Remember Pearl Harbor

December 7 is almost over, but I have been thinking all day that I would have to do a post tonight about Pearl Harbor. It's been 70 years, but some things you just don't forget.

I was eight. When my parents moved to Honolulu because my father's ship was stationed there, I had to stay behind with Bam Bam and Aunt Quail in Berkeley. I had to stay behind for nearly a year, until my orthodontist could safely pass me on to an orthodontist in Honolulu to continue the work already started on my misshapen bite. As soon as my mouth was ready, I was sent off  in style to join my parents, as a first-class passenger on the Matsonia--in those days, a real luxury liner. I was watched over by a rather stern stewardess, but I still managed to make the acquaintance of a young army lieutenant who escorted me to the nightly movies (with the stewardess' permission, of course).

This was November of 1941. I got settled in school (st. Andrews' Academy, an Episcopal school) and met the new orthodontist, and discovered the joys of living near the beach in Honolulu. We lived in a place my mother nicknamed "Dewey Dumps"--it was really Dewey Court--a series of rather modest bungalows sandwiched between the Niu Malu Hotel and an Army fort. I was in the 4th grade, thanks to Miss Olive Ferguson, who had noted my complete boredom in her third-grade class and had me promoted at mid-year, skipping the last half of the third grade. So I had been in the 4th grade for one term already--we called them Low and High back then, so I was in the High 4th. But at St. Andrews, a 4th-grader was expected to know the times table from 1 through 12, and in Berkeley, that had not been a requirement. I would be allowed to stay in the 4th grade only if I learned the times tables over the weekend. Luckily, my father was home evenings and weekends, (though he went to sea soon afterwards) so he drilled me and drilled me until I could do it. So I got to stay in Miss Akai's 4th grade class. For about three weeks.

This is Mr. Lewis' Fourth Grade class at Whittier Elementary School, Berkeley, California,  in 1941. Eight-year-old  Nancy is in the second row from the top. third from the right.

On December 7, a Sunday, I got up to go to Sunday School. Mother and I were all ready, and we were driving a neighbor child, Jane Douglas, as well. Mother picked up the phone to call her family to tell them we were ready to leave, and found it dead. Or deathly silent, anyhow. There was an operator to make the connections in those days, and Mother could her the breathing, so she shouted into the phone that it was an emergency, and was connected right away to Jane Douglas' house. That was how she found out the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor: another neighbor's husband had been called from his bed to return to his ship, and she had run over to tell Jane Douglas' mother. who told my mother. We would never have known, otherwise--we had seen planes bouncing around in the sky, but that had been happening for about six weeks or so, every Sunday, so we thought nothing of it.

Nancy in 1941 in Dewey Court, Honolulu

Other things began to happen in Dewey Court. The policemen who lived across from us had been called to duty, too, so they were dashing off to the station. Nothing was going on in the fort next door, as far as we knew--not a gun went off, there. But some of the women, mostly Navy wives, were gathering at Jane Douglas' house to talk about the situation and what they would do. Jane Douglas' father was at sea, too. We had no idea what, if anything, the Japanese had done about those ships. As the morning wore on, we began to find out more. The radio broadcast some information, and the grapevine provided some, too.

Nancy in early 1942

Some of the women opted to take their children and seek refuge with friends in the hills above Honolulu--my mother wasn't one of them. She opined that if the Japanese invaded, it would only be a matter of time until they got to the hills, so why bother. Jane Douglas' mother wanted to go to the hills, too, but my mother talked her out of it, and as Evie (Jane Douglas' mother) was terrified, we gathered up a few things and went to spend the night at their cottage. By then we had learned that we were not to have any lights on after dark, so Mother and Evie found some cardboard somewhere and used it to cover the windows in the master bedroom, so there could be one room with lights. Later, after supper, everyone gathered on and around the steps at Evie's, to listen to the radio and keep each other company. When it got time for the kids to go to bed, Jane Douglas and I went into the house, and Mother and Evie soon followed.

Around ten o'clock there was a knock on the door. Evie was afraid to answer it, but Mother wasn't, so she went to see who it was. It turned out to be two young Marines, who had been sent to patrol the street, and who were knocking on doors to let people know they were there. They looked terribly dirty and bedraggled, very unlike the Marines we were used to seeing. Marines have always been spit-and-polish proud of their appearance. Mother inquired about this, and was told that the two of them had been on the Arizona, and had swum to shore through burning oil when she was sunk. As they weren't hurt, they were immediately sent off to patrol our street. Mother took the situation in hand: she corralled uniform parts from various husband's wardrobes--Navy officer's khakis were as close as she could come, but at least were clean. She sent the young men to the shower, and gave them the clean uniforms to wear. They didn't fit, exactly, but they were clean, and the young Marines were grateful to be clean and neat once more--except for the shoes. They had to wear their own shoes, as no on else's fit--but they had clean socks. One of them was 17, and had lied about his age to get into the Marines; the other was 19. I think of them every time December 7 rolls around. Even at 8 I understood something terrible had happened to them, and yet they were proud to be able to help keep us safe that night.

Mother insisted they eat something before continuing their patrol, and when she sent them on their way, she asked if they were all right. "Oh, yes, Ma'am," was the reply, "we're Marines!"

Luckily, both Jane Douglas' and my father were in a convoy halfway between Pearl Harbor and Wake Island when the Japanese attacked both places; the convoy escaped the notice of the enemy, and so returned to Pearl Harbor intact.

School had been cancelled while bomb shelters were dug, and didn't reopen until mid-January. Everyone was issued a gas mask, but there were no child-sized ones, so Mother had to make one from a washcloth, a Lucky Strike cigarette can, and some chemicals the cloth was soaked in to make a mask to breathe through. Eventually, we kids got real gas masks.The price of bread jumped from ten cents to twenty-five cents a loaf, and we wondered if there would be Christmas trees. The Sears, Roebuck store had a wonderful display of lighted figures climbing palm trees (of course the lights went out as soon as it got dark). We made a blackout room out of my parents' bedroom, and folks continued to gather around the steps of Evie's house to listen to the radio after dinner. The cops across the street sometimes sat out on their porch and played guitar and sang. The beach was fine, once you got through the barbed wire. Gas was rationed, and meat and sugar and shoes, but we managed to survive. Mother's cousin, a construction worker at Pearl Harbor, was killed in the bombing, and she got his car--a Plymouth coupe. It had 127 bullet holes in it, none of them hitting a vital spot.

Yes, that's a gas mask. Surplus World War I, as it happens, but handy for the beginning of WWII

Mother and I stayed in Honolulu until August of 1942; when my father was re-assigned from Executive Officer of the USS Hopkins, a destroyer, to become Navigator of the USS Salt Lake City, a cruiser whose home port was San Francisco, we came back to live with Bam Bam and Aunt Quail in Berkeley.

Coming home on a troop ship. We had to wear the life vests all the time.

The trip home took 19 days, zig-zagging in a convoy across the Pacific (for comparison, it had taken the Matsonia five days to make the trip to Honolulu). When we landed in San Francisco at last, Mother called Bam Bam from a pay phone on the dock.
"Hello, Hannah," said my mother, "what are you having for dinner?"
"Pork chops," said Bam Bam.
"Can you feed two more?" asked Mother.
"Of course, Dear. Who is it?"

We took the train to Berkeley where Aunt Quail met us and drove us up the hill to her new house, completed just before the war. And there we stayed, for four years, until Father came back to run the Naval Training Center in San Francisco and we bought a house in Berkeley, where we lived until 1946, when we went to Guam.

Nancy in 1943, wearing Dad's cap

But that's a story for another day. Remember Pearl Harbor--Nan

Back to Bam Bam

Yes, that's what Helen Hawkins ended up being called by her grandchildren--and lots of other people, too. I was the oldest, and she required me to call her Grandmother as soon as I could talk. I was able to manage that, although I always called my other grandmother, Susan, "Mimi"--don't ask me why. Anyhow, Grandmother she was, our Helen, until my cousin Mark came along. He is three years younger than I, and he couldn't say Grandmother when he started to talk. What he did say was "Bam Bam," and she found it so charming that it stuck.

Helen, or Hannah, as she was often called, was quite a force of nature in Spokane. As the Society Editor for the Spokesman-Review, she met and interviewed many celebrities--I've already mentioned that. She was a brilliant interviewer, always managing to focus on what were the important things one should know about a person. She was proud of that skill; once, she said, she got Harry Bridges to admit that he liked "throwing a brickbat into things," as she put it.

Helen Lyon Hawkins (aka Hannah Hinsdale) in the late 1920's

She was always up to something in Spokane. She wrote for, edited and published a neighborhood newsletter. She sang in amateur theatricals, plying Yum Yum in the Mikado and Mabel in Pirates of Penzance (the latter costing her her singing voice, as she performed with a cold and strained her vocal chords). She started the Junior League. 

At one point, she took a fling at writing for Hollywood. That didn't last very long, as she had her family of at least five children and a husband to return to.

She lived for awhile in a tent in Yakima, where Harry was involved in brokering fruit. While there, she met Belinda Mulrooney, "Countess of Charbonneau, Queen of the Klondike", a famous, and fascinating, local.  I think she only had three children then; I do know my aunt Quail and my father were two of them.

She wrote for the Seattle Times for awhile, and could have worked for them again after Harry died, but instead she left Washington State to live in California with Aunt Quail, and never went back.

Hannah Hinsdale in a Seattle Times sketch in the late 1920's

Bam Bam told me several times that she had once been allowed to write an editorial (I don't know if it was for the Times or the Spokesman-Review). She never explained what the editorial said, except that it contained the phrase, "On the contrary, the reverse is true." No context. She was sure, she told me, that that sentence was the reason she was never asked to write another editorial.

Right after World War II, Bam Bam was hired as a stringer by the Spokesman-Review to write articles about the forming of the United Nations. She lived in Berkeley, and every day she took the E train to San Francisco to sit in the Press Box and report on the proceedings. I am not sure how she got the stories back to the paper; probably by telephone. In those days there would have been copy editors to take down her reports and turn them into articles for the newspaper

Another time, Bam Bam was a stringer for the paper, this time during the McCarthy era, when there were a great number of trials of accused Communists. A famous San Francisco Lawyer, Vincent Hallinan, was defending one of these hapless souls, and Bam Bam thought it would be a good lesson in history for me to go along one day while she covered the trial. I was living with her and Aunt Quail at the time, and I thought it would be a good idea, too. I was sixteen then, and I have never forgotten that snippet of trial I got to attend. I have no idea who the defendant was; but I will always remember his lawyer. Mr. Hallinan was cross-examining a witness, one who had accused the defendant of being a Communist and living, like all Communists, in a cesspool. 

"You say the defendant is a Communist?"

"Yes."

"And all Communists live in cesspools?"

"Well, it is..."

"Just answer the question, please; yes, or no?

"Well, yes."

"And therefore, the defendant lives in a cesspool?"

"Um, well, yes."

Mr. Hallinan fixed a beady eye on the witness and asked calmly, "And just what is that address?"

The courtroom exploded with laughter, and the red-faced witness just sputtered with indignation. That moment, in my opinion, is what got the defendant a "not guilty" verdict.

Bam Bam was an incurable flirt. Always. She could charm the socks off any male who got within two feet of her. This was somewhat unfortunate for any young ladies (like myself) who happened to be around. It made me think of Kipling's poem about the Wallflower:

"I go to concert, party, ball--

What profit is in these?

I sit alone against the wall

And strive to look at ease.

The incense that is mine by right

They burn before her shrine;

And that's because I'm seventeen, 

And she is forty-nine!"

Forty-nine or eighty-nine, with Bam Bam it made no difference. A male was to be flirted with. And she charmed them all.

Helen Lyon Hawkins in her 80's

I cropped the young man in attendance out of the above picture--but he was there.

I imagine she could have re-married many times, had she chosen to do so. I can't imagine that she wouldn't have had suitors. But she never did date again, and as far as I know, never seriously looked at another man, even after she had been widowed for many years.

She lived into her late 90's--well, if you could call it that. In her late 80's she began to suffer from dementia. She carried around a baby doll, and treated it like a baby, and there were other signs. Eventually Aunt Quail had to put her in a nursing home, because she could no longer be cared for at home. Her body was roughly ten years younger than it should have been for her age, and so she spent her last years in fine health but with no mind to speak of. I made my aunt Quail angry when I refused to visit Bam Bam after she had lost all her mental capacity--I knew she would not recognize me, and I didn't want to remember her as a bed-ridden vegetable. I am glad, too--because my memories of her are of someone full of life and mentally alert. However, like every newspaper person I have ever had close contact with, she was a terrible typist.

Until next time, Nan

Didja Notice Something?

I was just reading my e-mail when it came to me: The World Did Not End Last Friday.

Didn't end today, either. Unless all those cars on the road around me, ahead of me, and even behind me (the ones racing up to sneak in when a lane ends) while driving home tonight from Art Spa were headed to the place I had in mind for them. But as none of them disappeared, probably not.

And, believe it or not, it probably won't end next Friday, either. I hope not, because I am teaching a workshop on the following Sunday, and I would hate to have wasted all this time getting ready.

Direct-to-paper rubber stamping

The workshop is on making transfers, and though I have taught such workshops before, it's been awhile since it was polymer clay. So my samples all looked rather shopworn, not to say in tatters. Why is it, when you tell a class, "Please don't bend these samples, because that will destroy them," the very next person handling them flexes the sample and shatters it. Did they think I was lying to them? Or what?

Direct-to-paper rubber stamping with process colors (magenta, cyan and yellow)

Or what, indeed. Today, as I was making new samples, I thought about that, and the many other tips you send out in the course of teaching something. "If you do this, that will happen." And it does. "If the temperature is too hot, the clay will burn; not hot enough, the clay will not be very strong." And I am right; they are disappointed in their work, and I have to be careful not to start off with, "Did I not explain to you what would happen?" The folks in my upcoming workshop are mostly experienced enough in clay-ing, as we call it, that they will get it about the temperature. But the rest of it? who knows.

Another direct-to-paper stamping example

When I taught watercolor to rank beginners for a now defunct adult education school, I would start out telling them that artist quality paint was the only way to go. I gave them enough paint to get through the three weeks of class and beyond. I told them it was better to have three colors of artist quality (the primaries, of course) than a whole set of student quality paint. I gave them four colors--I added a green, because no matter what the theory says about mixing blue and yellow to make green, what you actually get is kind of dull. I also told them they would be happier with a paintbrush that was also artist quality, but if that was unaffordable, there were good student quality brushes to be had. I specified several kinds that were relatively inexpensive. I explained why one needed a "good" brush. I specified a good quality student grade paper that was inexpensive, and one sheet of the artist paper that they were to tear into smaller pieces for the last day of class when they would be painting a still life. Out of a class of ten, at least four would add to the colors I gave them with anything from Cotman (ok, but not artist quality) to an eight-color Prang school box. And the brushes were often not what I specified--really cheap brushes, like you get in a set of umpteen in the kid's section. The excuse was that they were not sure they would continue, and didn't want the investment. I could understand that--and I had some brushes they could borrow during class, but what about when they were home and trying to get color on a hopelessly limp brush? They were sure to be disappointed, and they probably wouldn't continue. And I used to wonder, Why won't they listen? Why can't they see it's more fun with good tools? I may have even gone overboard with the Having Fun part depending on Good Tools. May have? Hey, I acted like it was the End of the World if they didn't seem to agree with that concept.

Another dtp sample. All the stamps in these, except for the top example, were  molded foam

That's the idea, isn't it? To have fun? Otherwise, why do it?

Dtp again. Once you have the scans, you can make  other colors by manipulating them in Photoshop. None of these were done that way, though. This one was black, white, and copper stamp pad ink. All were pigment inks.

So maybe I should, as the teacher, have fun too--instead of despairing over ignored instructions. Well, I know the upcoming workshop will be fun, because there are very cool people taking it. And if they don't listen to every golden pearl of wisdom I cast before them, and even if my samples get rough treatment, it won't be the End of the World. That was supposed to be last week.

Cheers, Nan, who knows these pictures have nothing to do with the text, but is having fun using them.

Addendum to Yesterday's Post

Sometimes I wonder! Here I go and put up stuff about my daughter, the Artist-Singer-Sonwriter, and forget all about putting up a link to her web site. DUH!

Here is the link:

http://susanruth.com/

"Who is in the Crowd" by Susan Ruth

Check it out--and be sure to check out the music, too! And just so I shouldn't waste the trip, here are a few more of her recent works:

"Deconstruction" by Susan Ruth

"Throwing Stones" by Susan Ruth

"The Other Side" by Susan Ruth

"Untitled" by Susan Ruth

Susan lives in her studio in Nashville, and spends her time writing songs, practicing piano and guitar, walking her dog, Mikey, and painting. She just finished a Showcase in Florida, and will be going to New York City the end of November for a Showcase there. 

'Til next time, Proud Mama Nan

Virtual Art Journaling is Fun, But Not So Easy

Well, when I started out to do a blog. I had all sorts of good intentions about regularity, but we all know how those intentions end up...Life happens, your Muse takes a holiday, you find yourself going to but never getting there. So even if I am not posting every week, I do try.

For the last few days I have been making pages for an Art Journal--whatever that is. In my case, it turns out to be an excuse to play with different techniques and materials. I got some new Martha Stewart Craft Paint to try, and I found that I really love the stuff! I am gleefully adding it to my stash of inventory--art NEEDS inventory, remember? When it came on sale at half price for a day at Michaels, I loaded up on a set of Satin colors and a set of Pearl/Metallic colors. I got one glitter--copper--to use for Halloween, and an almost-white, and black, and indigo and a bright blue. I find I will need a bright green, a purple, and a dark brown. Of course I can mix the colors, but for craft paints, I like to get the color already mixed. I also used Golden heavy body acrylics for some pages.

So I scanned all the pages I did, and today I made a virtual art journal using some of the scans.

This is the title page

I used some Elmer's glue with the Martha paint to make crackle pages, and I also used Ranger's Distress Crackle Paint. I had to thin that some--it dries out in the jar, and you have to keep an eye on it to thin it before it gets too hard.

On the left, yellow craft paint layered with Elmer's Glue-all and red craft paint; on the right, copper metallic craft paint layered with Elmer's and blue craft paint

These pages have Distress crackle paint over Martha's craft paint

You have to zoom in pretty far to see the crackles. The two methods give quite a different effect. I have some acrylic crackle stuff to mix with my Golden colors, and I will have to give that a workout soon.

Here is the first spread after the title page.

I have been taking of series of pictures of me reflected in various objects, such as mirrors, windows, tea kettles, and this bottle, which I saw at the Saturday Market in Ilwaco when we were vacationing in Long Beach, Washington last September.

I like
I like these birdies just the way they were, so I didn't do much to them in Photoshop.

I have a lot of fun collecting things to make texture in my art. One really super find was a piece of blue plastic bubble wrap with triangular bubbles arranged in hexagons. It gets a lot of use in my art.

These circles were made using a glue stick container.

Now I have switched to Golden heavy-body acrylic. I painted a thick coat of the green, and mashed the holder I got with a pack of glue sticks into it. I also painted the holder with Golden magenta and stamped with it. Some wet brushwork over the green side thinned the paint out some. The photographs are some I took this summer.

My daughter, Susan Ruth, is an artist; these pages salute her . The circles are made with a pill-bottle top.

My daughter, Susan Ruth, lives in Nashville. She is a singer-songwriter who paints. She is over six feet tall, so you can see she doesn't deal in miniatures! The top two on the left are from a gallery opening; the painting on the bottom is recent work. She gives her paintings interesting titles. You probably can't see that the bottom one is called "From My Window I See Possibilities." The paint used here is Golden cobalt teal heavy body acrylic.

I used stencils on this spread.

For this one, I used a page twice and stuck it on a scan of the spiral wire
and  inverted the colors in Photoshop; more stencilling.

A spread cobbled together in Photoshop from two larger pages;
on the left, magenta Golden paint; on the right, Elmer's and Martha Stewart craft paint.

All in all, it was a grand couple of play days! Very refreshing! ---Nan

Grandmothers are Great, but I want to talk about ART today

I was just reading in another blog (Alisa Golden's at http://makinghandmadebooks.blogspot.com/) about Art being cut first when schools need to save money. A pretty bad idea, I sez--when I was in school, Art was a good refuge from the bullying I was subjected to, and I reckon it was for others, too. Making art has so many "uses"--like explaining your abuse when you are too young to write about it: you draw it. Or helping to explain a story in a book you are reading; then it is called "illustrations," but of course it is really Art. I'm sure you can think of lots of other things Art does for folks, even little kids, whose toys start out as someone's conceptual drawing--Art.

One of the textures I made from Lost and Taken and Valleys in the Vinyl  downloads

Art is Everywhere, and Art Never Sleeps.

Now, I don't recommend tossing out science, math and language arts just to make room to keep Art in the budget, but a little thought and effort can integrate Art into everything and anything. Scientific American is a magazine full of science, of course, but it is also a goldmine of breathtaking illustrations and photographs; somebody, somewhere in that magazine's organization has had a hefty dose of Art. Edwin Tufte has written several books on making information visually accessible to everyone; again, lots of Art involved. Geography? Some of the old maps are amazingly artful. And of course, National Geographic makes maps into art on a consistent basis. History? Well, before there were photographs, there were--wait for it--Paintings! And drawings, and mosaics, and who-knows-what-all that were used to depict battles, coronations, disasters and other memorable events. Language Arts (including all its children, like spelling, reading, and writing) can be connected to Art in lots of ways: illustrated alphabets, calligraphy, rebuses, and on and on and on. You name it, and there is Art connected to it somehow. Don't throw it out! But if you can't find a separate place for it in your budgets, Schools Everywhere, integrate it! Make Art a part of it all--won't be hard! Art has a great head start: think of the wonderful Cave Art that has come down to us after millions and millions of years. Once you have food and a roof, you make art.

Yes, this is almost the same, but I did add something

And I am a firm believer in Making Art. I try to do that all the time, but sadly, eating and sleeping have been known to interfere. I see lots of blogs by folks who are out there trying to make Art every day, and I see the wonderful, often untutored, always colorful art they make as a stimulus to my own Art.

Here are some special blogs I look at all the time:
http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com
http://bibigreycat.blogspot.com/
http://velmabolyard.blogspot.com/
http://timholtz.typepad.com
http://lostandtaken.com/
http://valleysinthevinyl.com/

They are all quite different, very individual. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer has a wonderful sense of color and freedom that I greatly admire. Bibigreycat's blog is all illustrations from all sorts of antique sources; she calls it Agence Eureka. Velma Bolyard is a fiber and paper artist who works with natural dyes and materials, and who takes the most stunning photographs of her surroundings. And Tim Holtz is--well, how can you describe Tim? He is full of enthusiasm, ideas, creativity, and energy, and I learn something new every time I open his blog. The last two are very cool sites where I can find and download textures to use in my digital art. They have also inspired me to make my own textures (Thanks, Caleb Kimbrough and Dustin Schmieding), and now I mostly do that instead of using someone else's. But they are a continually inspiring resource.

This one has eleventy-million layers, and

this one uses all my own photographs and scans

So I leave you with my very favorite Art aphorism, one which I made up (and someone else may have thought of it, too, before and after I did):

FEAR NO ART

Cheers, Nan

Yes, I had TWO Grandmothers

I've blogged a bit about my grandmother Helen Lyon Hawkins, but I haven't yet talked about my other grandmother, my mother's mother. She was amazing, also.

Her name was Susan Larkin Thomson--and the first amazing thing about her was that she was named after my great-grandfather's first wife, but she was the daughter of his second wife. My great-grandmother must have been amazing too, to let him get away with that!

Susan was the oldest of seven (or was it eight?) children, all but one girls. She was what her generation called a Great Beauty. Here is a picture of her as a young girl of about 14. The picture is from 1894.

She was very self-assured, not to say bold. When she was around the age of the picture above, her younger sister Virginia, who had been given a camera for Christmas, was asked by a spinster living across the street to take a picture of her deceased sibling, who had never been photographed while alive. Virginia was afraid to do it, but Susan took the camera and the photograph. The spinster rewarded the girls by leaving them each a three-carat diamond earring in her will. My great-grandmother confiscated the earrings, saying the girls were too young to have them, but eventually the daughters of Susan and Virginia got rings made from the stones, a generous present of another of their sisters, Holmes. I would have the ring today, but it was stolen from my mother--ripped off her finger by her cousin when she had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital.

But I digress. Susan grew up, and was presented to Society as the first modern Queen of the Veiled Prophet's Ball in St. Louis. Here is a picture of her as Queen in 1900. I always loved this picture, and my grandmother holding the crown of her office slightly behind her back. I still have the crown--it is purple velvet, with pearls forming sections all around it. It is rather tired now--but then, it is 111 years old! Her pin, a wonderful gold dragon and crown set with rubies, diamonds, and pearls is a treasured heirloom.

I always got the impression that my great-grandfather was something of a rascal where women were concerned, despite being A Pillar of Society (he was a founder of a bank and a hospital and the zoo in St. Louis); however, nothing was ever mentioned by my grandmother's generation in my hearing. Anyhow, Great-grandfather had strict rules where his children were concerned. One of these rules was that any suitor for the hand of one of the daughters had to have $1000 in the bank--a lot of money in those days. Only one of the daughters ended up unmarried--and it was said that my grandmother tried to help her elope with the postman, but the escape went awry, and Aunt May, poor soul, had to live to almost 95 without the love of her life. Aunt Holmes, whom I mentioned before, married a doctor, who turned out to be an abuser. He beat her so badly she lost the baby she was carrying, and came back to live under her father's roof as a divorced woman (something of a disgrace in those days).  Susan backed Holmes up when she wanted to get a job to support herself and her father objected; women in his family did not work (horrors!). And divorced women should stay indoors away from the gaze of society. Anyhow, Holmes got a job at the men's handkerchief counter at Stix, Baer and Fuller, the famous St. Louis department store. She was spotted there by a young man who was undeterred by the divorce and the disgrace of the working woman, and who was apparently in need of many, many handkerchiefs. By that time, Susan had married a young Cavalry officer, my grandfather Alex. Susan made sure that Holmes got to marry her young man (he turned out to be a millionaire, owner of Funsten's Pecans, and they were happily married for forty years, until his death), in spite of my great-grandfather's reservations. Susan bought Holmes' trousseau, as her father refused to so it, and Aunt Holmes was always grateful to her.

This is my grandfather Alex, taken in 1919 at the end of World War I. As you can see by the eagle on his cap, he was by then a colonel. He was in France when the word came through about the Armistice: he received the telegram announcing it, as he was Chief of Staff to the General in command. He was quite an amazing fellow--but his story has to wait for another time. Right now I want to finish up Susan's story--or at least as much as I know of it!

As the wife of a Cavalry officer, she needed to know her way around horses, and I have a picture or two of her on camping trips. She could ride a horse, and was also a crack pistol shot. She won a pistol contest or two.  My mother told me.a story about a time she and Susan were travelling the back roads of Kansas at twilight in their Model T Ford; Mother was driving. They came upon what looked like a road block up ahead. There were sinister-looking men around the block, and so my grandmother hauled out her trusty Colt .22, and rolled down the window. The road was quire rutted, my mother said, and Susan, with the gun pointed out the window of the bouncing car, asked, "Anne, do you think it would be fair to use both hands?" The road block turned out not to be bandits, but a fallen tree and workmen trying to remove it--but in the dim light, it had looked dangerous. Luckily, Susan didn't fire a shot.

Here is a picture of Susan taken in the late 1920's. She has on jodhpurs and boots; I am assuming my grandfather took the picture--he was an avid photographer.

Here she is camping, but I am not sure of the date...I call this her bag lady picture.

I think I'll stop here for now--there are more stories to tell, though, and I'll be back soon to tell them. --Nan