Kmart Smart

    

Clockwise from the top,
Aunt Marie with her nieces
 Norma Jean, Brenda and Cathy.

     Kmart has a back-to-school commercial out right now that features a group of middle school kids running around and dancing to "We've Got the Beat."  It's been a long time since Kmart was on my shopping radar but someone in their marketing department knows what they're doing because every time my daughter sees this commercial she asks if we can go to Kmart - because it's so cool.  I'm fairly certain that Sarah has never been inside a Kmart, mainly because I have no idea where a Kmart is here in Nashville, but after seeing this commercial over and over again she really wants to go.  I've told her that when I was her age we shopped at Kmart all the time because Target hadn't been invented yet. "Lucky!" she yelled at me. Now she thinks I'm depriving her of some great shopping experience because she's never been to Kmart.  Things only got worse for me after I told her about my Aunt Marie.
 
     Aunt Marie was my grandmother's older sister (you're welcome, Grandma)  and she was a woman who lived life on her own terms. She had a long memory for grievances, cooked badly but proudly and had her husband sneak ham sandwiches into the Cardiac Care Unit at the hospital because her restricted diet was too bland. Aunt Marie also loved the Kmart Blue Light Specials - a lot. When I explained to Sarah just what a Kmart Blue Light Special involved (an announcement over the store intercom, a flashing blue light, a mad rush to get whatever was on sale whether you needed it or not) she became even more convinced that she had to get to a Kmart. And silly me, I realized too late that I'd introduced my daughter to the idea of competative shopping - something that even at the tender age of six really appeals to her.  So, on our next road trip while I'm in the front seat scouting the horizen for IKEA signs, I'm guessing Sarah will be in the back seat keeping her eyes peeled for a Kmart, and when we find one I can tell her about her Aunt Marie all over again.

Facebook Family

Asbury and Della Beeler

The note on the back reads

"Aunt Esther's brother".

     Late one evening last winter I was cruising through Facebook when I came across a friend's photo album entitled "Adventures in Genealogy."  Since I had recently started my own adventure in genealogy I took a few minutes to look through her album. What I found was unexpected. She had photos of several Union County cemeteries - cemeteries where I knew I was related to lots of people who are buried there, and apparently, so was she. There was one photo of a gravestone belonging to "Asbury Beeler" and in the comment section she noted that his wife, Della, was buried somewhere in Knoxville.  Asbury and Della Beeler - I knew who they were too (sort of) because I had a photograph of them in my family history file. Could my Facebook friend and I be related? 

Outhouse at Beeler Cemetery
Union County, Tennessee
2008

     As it turns out, Leslie* and I are related, but not through the Asbury and Della Beeler in the photo above.  As hard as it was for me to believe, there was another couple - another Asbury and Della Beeler, who are Leslie's great-something grandparents.  The Asbury and Della Beeler in the photo here are my great-something uncle and aunt.  It seems that Asbury and Della were popular names in the 19th century and it also seems that every Beeler in Union County has a common ancestor in either John Valentine Beeler (1737-1823) or his father, Ulrich Beeler (1705-1788, I think, don't quote me on these dates). 

     Because there are a few branches of my family tree that don't fork quite as much as maybe you'd like them to, I am triple related to Ulrich Beeler and John Valentine Beeler - but the non-forking branches of the family tree really are a topic for another day, several days maybe (no sibling marriages, just some kissin' cousins). Also, the fact that my much cherished Scotch-Irish Appalachian roots are actually kind of Germanic (Beeler was Bulher -oy vey) seems to indicate that I am not as "highland lassy" as I have always believed myself to be.  You really have to be open to new ideas about yourself when you start exploring your family tree - like the fact that you may be your own 4th cousin once removed who now has an explanation for your odd love of saurkraut.

*Leslie and I both attended St. Joseph School and Knoxville Catholic High School.  Her sister Betsy and I were in the same class.

Cicadas

Late Summer, 2008

View up the hill
from the Old Highway

Every evening for the past week or so I have been listening to the sound of the cicadas in my backyard here in Nashville and it's made me homesick.  I miss my grandmother and I miss her house and for the first time in a very long time I miss my grandfather.  Gran passed away on July 8, 1982 which means that he's been gone most of my life, but at the end of this summer I am missing him like he died yesterday. What I want more than anything right now is to drive out to the country and sit on the front porch and visit with my Grandma and listen to the cicadas off in the distance.

The Beaches of Anadarko

     At least once a year, Joel and the kids and I pack up the car and drive south for eight hours to spend a week or so on the Gulf Coast. Sometimes we go with friends or family and sometimes we go with just us, but we always go.  On our most recent drive down to the beach I saw a herd of buffalo grazing on a farm and I pointed it out to the kids because, you know, it was a herd of buffalo.  I started to tell them about how when I was little my parents and I would go to Oklahoma every summer and how we visited a town called Anadarko where they had lots of buffalo-es (what the heck is the plural of buffalo?).  Sarah, never one to be impressed by much of anything, said "Anadarko!?  That sounds weird.  Why would you go there?  Was there a beach there?"  Um, no - there were no beaches in Anadarko. There were buffalo-es and cowboys and if I'm remembering correctly, a whole lot of heat.  Oklahoma is hot in August. Also, it's very flat - but it's flat all the time, not just in August. 

Welcome to Arkansas.
Only 300 miles to Oklahoma.

    We spent a week in Norman, Oklahoma almost every summer because that's where my dad's brother and his family lived.  We would take two days to drive from Knoxville across Arkansas and into Oklahoma because my dad is one of those "all about the journey" kind of travellers. We stopped here and there and everywhere in between because, why not, right? Um yeah - and don't get me started on the Burl Ives 8 Tracks my dad played in the car. Childhood - it leaves its scars.

     What I didn't know until very recently was that my mother's side of the family has some connections in Anadarko, Oklahoma as well.  My gg-uncle, J.L. Williams*, moved there with his wife, Nellie Ann Wolfe, sometime between 1903 and 1910.  The photo below shows J.L. and Nellie with four of their children. I can't imagine how long it took them to get from East Tennessee to Oklahoma in the early 1900s, longer than two days I guess.  I wonder if they ever got homesick for the hills and ridges they left behind in Tennessee.

The J.L. Williams Family
1959

* J.L. (Jake Lillard) Williams was born in 1887.  He was the older brother of my great-grandmother, Mary Williams Hurst.  They also had a younger sister, Catherine, and a younger brother, John.