Can You Inherit A Memory?

There was once an airfield just east of Villisca. It was on the north side of the highway just west of the Nodaway River bridge as we traveled into town. I remember going to an air show there as a small child. I have a memory that one of the performers that day fell to his death, but I don't have a memory of seeing the actual fall.

"Have you ever remembered something that you couldn't remember, Anna, a memory that belongs to someone else, that isn't yours at all?" That is a question asked in the book I am currently reading. It made me wonder if it was possible - especially after reading this in my Mother's Diary from July 5, 1937: "Went to Red Oak. Arthur K. & Mary Jo went with us. Had a swell time. (Except) The parachute jumper got killed."

It makes me think I have made two memories into one - my own and my Mother's. She was the one who went to a July 4th celebration which included an air show. She was the one who saw a performer fall to his death, not me. Perhaps she told me about that while we were watching the air show at Villisca and it got incorporated into my memories as being something I witnessed.

When I read Mom's diary from her 17th year, I do remember her telling me some of the things she wrote about - the boys she dated, the plays put on at the school house, walking up to the neighbors to visit, herding the cows along the road so they could pasture the grass in the ditches, visiting the young man who got a head injury when a swing knocked him into Spring Lake, gathering moss at the rock quarry to take home for their big fish pool in the yard, and one she didn't record in her diary - she and Aunt Lois climbing up on the roof of the barn. So, in some ways, her memories did become my memories - at least my memories of her youth.

It sounds like she had more fun at seventeen than I did - dances, parties, movies, several boy friends - but perhaps it seems that way to me now because she didn't tie herself down to one guy by going steady at seventeen as did I.

One thing she wrote about that I had never heard was going to Shenandoah to the Tom Mix Circus on June 11, 1936 - Grandpa Joe's 40th birthday. I remember seeing a Tom Mix movie or two as a youngster - Tom and his famous trick horse, Tony, but I had no idea his first love was the circus and that he had his own circus and wild west show for a brief time or that my Mom had seen him.

Mom also mentioned going to see the Hatcher Players tent show in her diary. (They quartered in New Market for twenty-one years.)  I do remember the Hatcher Players, although by the time I saw them in the early '50's, they were known as the Sun Players. They advertised: "A new play every night, feature show, 'Twin Beds'. Good clean entertainment for the whole family with Toby and the Hill Billy Band direct from Nashville, Tenn. At the fairgrounds for one week. Admission 60 cents adult; 20 cents for children."

The Schaffner Players tent show replaced the Sun Players a few years later. I saw them at the Adams County Fair Grounds, too. I still remember the end of their 100+ years history when 'Toby' suffered a heart attack in 1962. There were a lot of double entendre jokes and it was fun.

There are many studies involving inherited memory. There was even a movie in 1988 - Altered States, with William Hurt, that delved into deep DNA memories and experiences. For myself, I'm a believer. I believe some of my Mother's memories live on within me. I can only hope some of mine live on in my children.

The Owl and the Pussycat Dolls*

Or, in this case, the Owl, Ruth (17), Lois (15), Poochie and Trix. There was a story connected with this photo, but sorry to say, I've forgotten the details. It probably involved the owl getting their chickens and the necessity of doing away with the owl. From the flashlight in Mom's right hand and Grandpa Joe's revolver in Aunt Lois's left hand, I believe the actual killing happened at night. The next morning they used the ladder to get the owl out of the tree and then posed for the picture -  two such brave and stylish wild west heroines!

I remember Mom reading Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat to me as a child. Even then I thought it was a very odd pairing, but I enjoyed the poem. How fun to discover that Lear made up the word runcible, as in runcible spoon, and it later went on to become the name of a utensil.

	The Owl and the Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

I haven't heard Katy Perry's vocal version of the poem, but here's a lovely spoken version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1mNmFf3qPk

(*In Mom and Aunt Lois's day, they might have been referred to as dolls, but never as pussycat dolls. They probably never even watched that pop girl group and dance ensemble in their later years.)

The Dangers of Audio Books

I've always thought that listening to an iPod, MP3 player or any other device while walking or even driving could be dangerous - as in "you might not be aware of impending danger because you can't hear it". I never considered listening to an audio book while riding a stationary bike at the Y to be hazardous - hazardous in terms of embarrassment, not bodily injury.
Fortunately there weren't too many people in the room with me to see the tears flowing as I listened to the end of Robert Hicks's The Widow of the South. The novel is a fictionalized version of a true event that took place during and after the Civil War near the town of Franklin, Tennessee. The fighting took place November 30, 1864 and is known as The Battle of Franklin. 

 Before the two armies met on the battlefield, John and Carrie McGavock's house on Carnton Plantation had been commandeered as a Confederate field hospital. The floors of the house were covered with the wounded as was the yard outside. More than 6,000 soldiers of the South were killed or wounded. The pile of amputated limbs was higher than the wash house roof. The battle is described as one of the worst disasters of the war for the Confederate States of America. General Hood's Army of Tennessee was all but destroyed.

 Author Robert Hicks became interested in Carrie McGavock and Carnton after being named to the board of directors for the Preservation of Carnton Plantation. His novel tells not only Carrie's part in tending to the wounded in her home, it tells the larger story of what happened afterwards - of all the dead buried in shallow graves where they fell on the battlefield. Two years after the end of the war, the owner of the land was going to plow it up and plant a crop. Rather than allow the bones of the dead to become fertilizer, she managed to have all the bodies dug up and re-interred in the family cemetery near her home.

At the end of the book, a family from Alabama arrives and asks Carrie to show them where their son is buried. They are going to take the body back home to be buried on their farm. When they see the graves and the beauty of the surrounding countryside, they decided to leave him buried there. A year later they return with a wagon load of dirt. Once again they ask to dig up their son - not to take his body home to Alabama, but to replace the soil covering him with the dirt from their farm. That is when I started bawling.

Hicks's book was published in 2005. It has lead to increased interest and funds for the restoration of Carnton Plantation and the battlefield area - much of which had become commercial development but which is now being returned to the way it looked during the Civil War Battlefield and made into a park. They hope to have it reconstructed  by November 30, 2014 in time for the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

As I've said before, I really enjoy novels based upon true stories. This book, either in audio or print form is so well done. Fictionalizing the story made it so interesting, so easy to get into. If we ever go on another trip to visit Civil War Battlefields, this one will be on the top of my list to see. (And I plan to read Hicks's next novel, A Separate Country.)

Second Cousins? Double Cousins? Or?

Or first cousins, once-removed? I was happy to run into my cousin, Ron Travis (above on the right) yesterday. I hadn't seen him in ages. Even though we only chatted a few minutes, it was nice to catch up a bit. He was with his step-son, Trevor McMahon, and when he introduced me as his cousin, he said, "First cousin? Second cousin?" I said, "Or first cousin, once-removed?" Then we decided, "Who cares? We're related."
The definition of cousin in kinship terminology is that you have an ancestor in common. First cousins have the same grandparents. Second cousins have the same great-grandparents. With Ron, our great grandparents on our Mothers' side were Rufus and Kate Ridnour.
This picture of Ron and his family was taken at Mom & Dad's during the Ridnour cousins reunion in 1957. In back are Mom's first cousin, Esther (Haley) Travis and her husband, Lloyd. Middle row are their children, Shirley, Jenice, Russ and Ron. The little girl in front of Shirley is one of Calvin & Delores Haley's five girls - Kathy, I believe.
As I mentioned a few days ago, Mom and her sisters were always close to their Haley cousins - remaining so as they grew up and had families of their own. Lloyd and Esther lived about four miles from us and attended the same church. We often went to their home or they came to ours. The adults played cards while we played hide and seek, tag or kick the can.
I still am unclear about how cousins are defined - other than first cousins who are the children of siblings. I used to think Esther and I would be second cousins and Ron and I third cousins. But I think it is that Esther (Mom's first cousin) and I are first cousins once-removed and Ron and I are second cousins.
It is more confusing for me to figure out further down the line. The father of one of my classmates and my grandmother were first cousins. So even though J and I are the same age, we are not of the same generation.  His dad and my mother would be first cousins, once-removed? His dad and I would be first cousins, twice-removed? He and I would be first cousins, thrice-removed??? This is where you just need to say, "We're distant cousins."
Then there are double cousins. That happens when two siblings from one family reproduce with two siblings from another family. I remember first hearing the term as a child when Mom tried to explain the double cousins in the Mauderly-Ridnour's. A brother and sister of Grandma Kate Mauderly's married a sister and brother of Grandpa Rufus Ridnour's.
There were no divorces in my parent's generation, so we didn't have to deal with the questions of step-cousins or half cousins. However, after Ron's first marriage ended, he married a second cousin of mine on my Dad's side whose first marriage had also ended. So, when they married, did they become my double second cousins? I'm confused.
I have my own definition of cousin. It is someone I know I am related to somehow that I'm willing to admit being related to.

Oh, yeah, and what are kissin' cousins??

"Take The Joy And Bear The Sorrow"

I did not write about the audio book I listened to last month - Charles Frazier's Nightwoods. My listening is so disjointed - some in the car, some on the treadmill - with days sometimes in between. This book was so dynamic, so beautifully read by Will Patton, I knew I was missing too much. I knew I wanted to read the book before I wrote about it.
(Will Patton also narrates Frazier's Thirteen Moons. Frazier himself narrates his first, highly acclaimed novel,  Cold Mountain. I hope to listen to it just to compare the narrative voices and to enjoy Cold Mountain again.)

"You can't even cross a river without having to pay a toll." (Archilochos - 7th Century B.C.) This is the epigram in Frazier's book, Nightwoods. It speaks to the heavy cost paid by Frazier's characters of just plain surviving in North Carolina's backwoods of the early 1960's.
For reasons of her own, Luce has chosen to live a solitary life away from civilization. She is caretaker of an old abandoned summer lodge an hour away from the small town where she grew up. Her peaceful, solitary life is shattered when a social worker delivers into her care the young children of her murdered sister. Luce is just beginning to break through the children's traumatized insulation when their step-father moves to town. He was acquitted of murdering their mother, but he's looking for the money he had stolen and she had secreted before her death. He believes the children and their Aunt Luce must have the money.
Through alternating chapters we learn more about all the characters narrated by Frazier's quality writing. This is an example - when Luce is asked why she took the job as caretaker of the lodge: "She said she took the job at a point where she was of a mind to get over thinking about hopes and fears and desires. They didn't help a bit when it came to voyaging safely through a day. Just live every one as it came and not let people intrude on you. Shut up and hope everybody else did the same. Strive for whole uneventful weeks where the weather was about all that changed. She pointed out that weather was plenty interesting to watch as it passed over you, and it had entertained people for thousands of years. And not just immediate weather but also the larger movements of the seasons. You had to learn how to feel the long flow and not get hung up on the day-to-day. Big swellings and recedings, upturned and downturned sweeps linked in slow rhythms built from millions of tiny parts -- animal, vegetable, mineral -- not just temperature and length of daylight. For example, the way a rhododendron changed throughout the year, month by month."
Writing such as this is why I read - not just for the enjoyment of the story - but for the pleasure in the words and how they make me feel - for what I learn about all I'll never know. Frazier and authors like him make me think.

 As promised when I read Virginia Ellis's The Wedding Dress last month, I read her next novel, The Photograph. The former had a Civil War setting, the latter is set during WWII. It is a book about a young girl coming of age during a time when women had to deal with their men going off to war and how it affected their lives. I like reading about this era. This book is a nice sentimental look at that time.

Having just discovered P.D. James, I was ready to read her latest novel, Death Comes to Pemberley featuring characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In her opening 'Author's Note' she writes: "I owe an apology to the shade of Jane Austen for involving her beloved Elizabeth in the trauma of a murder investigation......." "No doubt she would have replied to my apology by saying that, had she wished to dwell on such odious subjects, she would have written this story herself, and done it better." I concur. This book is hardly worth reading. It is another example of anything a popular writer writes getting published.

It was ironic that at the same time I read P.D. James's attempt at a Jane Austen novel I was already reading Stephanie Barron's Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (Being the First Jane Austen Mystery). If you are an Austen fan and want to read mysteries based upon her and her era, I recommend Barron's series. The writing is true to the times and the mystery and its solving are believable. There appear to be fourteen books in this series. And while I found the first to be entertaining reading, I probably won't go in search of more. I'd rather spend my reading time with authors like Charles Frazier.

"Take the joy and bear the sorrow, looking past your hopes and fears:
Learn to recognize the measured dance that orders all our years."
     (From 'To His Soul' by Archilochos)

Then There Were Two

 There are now only two remaining Ridnour cousins of the original seventeen. Leona was the last of Uncle Guy and Aunt Lottie Inman's children. She died on Valentine's Day - three days after her and Walt's 57th wedding anniversary.
Mom was closer to her Haley cousins than she was to her Inman cousins and the Inman cousins didn't come to the family reunions as often as everyone else, so my memories of them are fewer. And most of them are sad.

 Leona had an older brother, Ray Leroy, pictured here with Leona and their parents, Guy and Lottie. I never knew Ray, but I remember Mom telling me about him. When he was almost eighteen years old, he was kicked in the stomach by a colt. He died two days later. That was in April of 1940. The previous August, Ray and Leona's little sister, Macey had died. She was six years old. Mom was one of the pall bearers at her funeral.
Uncle Guy and Aunt Lottie lived north of Corning; west of where Lake Icaria is now. We went there once to see them and my great-grandma Kate Ridnour who was living with them. I was always fascinated by Uncle Guy because Mom had told me he was one-quarter Cherokee Indian. I believed that was where the girls got their beautiful dark eyes and lovely cheek bones.
In 1945, Leona married Rex Kirkman. They had two daughters, Jeanie and Janice. I don't remember Rex, but I do remember his death in 1953 - how sad it was for Leona and the two little girls.

 Finally, some happiness when Leona married Walter Veatch in 1955. I remember going to visit them when their son, Johhny was born. A daughter, Julie, followed, completing their family. In this picture from their wedding day, Walt and Leona are flanked by Walter and Lola Brokaw - Leona's sister and brother-in-law. In front are Jean and Janice.

 I found this Christmas card from when Jeanie was a year old among Grandma Ridnour's pictures. I returned it to her when I attended visitation. I hadn't seen her in many years. Julie was the only one of the kids I had seen recently. (Johnny died in 2001.) I reminded Janice of the time I had stopped to see her when we both lived in Des Moines; something she had no memory of and I only have a vague memory of a house somewhere on the south side.
What I do remember is a family dinner in the mid-50's at Reldon and Lois Ambrose's near Lenox. Les and Mark were little. Some of the older cousins walked down the road a short distance to an old house. We went in and started exploring. I saw what I thought was a head in a bucket and ran screaming out the door. It turned out to be a horse tail. I remember someone saying that the house was "where Rex and Leona had lived." When I was talking to Janice, she mentioned that she and her husband live on the home place. One of these spring days I am going to drive down there to see if any of those childhood memories return.

In this picture, Leona's mother, Aunt Lottie, is the girl on the right. She was the youngest of the Ridnour kids. Aunt Florence is on the left and Grandpa Joe is in front. Aunt Lottie and Uncle Guy had five children. Grandpa Joe and Grandma Delphia had three girls. Aunt Florence and Uncle Tom had nine kids. Two of their girls, Darlene and Doris, are the last living of the cousins.

Sweet Violets

"Sweet Violets. Sweeter than the roses...
Covered all over from head to toe...
Covered all over with Sweet Violets."
Those sweet violets have to be one of the first flowers I was able to identify (along with Dandelions, of course) - and they have stayed one of my favourites through all the years.
The picture is of the two pieces I kept that show the pretty little violets of my youth. The cup on the left is less than two inches high and an inch and five-eighths across. The handle is so tiny, I wonder if the cup is from a child's tea set? I've had it so long I no longer remember where it came from. It has a gold rim and I think it is obviously hand painted.
The lovely cream pitcher is marked "Made in England". When I use it (as I did when Mark & Lindsey were here for Christmas), I fantasize my English great-great (even 3x great) grandmother might have once used it - though I really don't believe it is quite that old - and it isn't a piece handed down to me. I love it for its classic lines and the violet appearing inside.
When I look up the lyrics to Sweet Violets, I'm surprised to learn their humorous lyrics. I thought I was remembering the Dinah Shore version. Now I'm more inclined to believe it is the Roy Clark song I'm thinking of: "All year long, I waited for the chance, to ask if she'd go with me to the dance. She said, "What kind of flowers will I get?" And all I could afford to buy were sweet violets.
Sweeter than all the roses...covered all over with teardrops...she laughed at my sweet violets. That night another stole my love away. He promised long-stemmed roses everyday. She broke my heart and I still can't forget the time she laughed and left me with my sweet violets.
Her tear-stained letter came to me today. Now someone buys her orchids everyday. She has the world at her command and yet she wants the boy who offered her love and sweet violets...
Sweeter than all the roses.... Covered all over with teardrops...she cries for my Sweet Violets...." (Written by Joe Allison and Danny Hill.)
Those sweet violets ..... the little ditch flowers I picked for May Baskets....the plant that many consider a weed....the flowers I remember covering the bedspreads and curtains in the bedroom of a revered couple I once did housecleaning for....the flowers I still pick out of the yard and bring in to place in that small-mouthed perfume bottle I saved just for that reason...the flowers that will soon herald spring for me....the flowers that are 'sweeter than the roses' - the flowers that I hope my granddaughters will one day receive and value for all the right reasons.....those flowers....sweet violets.