Alice, Carolyn Meet Carolyn's Father's Cousins
First, an apology. On the last post, I cut and pasted from a Word document. When I hit the "publish" button and looked at the post, it contained different size fonts. So today I decided to go in and type above what I had written and delete what was there. I tried it but it didn't work. In fact, the post looks worse than it did, because it did a lot of other formatting things I did not ask it to do. Another of those cases where you find out you have no control over something. Actually, I apparently have little control over much of anything. Apologies anyway, because it looks terrible. The other posts look all right, so I don't know what the problem is.
Today, I wanted to include a portion of my email to Roger Hubert (my cousin) because the story is memorable and noteworthy. Tuesday, Dec. 28, Alice Thacker and I drove to Augusta and Hutchinson to meet my father's two cousins, who, besides him, are the only surviving family members of my father's generation. They are the children of my grandfather's sister, Edna Faye Cogswell Nicklin.
We called when we couldn't find his mailbox (later on we found out we would have found it if we'd kept driving a few more yards) so we drove some more, then pulled into this place called Hedrick's and saw zebras, camels, llamas, ostriches, and little donkeys on this guy's place. He takes them different places for shows of some kind. David told me parts of Africa looked just like Kansas. Now I believe it.
Before we went to Robert's in Hutchinson we went to Nina May's in Augusta. She's 91 or 92 and cooked us chicken pie with cheese, cranberry salad, mandarin orange jello salad and lemon cake. She made all of it from scratch except the pie crust (we asked her).
I took the picture of her mother, like you said. She has one like it, but I saw a lot of pictures of her mother I had not seen and a lot of her when she was a child. Also met her daughter, Martha, in a wheelchair, who makes computer-generated greeting cards. Oh, the complexity of lives, such a fascinating tapestry. And just scratched the surface. She said when her husband died she thought the world had come to an end. She had never worked a day in her life. I have written and asked her to talk about that more because...well, I don't know why I didn't ask her then to talk about it. Didn't seem like the right time, I guess, on such a short visit. Or maybe I missed it. Hope I get another chance to hear about it.
After leaving Robert's, we drove up to Salina. It was dark by then. After staying all night in Salina, Alice and I went to the Eisenhower museum in Abilene and then came home. My vacation is almost over. Still not exactly fired up about going back to work.
Great to hear from you. Take care and STAY WARM!"
Today, I wanted to include a portion of my email to Roger Hubert (my cousin) because the story is memorable and noteworthy. Tuesday, Dec. 28, Alice Thacker and I drove to Augusta and Hutchinson to meet my father's two cousins, who, besides him, are the only surviving family members of my father's generation. They are the children of my grandfather's sister, Edna Faye Cogswell Nicklin.
"I thought of you when I met Robert and how much fun it would have been for you to meet him. He was an absolute delight. He's 86 and lives alone in this huge house in the country since his wife died 11 years ago of pancreatic cancer. He is very thin because he forgets to eat. He said he 'drinks coffee with the old folks' at 10:00 Tuesday mornings, and the rest of the time he works outside, bowls, plays cards and watches ball games on TV until he falls asleep. I just kept thinking how great it would be if you two could meet. You would really like this guy. He retired from the Hutchinson News at 61 after 40 years as a typesetter-production room foreman. Now that's all done by computer.
We called when we couldn't find his mailbox (later on we found out we would have found it if we'd kept driving a few more yards) so we drove some more, then pulled into this place called Hedrick's and saw zebras, camels, llamas, ostriches, and little donkeys on this guy's place. He takes them different places for shows of some kind. David told me parts of Africa looked just like Kansas. Now I believe it.
Before we went to Robert's in Hutchinson we went to Nina May's in Augusta. She's 91 or 92 and cooked us chicken pie with cheese, cranberry salad, mandarin orange jello salad and lemon cake. She made all of it from scratch except the pie crust (we asked her).
I took the picture of her mother, like you said. She has one like it, but I saw a lot of pictures of her mother I had not seen and a lot of her when she was a child. Also met her daughter, Martha, in a wheelchair, who makes computer-generated greeting cards. Oh, the complexity of lives, such a fascinating tapestry. And just scratched the surface. She said when her husband died she thought the world had come to an end. She had never worked a day in her life. I have written and asked her to talk about that more because...well, I don't know why I didn't ask her then to talk about it. Didn't seem like the right time, I guess, on such a short visit. Or maybe I missed it. Hope I get another chance to hear about it.
After leaving Robert's, we drove up to Salina. It was dark by then. After staying all night in Salina, Alice and I went to the Eisenhower museum in Abilene and then came home. My vacation is almost over. Still not exactly fired up about going back to work.
Great to hear from you. Take care and STAY WARM!"
Comments
Post a Comment