to me when she was trying to get me to get to the point when I was telling a story.)

          Mamma never did whine. In spite of what she had to go through. She was always trying to figure out how to get along. And she didn't let us whine. This was her phrase:  I'll give you something to whine about.  That's one of her phrases that's glued to my memory. And we weren't allowed to tattle either. Me and Bob would tattle on each other and then we'd both get a whipping

          The Rooshuns. That's how Mamma pronounced Russians. Also she pronounced her a's as er's, and er's as a's, so my sister Oteka was "Teker," and her sister Ada was "Ader." Her brother Luther was "Lutha," and vinegar was "vinega."

          Mamma's toast was: Up to my mouth and down to my toes where many quarts and gallons go.

          A giggling girl and a cackling hen never can come to a good end.

          He=s a fool for the want of sense. (My mother made this comment about a cousin of mine who pretended to be smarter than everyone else.)

          A fool and his money are soon parted.   

          A house divided against itself cannot stand.  Mamma would say this when we=d fight with each other.

          So and so is more to be pitied than censored

          You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

          Pretty is as pretty does.

          If you don't act like a lady people won't treat you like one.

          When two or three are gathered together I will grant their requests.

          The sins of the fathers are visited on the sons.

          If you lay down with dogs you're going to get fleas.

          Blood is thicker than water

          Oh, for pity's sake.

          Birds of a feather flock together.

          A watched pot never boils.          

          I wouldn't have given a plugged nickel forC

          Mamma would also say AI don=t love ...@ instead of saying she didn't like

something.

          If Mamma called someone "old" it meant that she was mad at them, or didn't like them. She called her sister "Old Sis" when she opposed her marriage to Pappa.

          It's a long lane that knows no turnings. Is a quotation from Robert Browning's poem, The Flight of the Duchess. Mamma used it to mean that people get their just deserts.  

          Wheels within wheels. Mamma used to refer to complicated political or social situations.

          Leave well enough alone

          A friend in need is a friend indeed.

          Mamma used the expression Plotting against the British in reference to my brother Haskell checking on us to see if we were talking about him. It refers back to the revolutionary war when the colonists had to be careful what they said around the British. 

 

          Your damned old Daddy. The only curse word that Mamma ever used.

 

The Furniture Catalogue

One of my most precious possessions is a furniture catalogue which belonged to my grandmother, Victoria May Rosser Paul, my mother's mother. I need say here, if I haven't mentioned it before, that I apologize for not writing more about my father's family. They were and are wonderful people, but I don't know as much about their history. Also I've been concentrating for the last couple of years on putting together information about my mother's family. Sooner or later I'll start putting together the stories about my dad and what I know about his family. 

Anyway, let me tell you about the furniture catalogue. As you can see from the picture above, it's pretty plain. It has a brown cover and is simply entitled "Furniture." The only date I can find inside is 1852, the date of the founding of the company, under a picture of a big building which it says is at the corner of Market and Monroe Streets, for anyone who is familiar with Chicago. As for the date the catalogue was published, I have to guess that it was the first half of the 1920's because under "talking machines" there are no radios displayed, and the phonographs listed are all spring operated, with a crank on the side. They boast that the machine "will play four 10 inch records without rewinding." According to Google, it was the mid 20's before radios became widely available and phonographs came with an electric motor.  

The catalogue also advertizes coal and wood burning heating or cooking stoves, although some come equipped for gas as well. You can also order an icebox. They call it a refrigerator, but it's an ice box.

As interesting as this is, it's not why I value the furniture catalogue so much. It's important to me because Grandmother used it as a scrapbook. Almost every page is covered by pictures, newspaper articles, and poems cut out of magazines and newspapers. It's not a family album though. Grandmother had those too. The clippings in the furniture catalogue are just things she liked, for one reason or another. Some of the newspaper articles are about current events, and some are stories that have illustrate some religious or moral lesson. There are poems, and cartoons. There are several "Ripley's Believe It or Not" illustrations. There are several pictures of historic figures with stories about them: George Washington, William Shakespeare, the philosopher Cato. There are too many to list. Grandmother pasted a lot of pictures onto the pages of the catalogue, pictures of famous places, Mount Vernon, the Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem, pictures of people that caught her interest, and pictures that she just thought were pretty.  

I'll eventually spend more time talking about the catalogue. I've actually just started to look at it in greater detail, and to index it, but looking at the pictures and reading the articles and poems tells me so much about my grandmother, what she liked, what interested her, what she valued. When I first noticed it, my daughter and son, Cheryl and Donald were with me, and we thumbed through it together. The main thing we noticed that the was the number of stories and pictures that Grandmother saved for her children.  

Grandmother loved children. She had ten of her own and also lots of grandchildren. After she died my mother donated a baptismal font to the Paul's Valley Episcopal Church in her memory. The reason she gave to me for her choice was: "whenever I think of Mamma, I think of babies."  

My mother, Wenonah, told me that one time Grandmother rode the train to Oklahoma City alone. It was an emergency, so she had to leave the younger children under the care of the older ones. Anyway when she got back she told them about her trip. She said: "All the time I was gone I kept thinking that I had forgotten something, that something was missing. Finally I realized it was because I wasn't holding a baby."  

Anyway, there are a lot of newspaper clippings that Grandmother cut out and pasted in the Furniture Catalogue from a series entitled, "A Bedtime Story." Here's one of them: 

Uncle Wiggly and the Persian Cat

copyrighted by Edward R. Garis

          Once upon a time, when Uncle Wiggly and nurse Jane were going out to the moving pictures in the evening, they heard, as they passed an old stump, a sad sort of voice saying:

          "Nobody wants me! Oh, nobody wants me. How sad it is not to have a home where somebody wants you!"

          "Did you hear that, nurse Jane?" asked Uncle Wiggly as they stopped near the stump.

          "Yes, I heard it," answered the muskrat lady, hurrying along. "And you'd better not stop, Wiggly. Let's go on to the pictures. Maybe that's the bad fox or wolf trying to get you close enough so they can grab you."

          "Oh, indeed I'm not a fox or wolf," the voice behind the stump went on. "I am a poor Persian cat, and because I look so queer no one around here wants me," and with that there stepped out into the moonlight a large cat with long silky fur.

          "Oh, my goodness! What a queer cat!" cried Nurse Jane.

          "That's what everyone says about me," complained the poor creature.

          "But what makes your hair stick out that funny way all over you as Kitty Kat's used to do when she saw a dog?" asked Nurse Jane.

          "It's because I'm a Persian cat," answered the pussy,who was now sitting on the stump. "Persian cats always have long fur, like the Angora cats, only it sticks out more. But my fur is as soft as silk! Just feel!"

          Nurse Jane put her paw on the Persian cat's back, and the muskrat lady was not afraid of the cat, nor did the cat try to chase the muskrat lady.

          "Oh, Uncle Wiggly! What lovely, long thick silky fur this cat has!" Exclaimed Nurse Jane. "I can hardly see my own paw when I put it on the cat's back. The fur hides it, and it hides my diamond rings too."

          "Hush! Better not speak of you diamond rings!" Whispered Uncle Wiggly.

          "Why not?" Nurse Jane wanted to know.

          "Because the Burglar Fox might be around, and when we come home from the movies he might jump out from behind a tree and take your jewelry," said the bunny gentleman.

          "Oh, I wouldn't like that!" said Nurse Jane, as she raised her paw and her rings up from the midst of the thick fur on the Persian cat's back. "But if you want a home, she said to the pussy, "Why not come and like with us? I like you, even if you are different from short-hair cats."

          "So do I," said Uncle Wiggly. "Come to the movies with us, and then come to my hollow stump bungalow."

          "Oh thank you, I will," mewed the Persian cat. So she went to the movies with Uncle Wiggly and Nurse Jane, and on their way home, all of a sudden, as the muskrat lady passed a big tree a voice shouted:

          "I want those diamond rings!"

          "Whose diamond rings?" cried Uncle Wiggly.

          "Nurse Jane's," was the answer. "I'm a burglar fox, and I know she has diamond rings. Take 'em off. I want 'em." and with that out popped the bad fox.

          "Oh, what shall I do to save my lovely diamond rings?" whispered Nurse Jane.

          "Hush!" answered the Persian cat. "Just drop the rings off your paws in the thick fur of my back. They will be safe there and the Fox can't find them."

So Nurse Jane held her paw over the back of the Persian cat and shook off her diamond rings. They fell in the thick, soft fur and stayed there, and the cat walked around in the moonlight careless like, as if she had no jewelry at all.

          "Give me the diamond rings!" Barked the fox. Nurse Jane held out her empty paws. "Ho! Ho! Fooled again! Barked the Fox. I sure thought I'd get some diamond rings tonight, but you have none, though I thought you had. "I'll try it again some other night."

Then he ran away because he heard a policeman dog coming, never thinking to look on the back of the Persian cat for the hidden diamond jewelry. Then Nurse Jane took her rings out of the long haired cat's fur and put them back on her paws, and soon she and Uncle Wiggly and the Persian cat were safe in the bungalow, where the pussy lived for some time.

          So you see, it is a good thing sometimes to have long fur, and if the automobile doesn't bump into the street lamp and make it look all twisted like a corkscrew, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggly and the snow fox.

Anniversary

May 2nd was the anniversary of my mother's death - she died two years ago. We visited some of my cousins in Texas last week so I got to talk about her a little with them. When their father was alive he suffered from emphysema. Once he was looking for a place to stay and at the age of 90, my mother got on the phone and contacted the head of Chickasaw social services to help him find an apartment.  

I went hiking a couple of days ago. I always think of my mother while I'm hiking, I guess because it allows my mind to wander. Jim was pretty much homebound for the last 10 years of her life, so she enjoyed hearing about my treks into the mountains, and seeing my pictures. When I went hiking I was always thinking about what I could tell her about my trip. I still find myself doing that, even though she's not here any more.  

Jim travelled with my father before he died, but she was a little afraid of the mountains. She told me once about getting a panic attack while trying to climb up the steps next to Seven Falls in Colorado Springs. The experience puzzled her because she had climbed on trees and on the roof of her parents' house as a girl without ever being afraid.  

A couple of days ago I hiked up the Ben Tyler Trail just a few miles SW of Denver. The trail is between 9000 and 10500 ft elevation. There's not much snow remaining there, but the vegetation still hasn't grown up much yet. We had hoped to see some wild flowers - Jim loved wild flowers, but there weren't many. They were like jewels when we saw them though. There were a couple of clumps of Pasque Flowers, and in the middle of a bed of dead grass and fallen leaves we found about four stems of Fairy Slippers, a beautiful variety of orchid.

                                                Fairy Slippers

 

We met a young woman on the way down and got to talking with her. She does a lot of hiking and was telling us how she struggles to keep fit while holding down a job. I told her about how my mother started exercising with Jack LaLanne in her mid 40's and continued until she developed bone cancer at the age of 96. She remains my inspiration for the benefits of exercise.

There was a story on the news recently about a bear who wandered into Boulder Colorado and had to be tranquilized and taken out into the mountains. About a month later the same bear showed up in Boulder again. He had traveled about 30 miles to return. That's the kind of story Jim enjoyed. She would tell me about her childhood and I would tell her about the mountains, or whatever else I was doing.  

I really miss her. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but she was always on my side; she was always proud of me; she was always interested in whatever I was doing, and she was always glad to see me or to hear from me. No one will ever be able to replace her.  

                                       James Wenonah Paul Gunning