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knoxcotn-digest Saturday, August 18 2001 Volume 01 : Number 188
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 01:57:06 -0400 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Trace your Family Tree FREE at Ancestry.com You have been selected to receive a FREE 14-day Trial of Ancestry.com! http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=702&sourceid=1090 Discover why millions of people have come to Ancestry.com in search of their ancestors. With over 1 billion searchable records and new databases added every day, Ancestry.com delivers the speed, service, and expert help you'll need to discover your heritage. ********************************************************************* "I couldn't sign up fast enough. I look forward to all the short cuts and time savings I will incur through your site. 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Sincerely, Ancestry.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 01:32:04 -0400 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] 07 July 2001 Sunday Afternoon Rocking Sunday Afternoon Rocking Scrub Boards and Parasols (from the Sunday Afternoon Rocking series) Amazing it is, that the legacy passed on through the generations of a family might have more to do with habits than with physical evidence. I have within my home farm tools and quilts, jars and crocks, tintypes and ancient articles of clothing. But if that disappeared, if tomorrow all of those aged bits and pieces of the family before me were gone, there are things that would not be. My desire to purchase a parasol, for example- I "should". I "ought". Not so very long ago, a person from the past contacted me. I did not know this person, but knew of her family, and she knew my own. In fact she was of another generation, and knew the previous generations of my own very well. In the context of our conversation, she began to reminisce and told me of a few memories that delighted me, for I could well visualize the pictures she painted. I have long known of the "persnickety" nature of one of my main family lines, knew it very well. In fact I grew up in the shadow of it, not that it all "took" with me, but has been a source of both exasperation and amusement for all of my life. You see, my "namesake" line had a few idiosyncrasies, not "bad", but rather taken to extremes. Part of it involved the "saving" of everything, both something to be admired and then again, something to exasperate when time came that there was nothing left but disposal of the scraps of this and scraps of that kept for scores of years "just in case". Part of it involved the "record keeping" of everything which seemed to be an intense family trait, and could be truly helpful in a few places, but truly exasperating in others, as not all members of the family had the same level of organization. It was simply that they all seemed "kicked by the same mule" and did not part with a scrap of paper, however minute, and might go so far as to record each and every purchase made down to a haircut or a jar of coffee. These scraps of information, however, were not necessarily duly filed, dated, and labeled, and not necessarily of any consequence. Nor were they ever thrown away. They might just as easily be found neatly piled and stacked among twenty years of scribbled upon calendars or a great stack of used, but cleaned, carefully smoothed aluminum foil fifty years after the fact. No, indeed, hearing of these family traits came of no surprise to me. Nor did the revelation of the family's intensity about "cleanliness". If it was in eyesight it was attacked with a vengeance- by scrub brushes, rags, vinegar and whitewash. Daily. Nothing out of place, nothing to trip over, and heaven forbid a dust bunny enter a home of this family. There could be plenty of clutter, and was, but clean clutter and neat, whether with any organizational pattern or not. Things did not have to be new (in fact, were never), did not have to "match" (in fact, rarely), could be worn and basically down to "ragged" (quite often)…but by golly, they better be clean. The revelation of the family's intensity about personal appearance did not surprise me either. Some were quite "fashionable", others not at all…but for all of them, clothing better be neat, pressed and starched to the point of standing up of its own volition, human inside or not. And I well remember aunts who had slaved over an iron cookstove for most of the day spending what seemed like most of the night cleansing and applying first this cream and then another to maintain "their skin". To this day I rib one aunt that she ought to take stock in a toothpaste factory so much of the stuff can she consume in a short order of time. (She reminds me that it is few women of ninety years of age that have all their teeth!) So it was that the memories of this "friend of the family" did not surprise me at all, and it was no problem at all to visualize the long ago picture she remembered in my mind. She must have been remembering a sight she saw often some seventy years ago. It was long before the family had an old wringer washing machine out on the back porch, and it was in the days when the family still built a great fire out in the yard, placing an iron pot over it on "washing day". And there it was, said this "friend of the family", that my aunts would stand over the boiling clothes in the backyard, scrubbing them with a washboard…and all the while protecting their fair skin with a parasol! I laughed, seeing the sight in my mind, and knowing that strange as it seemed, yes, it was indeed exactly as things would have been. And what, I asked her, was my grandmother's reaction to this vanity on washday? "Oh," she replied, "Your grandmother was even more particular than they were!" And again I laughed, trying to imagine what could be more "particular" than tired sweating young women scrubbing clothes on a washboard in the backyard, all the while daintily taking turns holding the parasol. I do not pretend I am without my own "idiosyncrasies", but I fear the family would be greatly disappointed in their granddaughter as I am allergic to their level of cleanliness and neatness. Once or twice a year the "oughts" will kick in and I attack the house with typical family vengeance. Otherwise I am a disappointment. I am just as allergic to an ironing board and starch. Family failure. I do profess, however, to having a daily aversion to throwing out things, particularly scraps of paper. I have a tendency to "in spurts" write down minute details of everything, then never file or organize them, and forget when they were written or why at the time they were so important. I most often keep them, however, and my family has learned never to throw out anything upon which I have written no matter how nondescript it appears. It is the smartest way to keep mom calm. I am a family success. I have never in my life scrubbed boiling clothes in a backyard, and I rarely have a "parasol" even on a rainy day, much less a sunny one. Sigh. Such a disappointment. I would never spend the greater part of my evening applying creams and cleansing agents, but for some strange reason I quite frequently purchase the paraphernalia thinking the tendency "ought" to kick in. It sits on a shelf until it dries up, and I rarely pitch out the containers. They might come in handy, you think? Atta girl! I suspect that I am a great mixture of each of my family lines, and that those "traits" my family has learned to accept are indeed little oddities picked up in passing through life from the families that spawned me. I love my family, with all of its "peculiarities" and "oddities", the family that had such extreme notions that even the family neighbors recall them seventy years later. "Odd" my family might have been considered, and I have heard that enough from old timers to know it is fact, but respected they were as well. A shaking head and a smile is typically the reaction of those who remember, and in the next breath they are telling of the things they admired- the deep sense of responsibility and honor that accompanied the "peculiar". It is rather a delightful line to know one has come from, and with good humor I accept this is "my family". With good humor, I accept I probably have more than a few of the traits embedded within myself, and with relief (and sometimes guilt) I realize more than a few of the traits I have not adopted. I wonder sometimes if these things are so ingrained in me that I do not recognize them myself, try to figure where I have gotten each of my traits whether positive or not. Then I think of the futility of dwelling on such, as if I am happy within myself, what does it matter? Oh well. Better things to spend one's afternoon considering. In fact, I am right now thinking, it might be time to invest in a parasol I will never use, and forget where I put. No woman should be without one. Just a thought, jan
Copyright ©2001JanPhilpot ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be shared...simply share though e-mail as written without alterations...and in entirety. If planned for a publication, permission must be granted by the author. Please forward sufficient information concerning the nature and intent of the publication. Thanks, jan) Sunday Afternoon Rocking columns are distributed weekly on the list Sunday Rocking. This is not a "reply to" list, and normally only one message per week will come across it, that being the column. To subscribe send email to Sundayrocking-subscribe@topica.com Comments about the content of these messages can be sent to unicorn@sun-spot.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 01:33:43 -0400 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] 03 August 2001 Sunday Afternoon Rocking Sunday Afternoon Rocking Leaving a "Mark" (from the "Sunday Afternoon Rocking" series) In more than a few books lying about my house is inscribed: "Judson Dennis, his book". Jud, my great uncle, died in the first World War. He left his mark in a far more noble way than this, but to see his handwriting in his books and letters has made him infinitely more "real" to me. I think sometimes I know him, as well as I know many folks who lived in my own time. In more than a few books, are inscribed in childish script the same sort of statement in regard to Hazel and Helen. Those two little girls, my aunts, are now 89 and 90 years old. They left a mark I delight to find, and it is pleasant to imagine them as tiny girls struggling to form the letters attesting to ownership of those books. Somewhere, lying about the once busy railroad tracks in Tennessee, and maybe other places as well, there must be the remnants of more than a few railroad ties, all of them marked, if one but carefully looks, with the impression "TMD". And I have the very hammer that made the impression. My grandfather, for the sake of raising a family, supplemented his meager farming income by making railroad ties, exactly to railroad specification. And for practical purposes of proving their origins for the sake of payment to be rendered, he marked them with his initials. I am not sure it ever crossed his mind that he was also "making his mark" in a way that might well survive his own years on earth. Well I remember the day my own dad poured the concrete step for a storage outbuilding, and our family made quite a production of taking a stick and inscribing our initials and date it was poured. I followed through with the same tradition, and on the same property, my now grown children's tiny handprints will last for as long as a garage floor is there. We "made our mark", and I venture to imagine one of my children coming to this place one day to knock on a stranger's door and ask that they might show their grandchildren "our marks" made long ago. Fun it is, to find the "marks" those who peopled our past made in their time. A heart stopping thing it is to locate a will or a deed of a hundred years and more ago and see the tangible evidence of he whom you have only known in terms of dates, when you gaze on an actual signature. As "close" as you can get to that ancestor, you see the mark he actually made with his own hands, touch the paper he touched, wonder at the formation of the letters and what it might reveal about a personality you long to know more about. Somehow, that ancestor's "mark" makes all the more real the legends you have heard, the stories you have imagined in your mind, gives life to the dates and facts you have accumulated. And your heart is gladdened that they left "a mark", not only for the "genealogical proof", but because suddenly they are "more real". So nondescript these "marks" seem, nothing notable about them. Simply "marks". Marks to bear ownership, marks to prove, marks for the sake of practicality, marks made in an impulsive spirit of fun. And yet, because they are simplistic in their meaning, because they are so "every day" in their reason for being, they are all the more precious. They are proof that people were as we are, that they had the same inclinations, that now and then it was important "to leave a mark". They have indeed "left their mark" and in more ways than a simple signature or set of initials. We bear the accumulated "marks" of our ancestors that spawned us, that set the perameters of our worlds, that lent their ideas to those that shaped and formed our own. We suffer some of those "marks", learn from some of those "marks", grow beyond some of those "marks", and in many cases, rejoice "those marks" were made. We grow into a time, many of us, when "making a mark" is an important thing. We dream of a good living, we dream perhaps of achieving a semblance of fame. And we keep growing. We grow into the time when that sort of "mark" is not so important anymore, and we feel it important to "make a mark" in yet another way. There are things we want our children and our grandchildren to know, to feel, to learn. We wish to leave the mark of our experience upon them, that they will not repeat the mistakes we made. And sadly, we realize that all too often they have no wish to assume any mark of experience but their own. We wish to leave the mark of our past, and the pasts of our ancestors upon them, that they might "remember" what we remember. And sadly, we realize all too often that they have not grown into the season of it. And we wonder "how to make our mark". "Judson Dennis, his book" is written on the flyleaf, and not another thing about him. But from what I have been told, from the letters he left behind, from the documents attesting to the life he foretold he would give for his country, I know what his book had to say. TMD, was how my grandfather marked the railroad ties, but from what I witnessed, what he lived in the life I knew him, what I have been told, I know what his book had to say. Long ago, I left initials on a doorstep of freshly poured concrete, and nothing more. But I suspect, I have left a mark, and my children will know, when they grow into the season of remembering, of reading all I have prepared for them, what my life had to say. Every day we live, we leave "a mark", and I think perhaps the most important thing we can do is leave one our descendants may grow beyond, may learn from the mistakes of, may even rejoice at…but never one they will suffer because of. Just a thought, jan Copyright ©2001janPhilpot ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be shared...simply share though e-mail as written without alterations...and in entirety. If planned for a publication, permission must be granted by the author. Please forward sufficient information concerning the nature and intent of the publication. Thanks, jan) Sunday Afternoon Rocking columns are distributed weekly on the list Sunday Rocking. This is not a "reply to" list, and normally only one message per week will come across it, that being the column. To subscribe send email to Sundayrocking-subscribe@topica.com Comments about the content of these messages can be sent to unicorn@sun-spot.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------ End of knoxcotn-digest V1 #188 ******************************
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