Girly Girls Day

Charleston, South Carolina
2008

     This is the photo that my sister-in-law, Stacey, took moments after Sarah had her ears pierced. I was hiding behind a large rack of earrings because oh good grief  they were putting HOLES in my baby's ears! It was July 4th, 2008 and we were in Charleston celebrating with the [then] South Carolina Vallejos. We took Sarah to get her ears pierced at Claire's and then we went to a sweet little store called Girly Girls where Luz bought Sarah several dresses and pairs of shoes and a purse. Then we went back to Aunt Stacey's and had chocolate chip cookie cake. It was a perfect girls day - at least that's what I wanted Sarah to remember. Luz passed away on October 25th, 2008. Only time will tell what Sarah will remember about her Lola, but when she asks about her I can tell her about their day in Charleston and I can show her the pictures of Lola smiling and so happy to be spending the day with her grandaughter. I wish that Sarah and Luz could have had many girly girls days, but I am forever grateful that they shared this one.

As The World Turns No More



"As The World Turns" ended its long television run on Friday, September 17th.  Once upon a time I knew every plot twist and turn of that show, following Lily and Holden and Dusty through their various stages of falling in and out of love in Oakdale. I became a fan of ATWT because my mom watched it and she watched it because CBS was the only station that came in clearly when she was home with me when I was a baby.  We lived in the "the basement", a basement that was supposed to be the foundation for the house my parents would someday build on top - but only the basement was ever finished and when I was 18 months old we moved to the yellow house on Hallsdale Road where I grew up.  We could watch all three network stations in our Hallsdale house, but the CBS soaps -"The Young and the Restless,"  "As The World Turns" and "Guiding Light" - continued to be part of the background of many summer days and snow days. My grandmother wasn't much for soap operas but she told me many times as I sat in her den watching "Guiding Light" that her mother had listened to that show on the radio and she would comment that the same characters were still on the show.  I hadn't watched "As The World Turns" or "Guiding Light" in a very long time and when I was home with my own babies reruns of "The Golden Girls" and "Law and Order" were the background noise of our days. Still, I'm sad to hear that it's been cancelled - I liked knowing that the world was still turning out there somewhere, even if I wasn't watching it.     

Love Endures

Norma and John Maguire

on the occassion of their wedding

Cathedral of Christ the King

Atlanta, Georgia

September 4th, 1965

       When my mom and dad decided to get married, there were a few things that my mother had to agree to. Because my father was Catholic (and she wasn't at the time) she had to agree to be married in the Catholic Church during a Catholic Mass and she had to agree to raise any children that the two of them might have as Catholic. All of that was fine with her, but there was one part of the wedding ceremony that my mother would not agree to, she would not agree to say the word "obey" in her wedding vows - well, unless my father said it too. I'm pretty sure that they both said they would "love, honor and cherish" each other and that they would stay together for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health - but "obey" wasn't going to be part of the bargain. My mother wasn't about to start out a lifetime committment with the word "obey" as part of the deal.

   My parents didn't have a big wedding, I think there were less than 25 people in attendance and when the ceremony was over the two of them stopped at a hamburger stand to kill some time so that my mom's sisters could get back to the apartment to set up the reception.   They took a honeymoon trip to New York where they met Muhammid Ali walking down the street and even had their picture made with him only to have their car broken into and their camera stolen a few days later.
  
     My parents have had their share of ups and downs in their 45 years of marriage. There were several points along the way where one or both of them could have thrown in the towel and walked away - but they didn't. The two of them continued to stubbornly hang in there. One of my favorite passages from the Bible is the verse from Corinthians that says that love is patient and kind and that love bears all things, and believes all things, and hopes all things, and that love endures all things. Forty-five years of marriage really puts all of that to the test, but this weekend I am celebrating the fact that despite the obstacles they faced along the way, my parents have remained committed to each for the long haul.  Love truly endures all things.

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.