My Favorite Present

 

by Charlotte Hinger

My favorite Christmas present this year was not one I received, it was one I gave to my granddaughter, Audrey Crockett. My photo of this project (taken in haste) didn't reproduce very well on this blog. It's a collage of seven generations of women beginning with Marie Stephanova Pishney. (bottom right)

Next is my own grandmother, Lottie Caroline Pishney Smerchek, then my mother Lottie Josie Smerchek Southerland and myself, Charlotte Faye Southerland Hinger. Above is my daughter Michele Renee Hinger Crockett, then granddaughter Audrey Charlotte Crockett Bell, next to my first great grandchild Francesca Michele Crockett Bell. 

I put all the photos in inexpensive frames from Michael's. Then I glued them all to foam board. The finished project looked much neater than it does in the photo and the colors are more consistent. I was able to size each photo through my word program and also apply a sepia tint. 

The Smerchek family did an outstanding job of keeping records. Our Bohemian heritage has been traced back to a church in Moravia, I believe in the 1600s. 

Readers who are familiar with my mysteries will recognize my mother's names, Lottie Josie. Lottie is the protagonist in my series and her twin sister, Josie, serves as a female Dr. Watson, who keeps her on the right track. 

I have tons of pictures to file and place in albums, but I wish I had taken more through the years. Back in the day, film was costly and I had to watch every penny. Now we have digital photography and can take as many as we like. 

One of my most joyful writing projects was the honor of editing the Sheridan County history books. There were over 500 family stories submitted and the photos brought tears to my eyes. 

In addition to my family pictures, I treasure each photo I took at conventions through the years. This coming year I want to develop better photography skills. Even if photos aren't to be used directly in our written material, they are a wonderful reference. 

One Hundred Years Ago Today

My father and mother, 1947

 Donis here. January 19 is a big birthday date in my little corner of the world. Today is my brother-in-law Chris DeWelt's birthday. Happy birthday, Chris! I'm also wishing a happy birthday to my friend Judy Starbuck. But this year is special, because today would be my late father's 100th birthday.

Carl Casey was born at home, in Haskell, Oklahoma, my grandmother's second child after my aunt Lucille. My grandmother told me that the doctor used chloroform on her for her second child, and she was very happy about it. However, she said that when the baby came, her sister Mary, who was attending the birth, said, "Look at them* eyes!" Grandma was alarmed and tried to see what was with the kid's eyes, but she was so groggy from the chloroform that she fell asleep. Turns out my dad was born with his blue eyes wide open, looking around curiously (according to Aunt Mary, not the most reliable of witnesses.)

That wouldn't be out of character, though. My dad was full of life, outgoing, rather boyish, and playful. He was a wonderful daddy for little kids. My grandmother told me that he was "the playing-est kid she ever saw," and he only stopped playing with his friends outside because they all got too old and he couldn't find anybody willing to play with him.

...One year later...

My father didn't live anywhere near long enough to even think about celebrating his 100th birthday. He died of a sudden heart attack in 1967, when he was 44 years old. He left a young wife and 4 children. Our mother was beyond devastated. It colored the rest of her life, though once she managed to live through the early horror of it all, she did a good job of raising the children on her own. My dad was a 19-to-23-year-old Marine posted in the Pacific theatre during WWII, and even if, as far as any of us kids saw, he was a cheerful person, he was also fatalistic about the fragility of life. So even though he died so early, he had so much life insurance and property that my mother never had to work and was able to pay for all of us to go to college. She never remarried, or even dated after he died.

I was a teenager when he died, the eldest. My youngest sibling was 18 months old. He's in his 50s now, and never really knew our father. Even so, my brother notes that he grew up in a sad household. Our dad's death changed the course of all our lives.  I know it's a major reason I write the kind of books I write, set in the time and place they are set - the time and place of my father's family, a time and place he would have been familiar with. 

Carl has been gone much longer than he lived, but his short life was everything to me, my siblings,  all his family, and many other people, as well. So happy birthday in heaven, Daddy. We all still think about you a lot.

______

* I never once heard my grandmother or any of her many siblings use the word "those".

Rough Justice

Great-Grandpa

Aline’s entry, below, got us Type M-ers talking about how some of us keep notes, in one way or another, of stories we’ve heard or read about, that finally end up in our books. I am particularly guilty of doing that.

I’ve lived most of my life in the American West, which is a gold mine of eccentric behavior that is better than anything I could make up. My books and stories are full of tales that others have told me or snippets I have read in the paper, or events I was involved in when I was a slip of a lass—sometimes things that I have remembered for decades. A few weeks ago I was having lunch with a friend who is very into research on her ancestry, and she told me a tale about a forebear of hers who pretended to commit suicide on the front porch of the lady who had rejected him. I immediately filed that tale away for use in a future Alafair Tucker mystery.

My own relatives have provided me with a wealth of material, though I have to admit that some ancestral events are too grim or shocking to use in the type of series I’m writing without being…let us say, cleaned up a bit. There is one family tale that I’ve used as inspiration for murder more than once, but never actually written about. One of my maternal grandfather’s sisters, whom I will call Violet, was married to a man who regularly abused her, but she kept it a secret from her family for years. Until her husband (let’s call him Perry) finally beat her so badly that she took the children and went home to her parents. Her face was so pulped that her father, my great-grandfather, grabbed a pistol and ran out of the house, intending to do justice right then and there.

My great-grandmother didn’t care about the abuser, but she did care about her husband and had no desire to see him hanged for murder, so she persuaded her sons (including my grandfather) wrestle their father to the ground and prevent him from leaving the house. I fear that eventually my great aunt went back to her abuser, who also was a womanizer and cheated on her regularly. But this was in the late 1910s in the wilds of Arkansas, and women had few other options back in the day. My great-grandfather was a Baptist circuit preacher, and I’m sure divorce was not an option.

The story has an interesting ending, however. Shortly thereafter, Perry was found dead by the road, a bullet in his head, apparently shot right off his horse. No one was ever charged with the crime. Was he killed by a cuckolded husband or the relative of a wronged woman? Or did one of Violet’s brothers, or even my preacher great-grandfather, decided to take matters into his own hands? However Perry met his end, he brought it on himself in those days of rough justice.

Violet didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy her freedom. She was killed in a car wreck in the 1920s, and her children were raised by Perry’s parents.

I love to learn the details of a life, and there is no one who has ever lived who doesn’t have a fascinating story, whether they share it with us or not, whether we ever know about it or not. It seems important to me that our tales by shared, because the joys and tragedies of every life are what binds us together as human beings.

p.s. Someday I’m going to ask permission from my living relatives to tell some of our more shocking family stories. I’ll bet that when they brought into the light of day, we will hear from many people who have shared our experiences and lived to tell about it.