The Assignment Is.....

Some days, an idea pops into my mind early in the day to write about in my blog entry for the day. Other days, a kazillion things fly through, land briefly, sound enticing and I may or may not get around to covering each topic when those events happen. And then, there are days when nothing - absolutely nothing comes to visit that vast area of matter between one ear and the other. Just totally braindead days are the days I hate the most.

Today kind of started out looking like it was going to head off in the braindead arena. Nothing was coming forward, not even a slight little nudge.

Till late tonight, I got an e-mail from the lady who is the editor/publisher of the "West Branch Review" regarding when she wants to get the material for the next issue off to the publisher and she mentioned to me if I thought I could get a piece put together that we have been discussing for several months now.

Boy, wish she'd given me a trifle bit more notice about this so I could have been slugging away already, trying to get my information organized and so on. I had wanted to talk to a couple other people for a bit more background information and this only leaves me with today and Friday to try to reach out, make my contacts and then, get that recorded into a file to use to blend in with the piece.

I'll give you a heads up here as to what this article will be about.

Last year, my granddaughter was talking one day about a boy who is a year behind her in school and some of the things he does. She informed us that he plans to run for President someday. No, not president of his school class or the student council or ski club or any other activitiy like that, but he is actually planning to run for the highest office in the land - President of the United States.

Wow! Trying to imagine a 13-year-old kid who is thinking that far down his future roads to travel to achieve a goal like that is really incredible.

As it turned out, at the time Kate (granddaughter) was talking about this, my next-door neighbor, Deb, happened to be here and she said she had heard that this kid was working on plans now along those lines. She was describing him and his ideas, methods, manner of speech, etc., and her comment about him was that if he approached you to talk, it was like talking to a well-informed, seasoned adult but in this young teen's body and his manner of speaking was well in advance of his age.

I was getting more and more interested in this whole thing and eventually asked who this kid is - tell me his name. And when they did, I found yet another surprise there.

As it turns out, he just happens to be the grandson of my first cousin! His grandfather and my dad were brothers! This was even more interesting to me now!

Now, politics is not a new thing in my dad's family but it's something that has been very dormant for a long, long time. My dad was into local politics - was the township supervisor a few times back in the 30's, maybe even as far back as the 20's as I am not sure about when he was involved in that stuff. Another of my Dad's brothers - not this boy's grandfather though -was even more involved in politics as he served in several county offices in the 40's and 50's -even through the sixties. For many years, he was county commissioner, then later in life he served as the county prothonotary and even took a stab in the mid-50s to run for the office to be a member of the State's House of Representatives. Unfortunately, he lost that election though.

In 2005, as you may remember, I was heavily involved myself with the grassroots organization of PACleansweep.com -whose goal was to vote out any member of the House and Senate up for re-election in the November elections of 2006. Now some folks may say that because we didn't succeed in our original goal - to totally "clean house" in Harrisburg, I firmly believe that we did a darned good job of making a start on getting representatives and senators who were willing to work to effect changes, much needed changes as a matter of fact, in our political scene in this state and maybe if we could take down a few powerhouse politicians last year, who knows, there's hope this could perhaps spread to other states and we could even get changes to occur in the Federal government and those who hold offices there too! It could happen, sure it could!

But back to this boy and his dreams. I started thinking then that this would make for a really neat story for the Review perhaps - a "Here's someone to keep an eye on down the road" type of thing. So I called my cousin, his grandmother and explained to her I had just heard this about him and would she fill me in a bit more.

She said yes, he is really very interested in politics and follows all kinds of things that come under the politcal realm. When he gets home from school, along with doing homework, he clicks on the C-span channel and watches all kinds of debates and such going on there on the House floor and what's more, he actually tries to learn more and more about the major isses facing the running of a nation so he is really, for a kid just barely into his teenage years, he can give some pretty darned good explanations as to how many aspects of the government system really work.

So, I called him and asked him if he would be willing to e-mail me information as to how he developed this interest, how he plans to work his way into a position whereby he could run for election After showing my request for this type of information, his mother gave him permission to write back to me and give me his thoughts, ideas, plans and such. And, when I decided it would be appropriate to write the piece for the Review, before it would be published, his parents also had the final say in what data I was going to be able to write about his views.

So, now - here's an introduction for you of a young man who is very in command of himself, knows what he wants to do, is working to achieve that ultimate goal someday.

Meet, if you will, Paul J. Monella Jr - son of Paul Sr. and Ellen R. Weaver Monella. His grandparents are John "Jack" and Margaret Anne Hill Weaver from Curtis Park, in Philipsburg but the Monella's live in Morrisdale, along the main drag there in the house that had been Paul's grandparents' (Robert and Helen Ginnicks Hill) home for many years.

"P.J." - as he is called by family and friends - is now 15 years old and says he first became interested in the presidency through a book he received in the second grade, from his uncle, Jeffrey Weaver, who is a music and band instructor in the Chicago area. From reading that book as well as paying very close attention to a special that ran on the History channel a few months back about each and every president to date, their dreams, platforms, goals, successes and failures too while in office, P.J. can rattle off detail after detail about each of these former public officials. He can also tell you who was he spouse of each president and lots and lots of little trivia type bits of information on each of these men, their spouses, families and programs intiated by each while in office.

This is just a short outline about my idea for this story, what few things I have for my background writing about him and I have roughly four days time to re-read the e-mail P.J. sent me detailing his plans of how he is going to put all of these things into play over the years.

Right now, as things stand, considering his age and mine, the odds of my being around not if, but when he achieves his goal aren't all that hot as I am definitely on the downhill swing of life. So, whether I will ever get to cast a vote for him in his quest to be president is pretty iffy.

But for now, all things considered - his choice of party (which I won't divulge at this time for various reasons but sounds like a wonderful choice in my way of thinking), the beliefs he has about what could, can, should, better be done to deal with the economic factors, social security, the war, employment, gun control, abortion, equal rights - you name it, he has a well-studied response to any of those questions and lots more!

And because of all of those things, P.J. would for sure, get my vote if he were a few years older and of legal age to run for office and you can bet your bottom dollar my vote for him wouldn't be the least bit biased either, just because he is my cousin, "The Pres" somewhere done the line in our country's history will make one heck of a great politician, for sure, ten fold!

Monella for President, remember that name, that slogan too as I really believe this guy 's got the heart and potential to follow through and the intelligence level, ability to break down issues, study them in depth and make well-reasonsed, well thought-out solutions and also, that he will do it in a manner that shows the true meaning behind what a politician should be, not who the person is with tons of money and not having a clue as to how to think correctly, using that old fashioned commodity called Common Sense!

Yep, most definitely, you've got my vote, P.J.!

If I'd Known Then.....

How many times do we say that to ourselves - "If I'd known then what I know today"? And if we had known then, would we really have done everything differently?

I don't know if I would or not -if I could do a few things over or my whole life - change everything or just some little things here and there.

One thing I do know today is that my family - my kids and me - would most likely be considered "dysfunctional." Mainly because they are the product of a single parent family but then too, so was I - just under different circumstances.

With me, it was because my Dad died when I was 2 1/2 weeks old of cancer. For my kids, it was because their Dad and I divorced when my youngest had just turned 4. My son was almost 7, the older girl was 12.

For me, life was different from many of my peers on two counts - there was no dad here and I was an only child. I did have both my Mom's parents though as we lived with them, so there was an adult male in the house - although he was 70 when I was born, 82 when he died and the last three years of his life, he had what was referred to then as "hardening of the arteries" -which tends to affect people very much like Altzheimers.

Growing up with my grandparents though kind of made me almost like an extension of their family - a really, really late in life child sort of thing you know! My grandma and Mom tried to discipline me with some degree of success, as long as my Grandfather was not around. Him, I could wrap around my little finger -or so it often seemed. While my Grandma would grumble, growl, complain about this or that of my behavior and Mom would, if Grandpa was no where in the vicinity, occasionally even take a swift hand to my behind and one one occasion, even broke a switch off a tree, chased me around the outside of the house till she caught me and whipped me with that branch. But Grandpa - the harshest thing he ever did/said to me was "Goodness Agnes" and often that was just to get me to be quiet so he could hear his baseball game on the old radio that had more static on the broadcasts than anything!

My kids, on the other hand, did get a smack more often than I did but it wasn't an every day occurance and they knew if I was actually angry enough to do that, they were really in big trouble. They didn't realize why I tried to ride herd on them as hard as I did back then, but for the most part, today they do understand it was mainly to keep them out of as many scrapes as I could possibly avert and also, to try to avoid them being labeled any more than absolutely necessary because of being the product of a "single parent family."

Tonight, my older daughter and her fiance came up for supper and my son was also here. Mandy had to work till 7 p.m. so didn't get home to join the "party" (if you want to call our dinner together that).

The older girl, Carrie, is still ticked at her brother because of the episode Christmas Night when he totalled my car. Ok, I'm still very ticked off at him over that too. Carrie also has a tendancy to be very free with dishing out comments to her siblings as well as to me, that were we to say the same thing to her, she might never speak to whoever said what she felt wrong, hurtful, insulting again. OK - dish it out but not take it - yep, that's about her speed a lot of the time.

So tonight, when my son arrived here for supper, she immediately was going to start riding him about anything she could think of but he tried to avert this by telling her to make a deal - pick on each other as much as possible but only to do it in a fun way and surprisingly enough, she agreed to that!

They started to exchange wise cracks back and forth - my son has a very good wit, great sense of humor - and somehow the subject of dysfunctionality popped up. Someone, I don't know who, asked what is the definition of dysfunctionality and I responded to that by said it is 'E.R.T.M.E.R." (That's our surname, you see.) And from there, everything was fair game as long as the wise cracks were done in a "fun tone." They wanted to check and make sure I had taken a zanax today because otherwise, it might not playout that way - fun, you know. And, since I had done that (taken a zanax earlier) I wasn't in an angry or depressed mood. Ok, that angle was covered and things were safe. All went fine until Carrie reached for the white phone on the kitchen wall to make a phone call and I told her she'd have to use the other phone because the kitchen phone is on the line that my computer runs on, therefore, it was busy.

And, she started to get a little off the "fun" track and was ready to slam me about why did the computer have to be on all the damned time anyway? I smiled and reminded her this was to be "fun" nothing bad tonight and she did, for a change, back down a bit, but it was a bit of a close call there for a few seconds, maybe even minutes.

They brought with them tonight though a surprise visitor. Carrie and Robert had the cutest little puppy - about 3 months old - that they brought up here. Seems this puppy had been "rescued" by Robert's brother and his wife but after they got the pup, they decided to split up and where each was moving was a "no pets allowed" place so Carrie and Robert volunteered to "re-rescue" this dog and claimed her for their own, to live and romp and play with the three dogs they already have.

The pup is part cocker and part black lab and is just absolutely adorable. She's white with black ears (like a cockers) and black splotches of fur on the white and her eyes - well, they are different as they have a sort of blue ring around them! Just the sweetest puppy I have seen since the black cocker mix puppy I brought home when I was about 13 years old! I picked her up, cuddling and petting her and I could feel the tears almost ready to burst forth while caressing her. Her name is "Ollie" and I, half-teasing, told Carrie after she explained how they came to acquire her, that if she got the dog house-broken - well maybe - and she knew where I was heading with that too - maybe somehow we could figure out a way to convince Bill, my daughter Mandy's husband, to give it another try to have a dog in the house! He isn't an animal hating person but he isn't an animal lover either of the variety my kids and I are! Dogs, to him, are not meant to live in a person's house - they should have their own house out in the backyard and be tied up there, day in and day out. My kids and I feel much differently - dogs are meant to live inside with their people! End of discussion! Bill tolerates the one cat we have simply because Mandy made it very clear from the beginning of their relationship that the cat was a very high priority party in our home and would remain on the pedestal we've created for her over the 15 years we've had her! He knows, full well, should anything at all happen to that cat and there is the slightest inkling that he might have not done everything possible to be nice to the cat, his happy homelife will end then and there! No questions will be asked, he will just be totally shunned from that time forward, through all eternity as far as my daughter is concerned.

We were curious as to how the baby would respond to the puppy and after the initial lick up the middle of his face and the shock that gave to his system, he seemed to respond very well to the puppy. Maya was asleep on the couch when they arrived but when she woke up and saw this cute little furball bouncing around the room, she immediately made friends with the dog and Ollie with her! They took turns chasing each other - or so it seemed - around the living room and dining room and Maya was giggling virtually all over herself, she was so happy and excited over this little dog!

Will we manage somehow to acquire Ollie for our own? Well, that part still remains to be seen and odds are my desire there will go down the tubes and the pup will stay then with Carrie and Robert. But, boy seeing her here tonight, sure did make me yearn for some of those good old days!

The thing of it is - I do know today what I didn't understand back when I brought the puppy home - my sweet old Duffy - that a puppy, while cute as a button, takes a lot of work, a lot of care, training - extra money for dog food and even more extra funds for lots of new shoes too more often than not! Yeah, I do know all that; I even accept that too.

But at the same time, knowing now too what I didn't know or realize then, a puppy and small children, provided the temperment of the dog is the right type, is one of the very best things you can ever provide in a child's life.

And I wonder if we had this puppy, would it provide a really good outlet to help Maya grow, achieve more of her learning goals by sharing her young life with that of this loveable and so beautiful little puppy!

Cross your fingers, shake the rabbits foot and pray that I don't have to wonder but will maybe, with just enough luck, be able to watch them forge a good solid relationship between a small child and a loving little dog! Dogs are also good for old people to have around themselves too - wonder if my son-in-law might also buy that theory? (I didn't know that then but I DO KNOW that now!)

Visit to my Past

Come, talk a little walk back with me, in time to about 1950-51 and you'll find me playing along the street - same one where I live today (same house, too) and you might just find me playing with the two blonde girls in this photo.

These two girls, Lucille on the far right and Martha, in the center, lived about a quarter of a mile up the road from our house, so they weren't my "everyday" playmates. Most likely, to have been playing up at their house, I would have had to have permission to venture that far from home at that age. Well, let's put it this way - I most likely SHOULD have asked and was granted permission to go play with them. Sometimes, when I was a kid, asking permission to roam around, that far from home, was a minor thing to me and thus frequently escaped my mind.

Martha was a year older than me and her sister, Lucille (or Lu) was three years my senior. Since their mother and two of her sisters all married brothers, they and their 12 first cousins who grew up in this village too all looked very much alike.

Like me - and most everyone else along this street when we were kids - we belonged to the same church, the Emmanuel Lutheran Church at the intersection in the middle of town. I think only one family on our street belonged to the Nebo Lutheran Church, which sat atop the hill - high above us, or so it seemed. By about 1953, the two churches decided to unite and become one parish - First Lutheran - and everything in our old church was sold off and the church eventually was torn down. Today, there is a stone marker along the front of the property indicating that our lovely old church had once stood there but now, well behind that marker, is a fairly large garage, built into what had once been the foundation of this church.

Martha and Lu's grandfather, Jonas Nelson, my great-grandfather, Karl Eld and my grandfather and his brothers along with most all the old Swedes from the lower end of town and the village of Peale just east of us, were among the founding fathers of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church. Almost all the men along our road worked in the mining industry - the old-timers then having worked in the old slope coal mines and the younger fellows, parents of my childhood friends, either worked in the clay mine down in Peale or as the slope coal mines faded into obscurity in the area, had shifted over to work in the "strippings." (Slope mines are underground mines but unlike most underground mines in the eastern part of Pennsylvania where the mines were generally shaft type, the old mines in this part of the state were of the "slope" variety which the miners walked into, as opposed to riding down a deep shaft to get to the ore and dig. The "strippings" were the kind that used the big steam shovels and draglines, bulldozers and such to rip huge cuts into the earth, dig down to the vein and load the coal into dump trucks to be hauled away to tipples, railroad cars or other companies to be shipped out of the area.

Although any type of mining was, still is dangerous, the old slope mines held the constant danger of cave-ins or the potential to be injured by a mine car, pulled by mules, in and out of the mines. My Dad's youngest brother, my uncle Bill Hill, lost his leg the very first day he went to work in the mines at about age 15 or 16, when his leg got caught between two mine cars. Amputated at the knee, this meant his potential to work in the mines had ended and after he recovered, got a prosthesis, he went back and finished high school but died two weeks before his scheduled graduation because of a kidney disease. He would have been the only one of my Dad's brothers who would have graduated from high school although all three of his sisters graduated from high school and two of them went on to college and became school teachers. My Dad and his four remaining brothers all only ever completed the 8th grade but lack of education never stopped them from finding decent employment and a means to support their families. One sold life insurance, another got into country politics and was elected to various county offices during the 40's, 50's and 60's. But they all paid their dues, did their time as almost all young males in this region did by going to work in the mines as soon as they turned 14 or 15 years of age.

But I digressed there a tad and back to this picture we go.

I had never seen this photograph until last summer when Martha approached me after church one Sunday morning, telling me she had something I might be interested in. She knew from several articles I had written and published in the "West Branch Review" that I liked getting to see and often borrow, old photographs and scan them into my computer for use in a future article, or just for memory's sake and she pulled this photograph from her purse.

"I came across this a while back and have been carrying it in my purse to show you." she told me and went on to say I could use it if I wanted to scan it. I just finally got around to doing that little task this weekend - after having the photo sit on top of my computer for a while, then atop my monitor so my little granddaughter couldn't reach it and take off with it. For a time, I couldn't get to it to scan it because it had fallen down behind my computer desk and I couldn't move the desk along with the computer and all my other piles of stuff in the desk and on top of it to get to the photo. Finally, about a month ago, my daughter moved the desk out and rescued this picture along with a couple others that had landed back in the corner on the floor and I stuck it in a small holder in front of my monitor where Maya couldn't reach it and it was still out in the open facing me as a reminder, day after day, that I really should get busy and scan this photo in to save it for myself.

And, to track a little bit of other history from my time to the present, as I mentioned earlier, the church most all of us on this street belonged to "disappeared" in the mid-fifties, by uniting with the Nebo Lutheran Church at the top of Grassflat hill in town and becoming First Lutheran. Throughout the late fifites, until 1967, the minister of our church also was the pastor of the Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church in Lanse, a neighboring village about 3 miles away.

In early May of 1967, my mother and I had my daughter, Carrie, baptized in the First Lutheran Church. We had no idea of course that she would be the last baby to be baptized in that church but a week later, it was struck by lightning on the steeple and within and hour's time, nothing remained of that old church. We then began to drive to the church in Lanse and shared their building until papers were drawn up and our members united with the members of Gustavus Adolphus to become what is now known at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church - located in Lanse. Since joining the two parishes and with the old church in Lanse being very small to hold two congregations, in essence, in the 1980's, a brand new church was erected there, a beautiful building we now have for our sanctuary but one which has its roots back to a very small church built in Peale in the 1880's and which also was destroyed by fire. That one, so the story goes, caught fire from live candles used on the church's Christmas tree.

And, today - indicative maybe of the beliefs of her grandfather, Jonas Nelson, one of the first members of the old Emanuel Lutheran Church of my early childhood, Martha is the treasurer now of Holy Trinity.

Something else I didn't realize until this past summer/fall too is that Martha's grandfather was a first cousin to my Mom's older sister's husband. I remember about the time most likely when this photo was taken or close to that time, going out to an old farm near home with my Uncle Albin "Butch" Gustafson to visit his great-aunt, Christina Wick, who would have been Martha and Lu's great-grandmother. All these years, I knew that family name but never connected it to my uncle's family tree until I "met" online a great-nephew of that uncle who now lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

So Eric - and for his mom and Dad, Mary Ann and Mel - if you're reading this, here's a picture tonight of two relatives of yours, one who still lives in this vicinity too. Maybe, when you come back east in June, we can arrange for you three to meet Martha - might be a very interesting meeting for all of you!

That's the end of my little "memory" trip for tonight. As usual, a lot of ramblings about what many would say is a lot of nothings too. But to me, it represents where my roots lie, the strength of fabric of my life too in the type of community where I grew up, the church that has always been a major aspect of my childhood and teenage years and still is a part of my life today as are the many people I knew then and some still living nearby me today - like Martha Jane.

Thanks Mart for letting me use this picture.

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.

Fifty Years

Today, I'm introducing you to my cousin, Margaret Ann and her husband, Jack, who celebrated fifty years of wedded bliss in August of 2006.

Now, I don't know how anyone else may feel about wedding anniversaries, but I happen to feel anyone who can manage to survive fifty years together deserves a really big medal! Heck, I couldn't even make eight years with my ex, much less fifty. One of us would have been dead by now.

Margy and Jack have three great children - Jeff, Ellen Rochelle and John Robert, as well as seven grandchildren and a great-granddaughter now too. Margy's dad and my dad were brothers and I see so much how Margy looks a great deal like her dad.

One of these days I'm going to introduce everyone to one of Margy's grandsons too - who just happens to be a really fascinating young man with lots and lots of idealism and many dreams. But that's for another time.

Looks to me like the fifty years together have blessed Margy and Jack very well, don't you agree?

First Sunday of 2007

I've been meaning to post a picture of my older Grandson, my Prince, Alex but don't have any recent ones of him right now on my computer and my scanner/printer is acting goofy right now and won't let me scan his school picture in for this year. But I came across this one tonight - taken over a year ago of Alex with his "Aunt Mandy" and it's a snapshot of both of them that I really like, so I decided I would use it to show everyone what a handsome "little prince" he really is!

Besides, finding and posting this picture tonight, I added two more blogs to my "favorites" list - been meaning to put them up there and keep forgetting to do it, or postponing it or maybe just being lazy. I dunno! But they're there now. Hope you enjoy reading some of my favorite blogs from time to time, same as I do.

I'm not into making resolutions for the New Year mainly because usually by noon on New Year's Day I have forgotten what they were. And I didn't make any resolutions this year but I am going to try to get myself better organized in the use of my time. I need to start working on my research project - going through oodles and oodles of old local newspapers through an online data base and trying to glean from those papers, snippets about the villages in this township as well as bits and pieces too about the people who have lived here over the years. My goal for this information: put it into various categories, get it all put together then with writings about the various years, categories, people - whatever and hopefully be able to find a way to get it printed up then too! I really think a booklet or book like this could be a big help to folks doing family tree research or of interest to people like myself, who just likes to read about how things were "back in the day."

And now - time for my little man here to have his late night meal, get his sister to stay out of the cookies in the container on the counter that she figured out yesterday how to open and she's making a nice chocolate mess all over her face right now, munching away on some cookies called "Chocolate ectasies" and yeah, they are that alright.

After I get that done, will be trying to get Miss "cookie-face" Maya to lay down, get her to gear down a bit to get ready to go to bed and then, get myself there too!

Night all!

Mouse in the House

There's either a mouse in the house or bats in my belfry - or maybe both! I dunno, but something strange is going on here!

Earlier today, when I signed in via Internet Explorer 6.0, none of my things that are normally displayed in my sidebar would show up on my screen! But, if I closed IE and went and opened Firefox, my blog showed up with everything intact.

Which is why I posted the entry just below this one about "Confusion Central" because I sure was confused by the missing data when I tried to view my blog via the IE 6.0.

But, since I was able to work with the Firefox, at least I was satisfied I could still post, make corrections, whatever to my blog. And, after I made that earlier entry, I sat down, wrote a long e-mail letter, fed my grandson, talked on the phone to an old friend too for about an hour. Went back to my blog on firefox and surfed a little more then closed it. After that, I reopened my blog on IE and lo and behold, all my links and archives and my index of titles, profile, etc., are back within full view and also, when I scroll down to the bottom of the blog entries, everything that is supposed to be there is in there once again.

How the heck did this happen? I didn't change a thing while I was writing my other post or reading other blogs when I had it open in Firefox, so what happened to return my blog back to looking like its normal self again?

Now, I know programs get "bugs" in them from time to time. I know too, for a fact, we had a mouse here in the house, at least it was visiting over the Christmas holidays because I saw it scurry across the living room floor a couple of times and watched it go behind my bookcase by the fireplace to hide its little self. No one has said that they set a trap and caught anything as yet, so I am assuming the little fellow is still around here someplace.

I'm thinking though that maybe people who know me and have told me in the past, on several occasions too, that I must have "bats in my belfry" that quite possibly that is what has happened.

Yep! Evidently I am really going daft!

Confusion Central!

I know, when it comes to computers and such, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but something is going on here today with my computer and I am REALLY confused now!

Earlier today, after my anti-virus program had gone through it's normal, daily updating thing, I got a message that I would have to do a shut-down and restart, etc., for the updates today then to take effect. No problem. I ' m happy to oblige cause I want (and figure I need) all the anti-virus protection I can get -who doesn't? So I do that and when my computer finishes reloading everything, all of a sudden - without my clicking it on - my printer/scanner opens up for me. I have no clue what caused that to happen as I wasn't touching anything on the keyboard or the mouse - or anything remotely related to the computer at the time. It was just "doing its own thing" while I was reading today's paper.

Ok, didn't really think TOO much of that. Just closed it and proceeded to sign in to my provider and go on line.

From there, open the e-mail program, get that taken care of and off I went to my lovely blog. I decided to use the internet explorer to open and access my blog. Mainly because there were a couple people who had commented to a piece on my blog recently, whose blogs I had visited and liked very much and my intent was then to add their blogs to mine. You know, the nice thing to do; reciprocate and all that stuff.

Well, I open my blog and wait, it loads, says it is done but there is something missing!

The whole string of stuff that normally appears on my blog, down the right-hand side - the blog links I like, the index of recent articles, the archives, my profile and sitemeter - all missing!

My immediate reaction was to sit here, stare at that and mutter to myself, "WTF?"

I hit refresh and the same thing happened again. I scrolled down the postings showing only to see that the last posting showing up -I think it was from December 30th as it was one that I had done referencing a lot of stuff about my family trees - was not there in its entirety. Go figure. What's up with that?

Well, I decided to try another route then. I closed my IE and went over to Firefox and opened that up. From there, I opened my blog and presto magic, all the data was there - links, index, archives, profile and sitemeter plus, the last posting showing on that page was all there too! Every last word of it, in all its literary glory just a shining through!

Up until maybe a month ago now, I only had internet explorer 6.0 on my computer. I didn't see any need to put another browser on or switch to a different one and dump the IE. However, a lady who writes one of my favorite blogs - listed under my favorites column here - "remodeled" her blog a little while back and after she did that, IE wouldn't open her blog! Her husband also has a blog which I have listed under my links too, so I commented in a post to him that I couldn't open his wife's blog and they suggested that I add Firefox. So I did that, mainly to access that one blog! But, considering what's happening to my blog on the old IE today, it's evidently a good thing I did that or I wouldn't be here, posting this today maybe, would I?

So, what I'm wondering here is if there's any one reading this who understands computers, blogging stuff (especially problems), whatever - and can give me any idea as to why my blog doesn't open fully on the IE and what -if anything - I can do to correct that?

Now, in the meantime, I just got an e-mail from an old school-days friend whose first husband was a guy who grew up about 4 doors down the street from me but was killed in an automobile accident back in 1964 and I'm closing this piece tonight to go respond to her note!

So, Audrey Grace, if you're reading this before I get a letter composed and e-mailed back to you, you've got one coming!

At least I think so! I haven't noticed anything strange going on today with my e-mail program! Not yet, anyway!

Purple Circles

I've been up for several hours now today; on my fourth cup of coffee now too. But nothing seems to be working to bring me to "life." No energy, just want to go back to sleep it as my solution of the day.

When I looked in the mirror this morning, my eyes seemed to have a dark cast beneath them - sort of a purplish circle effect to prove to me that they weren't fully rested, wanted more z-time I think.

But the purple circle effect appears to be following me all over now too.

First cup of coffee in hand, I headed to the computer - of course. Check the e-mail, read the morning paper from State College online, see what was new and exciting in the world. Nothing going on there but lots of e-mails coming in, so that might perk me up a bit.

Kids had their breakfasts, Mandy left for work. Maya was being exceptionally good, playing quietly and I started into reading the e-mails. I made my big mistake there in seeing Maya enjoying some of her toys, doing so well playing with them, I guess I must have turned off my "inner hearing" sense - that one you need to keep on all the time when dealing with three-year-olds.

I kind of got lost reading the e-mails. Apparently I was concentrating so strongly on the topics coming in there today that I didn't notice Maya had moved from the middle of the living room floor till all of a sudden, I heard this strange kind of squeaking nose directly behind me.

I swung around in my chair and what did I see? Purple circles right behind me!

All over the wall that is behind me! Nice big purple circles there to adorn the white painted wall just off to the left and behind my computer desk already there and little Miss Maya standing there, purple marker pen in hand, merrily drawing more and more of these circles all over!

Oh brother! Her mother is going to really pitch a hissy fit over these gems! Yes indeed!

I jumped up -well if you can call my slow movements to bring my tired body out of the chair jumping - but that's what it was intended to be. I grabbed the marker out of Maya's hand and gave her a lecture - consisting mostly of just repeating to her "NO! No, no, no, no, NO!!! You don't draw on the wall!"

Her response, as expected, was a sad, disappointed, kind of shocked gaze at me as I continued ranting at her and the mouth curled up, tears rolled down her cheeks, amazed that Grammy didn't appreciate her marvelous mural done oh so lovingly.

Off to the kitchen to grab the "Mr Clean" miracle-worker sponge and a container of some kind of heavy-duty stuff to spray on the wall and try to rub hard enough to remove the marker circles but not so hard that it would mar the plasterboard surface under the paint. Took a good bit of elbow grease to get the area - about 2 foot in diameter - and pretty well colored in that radius as well - to come clean.

Ok, the marker is up out of reach now. She's back to playing in the middle of the floor again and I'm happy back to reading all kinds of excerpts writer friends are sending through today - "Friday Teasers" -from whatever it is each of them is currently working on. A book for some, short story for others, some "bad poetry" a couple more are playing with and I'm into my third cup of caffeine, hoping, praying pretty soon it will kick in and fully get me awake.

All was going fine then as I finished clearing out the e-mails, started down my blog to read the new postings there since yesterday. A few comments done, watched bits and pieces of some program on TV-land of the 100 Most Exciting Moments on TV and I don't know exactly how it happened but something caught my eye and there, beneath the bow window I see something I definitely didn't care to catch even the slightest glimpse of - more purple circles covering an even larger amount of wall space than had been drawn on the wall a short time earlier directly behind me!

Obviously, these were from an earlier episode today of Maya's mural meanderings because I knew where I had put that purple marker was completely out of her sight and reach.

I didn't even bother to yell at her over this discovery. Too late for that since she had long since abandoned that scene, moved on to strewing toys all over the middle of the floor.

I got up, poured my fourth cup of coffee and sat down again to slowly ingest this nice comforting hot liquid, write this up while hoping my fairy godmother would come in and gently scour that wall clean for me.

But now, still half-asleep, I look over and see those big swirls haven't evaporated as I had wished would magically happen and I'm gonna have to go repeat the wall-cleaning process yet again today.

One can pray I guess that it will be enough movement to finally bring some reserve energy into play for me. But I have decided that the next time I get up and look in the mirror and observe purple circles under my eyes again, I'm going to consider them a very bad omen for the day ahead and go crawl back into bed and sleep the rest of the day - or until I no longer am swimming in a sea of purple circles -or any other rainbow color the markers may hold within.

Better yet, maybe I will just trash or at least find a hiding place unreachable by little fingers or put out an edict to whoever the person is who lives here that bought the damned things and brought them into the house in the first place.

Purple circles - not for me!

A News Flash!

Today has been a day I think it would be safe to say was "interesting" to say the least! So interesting in fact, it even involved talking with two agents from the FBI about an e-mail I received.

Now, how about them apples, huh?

What's this about the FBI, you ask? Well, let me start at the beginning and explain. Best get yourself a cup of coffee to sip on while you read, cause if you've been reading my blog for any length of time now, you know it can get pretty long-winded!

I got an e-mail this morning that announced it was from the good old IRS and gee, imagine this - it was telling me that there had been an error on my last income tax filing and I was due a refund of a whopping big $63.80! Wow! Then this e-mail also told me to "click here" and fill out the information on that page and within 6-9 days processing time, I would receive this refund.

Red flags started popping in my mind immediately for two reasons. One, that I have not worked since 2002 and the last time I filed a federal income tax return was in 2004 because I had to cash in a very small IRA from one of my former employers, so the idea that there was this refund waiting for me to claim it sounded fishy to me. And also, the fact that if indeed I were due a refund from that year, and if the IRS had indeed e-mailed a notice to me, they would have sent it to my old e-mail address because I've only had the one I currently use for slightly over two years but not dating clear back to before April 15th of 2004!

I clicked open the page as directed though just out of curiosity and was really flabbergasted at what information was being requested for me to submit to get this refund - which by that time I was convinced this was phony - a scam. Not only did they want my checking account/debit card information but any credit card data numbers, expiration date and also, that little special code on the back of your card that is next to impossible to read but you have to have it to do any online transactions. And, in addition to that, they wanted my social security number, date of birth as well as -that super secret answer to the big question - what is your mother's maiden name! All things that in the wrong hands could drain one's checking/savings account, create massive headaches with credit card companies and with all the social security personal data, would give a crook the opportunity of a lifetime to set up a means of stealing my identity!

Incredible, really incredible, isn't it?

I didn't even mess around bothering with contacting the local police or the state police - I went straight to the big guys - the FBI. The agent I spoke to advised me not to submit any information, something that was really unnecessary advice on his part to me since I had already decided this was obviously a blatant scheme to help me part company with what few funds I have. He also gave me a number to contact for the Internet Crime Center to verify that this was indeed a scam and then how to report this incident of the e-mail I had received to their online center.

So, if any of you good people reading this entry gets a message via e-mail from the IRS telling you there is an error on your last tax return and you are due a refund, DO NOT, repeat that, DO NOT SUBMIT the information requested in that e-mail, on the website it takes you to! If you do and your bank account is suddenly drained, your credit cards maxed out and you learn someone else is using your name, social security card number - the whole nine yards there, then don't cry about it and say "OH, I had no idea things like this existed!" or "I just didn't think it could/would ever happen to me!"

If you do however, get an e-mail message like this one, run - don't walk - to the phone, call the FBI at your local office and get the number for their Internet Fraud office. Talk to the agent there to verify this is a scam and then, for the love of Mike and Pete put together (as my Grandpa would have said), go to their website and fill out the form to report this as the crime that it is!

The more of us who receive these phony-baloney things like this one or the Nigerian Scam or whatever it may be and report it to the proper authorities, the better chance there is that the people trying to rob us blind can be caught, charged, tried and sent where they belong - straight past GO and directly to JAIL!

Here's the website for the FBI's Internet Crime Center: www.ic3.gov . Pass this information on to anyone you know too who has an internet connection, e-mail and do it before they get suckered in and lose everything - or run the risk of that happening!

Now - in addition to telling you here about this episode today, I have also contacted a local internet news site and spoke to the editor of the site about this issue. She is going to do a special news article on their website about this and how easy it can be for criminals to bilk the honest public in hopes of reaching a few others who evidently don't read the newspaper or watch the news on tv to know and understand and be able to identify properly the things that could serve to destroy one's lifestyle.

So, what do you think now - was my day "interesting?"

Can We Talk? Please?

No, I'm not trying to imitate or emulate Joan Rivers with her routines but I'd really like to take a few moments of your time to talk about something that I think is one of the biggest issues facing society today. And, maybe, just maybe from reading this and another blogger's post here, it might help save someone's life too - maybe even yours!

The subject is one that many people - even after twenty years since this was first noticed on the radar screen of medical researchers is still a very misunderstood thing and often, way too often, it either joked about or discussions on it are TABU!

I'm referring here to the epidemic known as AIDS.

This disease, once believed to affect only gay men, is no longer regarded in that manner as it strikes young, old, gay, straight - all races, ethnic groups - no one is truly safe from this illness. There are ways that it can be prevented but these do require several things - precautions, safe sex practices, and educating yourself as to how easily people can be infected by the HIV virus.

I'm not going to go into detail here about the who, what, where, how of AIDS.

I am however asking that you please read the blog - shown on my "Blogs I Like To Read List" and called "Reading Rucker. (readingrucker.blogspot.com) My friend and author, Linda Rucker, has posted an excellent piece there with very valuable information about this epidemic - and yes folks, it is an epidemic and is growing by leaps and bounds every day!

Linda, along with another writer friend, Mike Morris, whose blog "The_Author_Mike" freewebs.com/the_author_mike/ also appears in my list of favorites, are joining forces and resources in a concerted effort to try to raise awareness and yes, money too, towards the treatment and/or prevention of this illness.

Please, please, pretty please with sugar on it - stop by Linda's blog and read about ways this illness can and is being spread, methods that can be used to reverse the spread of AIDS and learn some of the plans Linda and Mike are working on in a great undertaking of the group - W.H.A.T. (Writers Helping with AIDS Treatment) to do whatever they can to help combat this scourge.

And please too, spread the word to your family and friends about Linda's blog, about her book "Dark Ridge" from which she has pledged to donate 40 percent of her profit from each sale to combat AIDS spread and helping those already affected/infected by it.

The message you spread and the life you save by doing this could very well be that of a family member, close friend or who knows, maybe even your own.

Optimism?

I'm taking that title today from three things. First, from two entries in Barb's blog "Skittles Place" and the third, from the entry for Friday, January 12, 2007 from my Bushisms calendar.

I'll give you the calendar quote first:
"And I am an optimistic person. I guess if you want to try to find something to be pessimistic about, you can find it, no matter how hard you look, you know?" (Washingto, D.C.; June 15, 2004)

And, the things that, to me, tie together, in maybe an offbeat way, from Skittles Place were a Quickie question she had asking if you "play an instrument" along with her comment at the beginning of her blog stating she planned to spend the day watching the funeral of former President Gerald R. Ford.

Let's work our way down through this as I see it in my mind - which might be a somewhat confused, rambling trip too, as you are probably already thinking, but bear with me anyway.

The musical instrument thing first here - yes, I have taken instruction on three different instruments during my younger years. Starting when I was about in 3rd grade or so, my mother decided I should learn to play the piano. A nice, pleasant idea that all young ladies should know how to play the piano was pretty much the "norm" I think back then, plus - we just happened to have a big old upright piano here in the house, so why not let me make some use of that instrument, broaden my mind, allow my musical talents to pour forth. I think that was more what my Mom had in her dream world for her daughter anyway.

But, suffice it to say, I started taking taking lessons from a lady in Philipsburg who was at that time, well in her 80's. Strict, very stern, extremely particular in how one "addressed" the piano for openers. Your posture had to be just so and with me, that was a huge goal in her mind before we even began the very basics of piano instruction. Time too - that metronome clicked back and forth constantly and time apparently was another area about music that was not a strong point in me. My cousin, Ruth Ann, I think had also taken her basic piano instruction from Miss Dom - Miss Grace Dom, if I remember correctly, was her name. She and I just never got along very well; I disliked her immensely and used that frequently as my excuse for not practicing my scales, finger placement exercises and the etude books she insisted I had to learn frontwards and backwards and every which way in between too!

Then, in the winter of my 4th grade year in school, our music teacher, after administering some kind of tests to determine which students had hidden musical talent/ability, determined (probably because I could at least read music by then) that I would be a good candidate to learn to play another instrument. Papers were sent home to give my mother all this wonderful news that she had a budding star musician on her hands and to inquire if perhaps, somewhere within the family, there might be an instrument hidden away that I could use in this new aspect of the musical program within our school district.

Somehow, word got back to my Dad's family about how much talent I had with respect to learning music, an instrument, etc., and it was made known that a violin that had belonged to my Dad's brother (my Uncle Rab), was up at the family homestead and that if I wanted to take violin lessons, this would be available for me to use.

So it was decided then I take violin lessons and I'm sure my Mom had dreams of my becoming the next virtuoso violinist with maybe the New York Symphony someday or at the very least, the lead violin player in the school orchestra our music teacher had dreams of forming.

Sadly, none of that - other than my taking lessons on the instrument for roughly three school years - ever took place! Although I did practice occasionally, I was -again - not faithful in my practice sessions. Thankfully, my grandfather was by that time getting very hard of hearing because I really don't think there is anything worse to hear than the screeching sounds produced by someone trying to learn to play the violin! But Grandpa would listen to me make my meager attempts at practice and always commented to me on how wonderful that music sounded. He apparently had lost his musical ear too because I KNOW what sounds were being produced by me were far from good!

Somewhere along those three years of taking violin lessons, I also switched piano teachers too. I convinced Mom that Miss Dom was just too outdated in her methods of teaching and could I please change teachers - maybe switch over to the lady in Philipsburg who had given instruction to a distant cousin of ours and our neighbor across the road (Bev Lundgren) and look how well Bev had done with her as a teacher. So, I began taking instructions then for a time from Miss Grace Moore - also located in Philipsburg. She was much friendlier than Miss Dom, that much was for sure and she did have more patience with me too, although I think I probably wore that pretty doggone thin too because of one particular trait that kept popping up - I hated to practice!

Somewhere in time - 6th grade I think - the music teacher at school decided I would perhaps do better learning an instrument that would be good for the school band. I think he had by then given up his dream of a school orchestra but since we already had a band, that held more potential to keep kids interested in learning to play an instrument. He dug around and found a French horn that wasn't being claimed by another music student and so, I began learning a third instrument then too.

Keep in mind here that my piano instruction did not continue on a steady basis during those three years. It was more or less a hit and miss deal most of the time. Aside from the fact I didn't like to practice the violin, or the French horn or the piano, with respect to the violin, it's my firm belief one must also have a lot more dexterity and a better "ear" for music to learn to play that instrument even half-way decently. Having better finger dexterity would probably have been helpful with the other two instruments and more practice might have shown some improvement in my playing abilities overall, but that just was not in my tomboy attitude at the time.

I had better fish to fry!

I did continue struggling with the French horn through 7th grade and the music teacher decided I was up to a par level where I could join the school band too - this would be the "marching band" and that was a very big mistake on his part! Walking and chewing gum at the same time have always been difficult for me. And, trying to march, in set patterns that one had to memorize, read music and try to play it too - all at once! Nope, no way was that ever going to be a part of my life and after 7th grade, the only instrument I continued to deal with - again, off and on - was the piano. I switched teachers yet again, this time to Mrs. Hayes, whose husband also happened to be our school superintendent and she was just a very sweet lady, so nice, complimentary to everything I tried to do, but to my Mom's chagrin, she seemed to pay little attention to enforcing the "time" factor of producing music. Therefore, I didn't seem to "get it" when it came to what speed this or that note should have. A quarter, half or full note? Who cared? Certainly not me!

I had, when I look back on my musical ventures, a bit of a delusional side, leaning towards grandeur! As a kid in elementary school, because I had memorized how to play "Jesus Loves Me" -with both hands, no less, I thought I could be the Sunday School pianist. WRONG! In high school, I thought I had advanced enough that I could play the piano for the entry march into the school auditorium for our weekly Monday morning sessions - simply because I had managed to learn to play the "Toreador's Song" from the Opera, Carmen, in the 3rd grade THompson's book of piano instruction. WRONG again there! I hit more wrong notes than one can possibly imagine and was an absolute nervous wreck about trying to play the piano in public too - another small factor I didn't take into consideration when I tried out for this honor!

Why then I got the notion in my junior year of high school that I felt I was qualified to become our next illustrious church organist is then truly beyond me when I think back on that move! Other than the fact I was a really smart aleck brat who thought she knew EVERYTHING apparently! But in my senior year in high school, the church council did award me the position of serving as organist/choir director which I did for a full year until they were, luckily, able to find someone much more capable. That wasn't a hard search either for them, I'm quite sure. Humility wasn't apparently an emotion I had much of a grip on back then! But optimism sure ranked high within me.

Moving on to the historic event of today - that being the funeral of former President Gerald R. Ford -almost every article I have read, every reporter who has spoken on the TV news the past few days, as well as many of the politicians who have spoken about President Ford at the various ceremonies in honor of his life, his work, have all referenced that he was regarded as a "healer" at a time when America most needed a person with just such qualities.

Now, because I grew up with my grandfather, who was a staunch democrat as well as a very strong believer in organized labor (especially the United Mine Workers Union), the only Republican, actually to this day, the ONLY politician I have ever felt was really an honest person, was my Dad's younger brother, my Uncle Arch, who was heavily involved in county politics (Republican, of course) and served as County Commissioner for a number of years, later as County Prothonotary and even ventured as far as to run for the State General Assembly back in the mid-fifties too. President Kennedy had been, still remains to this day, as my idol, my hero - regardless of the stories we all read now about some of his exploits, I still believe he was a great man. President Nixon, now that was then, a horse of a different color as I never liked him as vice-president, had even less respect for him after he became president either.

When President Ford first took office, and one of his first moves then was to pardon Nixon, I was at that time, livid. I thought this was grossly unfair and also, believed this was a move orchestrated too at the time Ford was approved to become Vice-president and later, the top official in the country when Nixon resigned.

Thirty plus years since that era, I have to agree with the reporters and their assertions that Ford was a great healer, just what was needed back then. Indeed, he was that! I have to confess that even when he was President, aside from the pardon episode, I really never could find anything else that I disliked about him. I thought very highly then, as I still do today, of his wife, who I think was perhaps THE MOST admirable First Lady EVER! She was attractive, polished, articulate - all good qualities for a "First Lady" to have, but she also always had an air about her that seemed to say "I'm just me, a plain person, like just about everyone else" and in retrospect, I think President Ford was cut from the same type of fabric there.

He always seemed approachable, not better than anyone, no airs about him, just a decent, good, honest man! Maybe it was this "down-home" quality I saw in him that reminded me a bit of my uncle that, although back in the 70's I would never have admitted it then, I actually liked and admired him very much.

Now, perhaps you see my tie-in to the optimism of my musical ventures to President Ford and accepting him as having been a very straight-forward thinking person, to the irony in the quote posted today from President Bush.

However optimistic I may have been about my own abilities, however much my optimism may color my opinion of President Ford's term in office, I don't think I have quite enough optimistic spirit in me though to ever regard President Bush in that same vein.

But then, isn't there a line about hope spring eternal in the human breast and isn't hope a lot like optimism? I'm working on that issue, but there just might not be quite that much hope, that much optimism left within me these days.

More Bushisms!

The past two or three days and the entrys made have all centered on my family tree history - a little bit of pictoral stuff and some explanations about what little I really do know about the people who long ago and in some cases, far away, are ultimately responsible for my being here today.

And in doing those pieces, I didn't think it would be appropriate to toss in one or two or so of these lovely little "Bushisms" from the desk calendar my daughter so kindly provided me as one of my Christmas gifts this year.

She knows exactly how I feel about our wonderful "Mr President" and knew, all too well, how much enjoyment I would get from reading these little quotes. I don't know that she thought I would take to putting a couple of them in my blog almost every day but that's beside the point. My aim is to share what little I have and if I enjoy these things, then surely the odds are that there are plenty of others who might just stumble across my pieces of prose that include some of these quotes and maybe it just might brighten someone else's day too!

The next "Bushism" in line for me to cite is shown for Thursday, January 11, 2007 - see, I'm keeping you at least a week ahead now too in this process. (Don't want anyone to miss any of these gems, you know.)

"Nothing he [Saddan Hussein] has done has convinced me -I'm confident the Secretary of Defense-that he is the kind of fellow that is willing to forgo weapons of mass destruction, is willing to be a peaceful neighbor, that is - will honor the people- the Iraqi people of all stripes, will- values human life. He hasn't convinced me, nor has he convinced my administration." (Crawford, Texas, August 21, 2002)

Now, what the heck does all that above really mean anyway? I have yet to figure out exactly what in blue blazes the man was trying to say here.

However, considering the events of this past weekend, which included the execution of Saddam Hussein - finally - I guess one could consider this quote to be pretty appropriate. I don't think anyone really understood Hussein all that well either, except that he was a dictator, a murderer, thief, crooked politician and all that kind of obscene stuff.

We'll just let it all go at that!

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.

Fair play to the Other Side of the Family

These are my mother's grandparents - Karl and Maja Lisa Till-Olson Eld-Andersson, originally from Bolstad, Dahlsland, Sweden, who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1880, for my great-grandfather and followed in 1881 by my great-grandmother and their five oldest children

The church is the Lutheran Church in Bolstad where they had been members until they immigrated to this country. A lady in Sweden who does family tree research sent me this photo of the church along with records from which I was able then to trace my roots on this side of my family back to the early 1600's. Needless to say, I was astounded to receive records that far back in time for these ancestors who were, as the old saying would aptly apply here, "As poor as church mice!"

Just absolutely incredible, isn't it?

Deeper Roots

While hunting through some old photos I had saved in various places, I found this one and thought it appropriate to post to go along with the photo in the previous blog of my dad and some of his siblings, taken around 1912 or 1913.

This picture is of my great-grandfather, George Hill and his second wife, Mary Todd Hill and some of their children and was taken in 1896, somewhere in Montana.

I can't identify the great-aunts and great-uncles on this photo as I have never met any of my Dad's relatives from "out west." This photo was sent to me by the daughter of the youngest son born to George and Mary Todd Hill - Robert Todd Hill. His daughter, Evelyn Hill Sturm, who now resides in Sun City, Arizona and who was kind enough to send me the complete family tree for George Hill - which includes all his children from his first marriage to Christina Hunter and those children born to his second marriage to Mary Todd. I would never have been able to put together a family tree on this side of my Dad's family without her kindness and generosity and the 13-14 years of hard work she had put into her research prior to my finding her online through a query she had posted about the Hill family.

As anyone who does family tree research of any type will tell you, no tree is ever "complete." But, Evelyn has researched our lineage back to the early 1800's in Scotland and has documentation she provided me I believe as far back as my great-great-great-grandfather there - whose name - gee, go figure - was also George Hill.

And true to the Scottish naming traditions, my grandparents named their first son (also their first child), George Hill. That brother of my Dad's named his first son George Hill - but the family has always called him "Skip" or "Skipper" and Skip and his wife named their first son George Heystel Hill but he is known as Hy or Hystel. It can get pretty doggone confusing when one is trying to figure out which generation you are referring to in this family - and others like them - when there is such a proliferation of the same name -George Hill! Almost like looking for information on someone named "John Smith" isn't it?

I'd love to be able to continue to get updated information on the descendants of George and Christina Hunter Hill or George and Mary Todd Hill but the only relative I have any contact with pertaining to those relatives is Evelyn Sturm and I think the family has spread out over so many states and large cities now too, that she is losing track and contact with many of the descendants as well.

So, if you happen to be reading this and have the surname of Hill in your family tree and your ancestors once lived in Grand Coulee, Cascade County, Montana then there might be a very good possibility that we are cousins. And if you're interested, please feel free to contact me!

I'd love to hear from any of these unknown family members, leave a trail too for my children and grandchildren to follow so who knows, someday the twain shall meet!