Busy Day!

Boy, it's been one heck of a day! A darned busy one!

In my last post, it was in the wee hours of the morning and although I had gone to bed around 10 p.m., I was back up and awake by 11:15 and the pain pills didn't take effect enough to make me sleepy till about 6 this morning. So as Bill was getting ready for work and Kate was leaving for school, I was finally able to drift off to sleep and even slept till about 10 a.m.! Man, that was heaven to get that much sleep - 4 straight hours worth!

From my post last night, I even got a suggestion from Melloncutter for a pain medication he had used when he had the shingles a year ago now. Sure is nice to know I'm not alone in coping with these things nor is my attitude any different from others who have had to suffer from these things. I'll have to give my family doctor a call and see if maybe I can get a prescription for the patch he told me he had been given. I'd try just about anything right now!

Last night, I pulled the turkey out of the freezer to start thawing it -figuring I ould cook it tomorrow to serve for supper when my cousin Eric and his family came to visit. However around 1:30 this afternoon, those plans changed quite quickly when I received a phone call from Eric telling me they had finished up in the Poconos and had been down to Hershey, PA for that part of their trip and were now out on Rte 322, heading towards our neck of the PA woods!

They figured they would be here at the house shortly after dark.

And I was about to panic because that turkey was the only thing I had in the freezer that I knew would feed that many people and geez, it was still thawing.

I checked on the status of the turkey thawing and decided it was almost completely thawed so hurried up and stuck it in the oven. The I set about to fix a pan of apple crisp, corn pudding, peeled a bunch of red potatos and made coleslaw for our supper.

The nice thing about their timing changes was that Carrie was scheduled to work tomorrow night but had tonight off, plus she had Alex tonight too so she was going to try to come up then, bringing Alex with her so he could meet one of her favorites cousins from the Eld side of the family, along with his wife and their four younger children.

They got here shortly before 6 p.m. so that gave his family a little time to adjust to me, Kate, Maya and Kurtis anyway. Eric and his wife have four children of their own - Anna, age 13, John age 11, Alexis, age 7 and Alyssa, Age 5. They also were raising his sister's son, Stefan, but Stefan, at age 17, decided he was homesick for his friends and classmates back in the Houston area so he went back to Texas and is living with his grandmother, Eric's Mom, there! Sure would have been great to see him again too but, just wasn't in the cards today.

After supper, I hauled out some old albums with a mixture of really, really old photos plus some from when Eric, my Carrie and Eric's sister, Caroline, were little taken at our family reunion and he really reveled in showing his children snapshots of himself, his sister, parents and grandparents as well as his mother's sisters, who lived down the street from us when my kids were growing up.

Seeing him again took me back in my mind to days when I was growing up and Eric's dad usually came up here most every summer from Pittsburgh to spend as much time as he could with his aunts here. Carrie commented to Eric tonight about how they used to play in the old barn at his great-grandfather's old house and how much fun they had there. Eric agreed with her saying it was the ideal place for kids to play and really have a fun time.

The thing that really resonated with me was when Carrie pointed out how much "The Aunts" really spoiled her, Eric and Caroline rotten! Oh yes! So very true!

"The Aunts" - Edith, Helen and Hedvig - were sisters of Eric and Caroline's grandmother - Esther Eld Sabolsice. And yes indeed, they certainly doted on their great-niece and great-nephew as well as all three of my kids!

Kathy, Eric's wife, while looking at very old reunion pictures, was able to immediately pick Eric out in one shot which was of him, taken from behind him. "How the heck did you know that was me," he asked her. The answer: "From your butt!"

Eric and Kathy have four of the best-looking kids - really, really pretty children they are and also, very well-behaved too! When they first arrived, Kate was seated at the dining room table coloring with Miss Maya and she went to the cellarway to get out more crayons and coloring books so in no time all the girls were seated there, coloring away and maybe even talking ever so slightly.

Eric was determined to refresh his memory about things he remembered from summers spent here in the 70's and early 80's and was really proud of himself I do believe when he realized how much he actually does still recall of those days. A totally different era from what things are like here today.

All in all, it turned out to be a very nice visit and one I'm really happy we were able to have.

Eric's grandparents sure would be proud and pleased as punch to see what beautiful great-grandchildren they have and also, to know how well their grandson remembers so many of the Swedish food traditions his grandparents always observed too.

Safe travel back to Florida guys and as soon as Carrie sends me some photos of the ones she took tonight, I'll be posting them so any of my Eld family cousins can also see just what a bunch of good-looking folks the Eld clan has turned out to be!

Nite all!

Ah, Youth - How Grand!

The good looking guy in this photo is very, VERY much younger than me. And he never fails to remind me of that fact either.

Meet my cousin -Ray, his wife Mary Ann and their two grandchildren - Evan, age 11 months and Madison, age 7 months.

The year 2006 was a banner year for gaining new members to the Eld Family. With Ray and Mary Ann's two grandchildren and my grandson, Kurtis, who is a month older than Madison, that's quite an increase in one year!

Ray and Mary Ann are both originally from the Pittsburgh area - Ray grew up in Monroeville - but they've lived in Indianapolis for a good number of years now. I know since Ray is so much younger than me, he is loaded with a lot more energy than I have because he is the babysitter for these two little ones daily while Madison's mother works and he has Evan usually for two-three days out of the week as well. Considering how much younger than me Ray is - all of three days - who would have thought those three days could make that much of a difference in not just the energy level needed to watch two babies, but the amount of bravery that has to be involved in doing that as well!

Give Ray a Gold Star for the Grandpa of the Year award for 2006, at the very least.

Four Brothers

This picture, taken probably around 1906, shows four of the sons of Carl and Maja Till Eld in the back row from left to right: August, Oscar, Elmer and Adolph Eld. The child seated in the middle is Bertrum Carl Eld, second child and son of Adolph and Ellen Johnson Eld. Seated at the left is Emily Johnson Eld, wife of August Eld and she is holding their son, Wendell. In the middle, the girl in the rear is Ethel Amelia Eld, oldest child and daughter of Adolph and Ellen Eld, In front of her is Emily Eld, oldest child and daughter of August and Emily Eld. Seated on the far right is Ellen Johnson Eld, wife of Adolph Eld.

Adolph Eld and his wife, Ellen Johnson Eld, were my maternal grandparents. My grandfather was born September 26, 1874 in Bolstad, Dahlsland, Sweden and immigrated to America in 1881, with his mother, three brothers and one sister. His father had come here the year before and was living and working in a little coal mining town - long since defunct -in Lycoming County, near Williamsport, PA - called McIntyre.

My grandmother's parents were both born in Sweden and immigrated to America where they then met most likely someplace in New York State. I don't recall my grandmother ever talking much about her parents, when they came here or how they met. My grandmother was the next to the youngest of seven children and was born in Mayville, New York, October 1, 1880. (Mayville is located in Chautauqua County, near to Jamestown, NY.) Sometime in the 1880's, her parents moved to a little area just on the outskirts of Warren, PA, to a little place called Scandia, where they had a farm. When my grandmother was 14 years old, she went to work as a maid for some well-to-do family in Warren. She worked from the time she was 14 until her marriage at age 21, to my grandfather and somewhere along the way, went from working in Warren, PA to working, also as a maid, for a family in Olean, NY. It was while working in Olean that she met my Grandfather, who had gone up to that small city in search of work away from the coal mines of central Pennsylvania. He boarded there with his mother's sister, Anna Olson-Till Johnson.

The family story of how they met was that they both were attending the same church in Olean and both, being music lovers, had joined the church choir there. (My grandfather had one of the most beautiful bass voices I have ever heard and I guess because of his vocal ability, I have always had an affinity for the bass harmony.) My Mom's brother, Ralph, who was about 3 years older than her, used to tease my grandmother about how she and Grandpa had come to meet. Supposedly, the name Eld, in Swedish, means fire. Whether this is true or not, I have no clue as I know only a very few select words in that language. But Uncle Ralph, knowing especially how prim and proper Grandma tended to be, would always tell her that when he was first introduced to "Dad" and was told his last name was Eld, her comment to him then was, "OH, Eld! That means fire. You must be hot stuff."

As a kid, I often heard him gently tease Grandma about this and she would, lower her head slightly, blush and laugh at him, telling him, "You go on now, Ralph. My land sakes!" And, since this was a family joke, usually told around the dining room table at Christmas gatherings or for some other big holiday type event when most of my aunts and uncle and cousins would be here, this story just stayed within the house and the family.

However, the spring shortly before Grandma's death, she had been in the hospital for a few days and after coming home, our pastor at the time, The Rev. Edward Corneilson, had come to pay a house call on Grandma. As they sat out on our sunporch talking and he was inquiring as to her health and such, because he was relatively new to our parish, he didn't know much of people's background and so, he began to ask Grandma about her parents, her early life, etc.

During this entire conversation, my Mom (who related this event to me later that evening when I got home from work), was in the kitchen, preparing coffee, and getting other general kitchen work done but she stopped everything completely when she happened to hear my Grandma telling the Pastor this particular family story, which in essence was nothing but a joke. When my Mom told me about this, she said she wanted to laugh so hard, but had to choke it back at the time. However, as she related it to me, she was then howling laughing at this whole scene because to begin with, to call someone "hot stuff" wasn't exactly part of the vocabulary in the era when my grandparents met, plus had my Grandma actually understood the meaning Uncle Ralph was putting into this little tale, and for her to be repeating it to the minister, she would have been mortified!

But, back to the photo again. I never knew Uncle August, who was the third child of Carl and Maja Eld, as he died in the mid-thirties. But I did know his widow, as well as the two other brothers in the photograph. Uncle Oscar, who was about a year old or a little over that when they came to this country, was the joker of my Grandpa's siblings. Uncle Elmer was very quiet, never married, and generally just sat back and listened to what everyone else had to say, smoking his cigar and nodding his head apparently in agreement.

Uncle Oscar married a daughter of the family who lived next door to my great-grandparents. Her name was Hilma Johnson and she, like Uncle Oscar, had a great personality, a wonderful sense of humor too.

When my grandparents first married in October of 1901, they shared half of a house with Grandpa's older brother, Erick and his wife, Beatrice Johnson Eld.

Now, if you've been paying attention to the maiden names of the wives of these four brothers, don't for a moment think that they married sisters because all four of these women had Johnson as their maiden names. Not by a long shot! It was one of those things that is purely coincidental and due to the proliferation in Sweden of people with the surnames like Johnson, Carlson, ERickson, Anderson, etc. Sweden used the patronic naming system, where the child took the father's first name and added either "son" or "Dott" to the end of that for a new surname. However, if a man went into the Swedish Army, often they would be assigned a name - due to the confusion of having all these men with the same last name - and that is how our family surname became Eld, because originally it was actually Andersson! (My great-great-grandfather's name was Anders Svenson and when his children were born the boys had the surname of Andersson and the girls -some went by Andersdotter, others were listed as Andersson. Again, a bit of a "go figure" there too! I still can get majorly confused trying to piece together which Andersson this or that person is in my family tree without going to the records and looking it up to see, by the date of birth, which Andersson family this might be within the tree.

My grandfather, his father and most of Grandpa's brothers all worked in the coal mines here in central Pennsylvania. Some, like Uncle Erick, worked almost his entire life in the coal mines. The boys generally went to work in the mines around the age of ten and that was no different for my grandfather. But, he left the area, as had Uncle Erick in the late 1890's and both had gone up to Olean, NY to work. Both had met their wives there as well and I think it is possible that Uncle August too may have gone to Olean to work for a period of time too but I'm not positive about that.

However, both Uncle Erick and my Grandpa had moved back to Pennsylvania by 1901 and were working in the mines here then. Over the next couple of years, my Grandparents remained in this area, having built the family homestead here in 1903, which is now my home. But, somewhere along the lines, Uncle August, although he worked for a mining company, had managed to extracate himself from working in the mines to a position where he eventually rose to be a store manager for some coal company back then. Through this position, he and his family often got transferred from one small coal mining town to another throughout southwestern Pennsylvania and even down in to West Virginia for a time. Also, because Uncle August was in a position that had a little more authority, if times were hard back home here and work was sparse, he was the one who found jobs for two of his brothers, my Grandpa and Uncle Oscar, and they too then worked the mines or sometimes in a clerking capacity where ever Uncle August happened to be based at times.

It was from about 1906 till 1924 that my Grandparents moved around a lot in Westmoreland County especially, then down to Tunnelton, West Virginia, following the work demands through whatever mining company Uncle August was with at any particular time. Thus, my Mom was born in Edna, PA -which is someplace near Greensburg. I'm not sure exactly where Uncle Ralph, who was just above her in the family, or my Uncle Cookie (Clarence) were born, but Mom's baby sister, Aunt Marian, was born in 1923 in Tunnelton, PA and the following summer is when the family returned back to Clearfield County, to this little village of Grassflat, where I was born twenty years later.

LIfe was hard for my grandparents. Wages were low whether one worked in the mines or in a different capacity for the company, there was very little to go around. I find it amazing that while they hopscotched around the state for at least 17-18 years, they managed to keep this house by somehow finding tenents who must have been good, responsible people at that time and didn't rip the place apart as all too often can happen when one takes a chance to rent their property to others.

My Mom always credited my Grandma though for being the one who was the "manager" of the family and who, by her side work wherever they lived, managed to pay off the mortgage on this house. Grandma took in laundry for folks and also, being a very talented seamstress, would do dressmaking for others in these little towns where they happened to land during those years. Grandma, after they returned to this area, was known to many along this street too as being an excellent seamstress, one who women could bring a picture from a magazine or newspaper ad to her and show her a dress and from seeing the way a dress was shown in the picture, she could take measurements, make up a pattern from which to cutout the dress and stitch it up so well that no one would ever know it was not a "store bought" item.

Although Grandma taught my Mom many of these sewing skills, Mom never learned how to make her own patterns but she did become quite adept too at doing alterations and often did sewing when I was a kid, mending clothes, taking in seams or letting some out, hemming, etc for many of the neighbors.

Now it was this talent of my Mom's that was something of a befuddlement to me though. Someone could bring her a skirt they bought and although it maybe fit perfectly around the hips, it might be very loose at the waist and Mom would alter it to fit their waist to a tee! However, when it came to sewing clothes for me, that talent seemed to fly right out the window!

When I was in high school, Mom decided since I needed to have a gown type dress to wear for the high school chorus' spring concert, she would make the gown for me. She found a pattern she felt was suitable - even had spaghetti straps on it - got some taffeta in a not pale blue, more of a color I would call a light steel blue, nylon tulle net and went to work on making this gown for me. All was fine until she put it together with straight pins and had me try it on for sizing. The bodice fit tighter than you can imagine, pulling my breasts in till they were virtually as flat as pancakes. Then at the waistline, although it was to be fitted down to the waist and then the skirt, gathered mind you, attached there, as the bodice worked down to the waist and the skirt was pinned to it, it flared out there! I was irate and told her this just wouldn't do because it didn't fit me properly. We argued and argued over how much should be taken it to keep the bodice fitting snugly as to where it attached to the skirt, but she would always win out by putting her hand in the waistband area and by having the side of her hand against my skin, thus creating a gap of about 3 inches between my skin and the skirt, she would proclaim that there was no way you could possibly have this skirt, the waistband area, any tighter!

I tried and tried to show her how she was making this big gap there, but for some weird reason or other in her head, she could never see this my way!

Now that I think about it, I do believe that gown may have been the last piece of clothing my Mom ever made for me. I know everytime I saw it hanging in my closet, only ever worn one time for that spring concert, it still was a thorn in my side because it never, in my opinion, fit properly along my side from below the bust to the waist!

That story is a little off-topic from where I started relating about my Grandparents and great-uncles and their families, but just thought it "fitting" to put it in here when talking about the sewing talents that did exist in my Mom and in her mother before her as well!

My grandmother, as long as I can remember back in time, always, every October, would set up her quilting frame in the living room of our house. That quilting frame came down about a week or two before Christmas and as soon as the tree was removed from the living room after the Christmas holiday, the quilting frame went back up and stayed up usually until early, even mid-May. She worked on quilts all winter long. During the late spring and summer months, she would spend her evenings sitting with all types of scrap materials she had accumulated and would carefully mark out the designs for her quilt patterns and then begin to stitch these together. Then, come October, she would have gathered the fabric she wanted for backing of the quilt, batting for the inside and these pieces all sewn together would be stiched in place on her old treadle sewing machine - a Singer - that she had bought while working as a maid in Warren, PA in the late 1890's. She would then lay the pieced part of the quilt over the batting with the backing underneath it all and somehow, I have no idea how she did this, she would wind it onto the quilting frame and night after night, would sit there, carefully marking with a ruler and pencil her quilting lines and then, stitch this all together.

I have no idea how many quilts she had made in her lifetime but I know she made one for the older four of her grandchildren which were given to each one of them as their wedding gift from her. I know she made several quilts too which were given to each of her children for use in their homes, for their kids to be kept toasty warm. Considering we had three bedrooms in this house, plus a twin bed for a while that was in my grandparents' room, and with the 13 bedroom total count of the rest of her children's homes, at a minimum of two quilts for each bed, would come to at least 36 quilts right there that she had made. Considering the fact that each bed here had at least two quilts on it, year-round, and there were enough quilts stashed away upstairs in the cedar chest, in storage drums in her closet, in the attic in more storage drums, heaven only knows what the final tally of quilts might have been.

All I know is that it was an extremely labor intensive project and one that went on, in one form or another, year-round as her pasttime. I still have one of her quilts made in the late 50's, before her eyesight finally gave out on her and she couldn't see to make the tiny, meticulous stitching for which her work was known. And that quilt doesn't look all that worn considering it is close to fifty years old now.

Now, that was quality workmanship!

There are probably many other stories that will come to me from time to time about my ancestors, others within both sides of my family tree, but for now, I think it's time to find that last quilt here and crawl under it and get some sleep to be ready to tackle another day!

Some Really Good Years!

The above photo - a collection of photos actually - represents to me, some of my favorite things about my Mother's family.

Starting with the photograph on the bottom - which obviously is also the oldest picture of the group - this is one of my favorite pictures! This is my cousin Ray Eld, who never fails to harrass me about how very much older I am than him - all of three whole days, you know! This was taken on the front steps of the house where his family lived back in the 40's on Blackadore Street in Pittsburgh. I'm not sure how old we were exactly on this picture but I think we were three, maybe four years old. Ray figures that most likely it was taken shortly before my grandparents, my Mom and I were getting ready to leave there and return to our home in Clearfield County, which is pretty much dead-center in the state of Pennsylvania. His reasoning behind that is because I am dressed up a bit, cleaned up, whereas he is looking a bit on the ragamuffin side on this shot! Therefore, he says that means I was about to go for a long ride and he was staying put, no need then to get him all decked out in Sunday-go-meeting clothes if he wasn't going anyplace. Yeah Ray, your logic makes sense to me for sure!

The couple on the right hand side of this grouping is my Mom's baby sister and her husband - Edward David and Marian Theresa Eld Bird! Uncle Ed was originally from Niagara Falls, NY and was Irish in ethnicity and of the Roman Catholic faith too - all things which normally, by my grandmother's standards for one to marry a child of hers should have made him absolutely TABU! By comparison to the rest of the children in the family, Aunt Mamie was a bit of a rip - not bad, but she sure didn't live a quiet, calm, staid lifestyle like her siblings and their spouses did! Not by a long shot! Of the girls in the family, she was the most fun-loving. My Mom and the older sister, Aunt Ethel, were by comparison "houseworkaholics"!!! Aunt Mamie liked to dance, sing, play the piano and not just church music either and go out, have a few beers and enjoy life! Uncle Ed operated much in the same vein. I spent the summer of 1951 living with them and my Mom just outside Fort Niagara, along the Niagara River. The best thing about where we lived there - it was a huge old farm house and the second floor had been converted into an apartment of very nice proportions - was that they had a beautiful full-blooded collie -named Coral - who was smart as a whip and just a really great dog for a seven-year-old to romp around the yard and play with. The next best thing was that they had a tv set too and since the location was fairly close to Buffalo, NY, we got quite a few good stations and Uncle Ed and I used to love to watch the equivalent of that era to today's World-Wide Wrestling matches! Ah, such fun!

The photo to the left in the middle is one of my favorites for the people in it and the occasion of the event. It was taken by my cousin Ken Eld on the day I graduated from Penn State University (May 14, 1994) with my B.S. in Rehabilitation Education. And those around me are my daughters, my oldest, Carrie, on the left, then me, then my Aunt Mary Mawk Eld and Amanda (or Mandy), who is my baby. She was probably the one who, next to me, was the happiest to see that day finally arrive! She and her late husband, my Mom's yonger brother (Uncle Cookie) had always wanted to see me go to college but I never was able to get around to going to school until 1990, eight years after my uncle's death. When I told Aunt Mary of my decision to go to college, fulltime, while working fulltime, and with two teenage kids at home too, she was probably also my strongest supporter, giving me loads of encouragement every step of the way over those four long years! I'm so grateful that I had her beside me while trying to achieve that goal of my college degree. I just wish that things would have worked differently and I had been able to find employment in the area of my major to show her that I really had learned a lot in college after all!

And finally, the top photo was taken at one of the Annual Eld Reunions! We have been having this family reunion since July of 1950 and since 1967, we hold it at a very small private park about five miles from where I live in the village of Lanse, PA. It's a very pretty, quiet little secluded place with a very nice sized enclosed shelter that also has indoor bathroom facilities (a bonus in parks) and also a nice sized kitchen with an electric range and refrigerators too. Today, it even has a microwave oven in the kitchen. And it has always been large enough to accomodate some of the largest reunions our family has ever held but sadly, the past few years, it seems to dwarf those few of us who still faithfully attend this annual picnic.

Those on this photo are all grandchildren of the Adolph and Ellen Johnson Eld branch of the family tree and those on this picture - around our Aunt Mary Mawk Eld are as follows from left to right (sort of): Becky Eld Reid, daughter of Clarence "Cookie" and Mary Eld and the youngest of my grandparents grandchildren, next there is Carl B. Eld and his older sister, Nancy Eld Lang - children of Bertrum and Nellie Simpson Eld. Carl was the first grandson and Nancy was the first Grandchild in the family. The next cousin is Barbara Eld Donaldson, Daughter of Ralph and Hazel Stoughton Eld, followed by Aunt Mary Mawk Eld, then me and my cousin, Kenneth A. Eld, oldest of Clarence and Mary Mawk Eld's children is directly behind me.

I wish I had a photo now of all the children of those of the six of us in that picture. Beck and her husband have four children, all adopted from Korea; Carl and his wife have two daughters and a son and now have 8 grandchildren as well as a great-granddaughter; Nancy and her husband Howard have three children - two boys and a girl and 3 grandchildren; Barb has a daughter and a son and three grandsons; I have three children, two girls and a boy and two grandsons and a granddaughter plus two stepgranddaughters and a stepgrandson and Ken - he's the late bloomer I guess, with two daughters and his first grandchild due in May of 2007! I keep telling him that he and his wife Laura have no idea how great kids really are until they finally have their own grandchildren - who in my opinion, are soooo very much better than the first edition! Probably only because the full responsiblity of raising those kids falls onto someone else's lap other than your own, you know!

There were 11 grandchildren born to Adolph and Ellen Johnson Eld - my Mom's parents but today, there are only ten of us left. One cousin, David Eld, took his own life back in March of 1982, which probably was the last time all but perhaps one of my first cousins and I were together for Dave's funeral. The other four of my cousins still around but not at the reunion that year are: Joan Eld Kujava, Ray Eld, Tom Eld and Sue Eld Gerecke. Maybe one of these years I will get all my cousins together once again at this gathering spot. However, because we're all getting old way to fast, our kids are now almost all grown, married, on their own, and several of us have had some major health issues the past couple of years that make it really difficult now for us to get together once more as a strong family unit, but it's still a nice thought to think about anyway.