If only spring was this easy

Grace helped me change autumn into spring (background) over the phone because it has been so long since I did that, I could not remember exactly all the steps. It involves lots of cutting, pasting, removing and saving-not necessarily in that order.

Present day into history.

My son, Chris Long has been connected with many bands but one of the most interesting and beloved is his long time association singing and playing bass for "King Johnson", his Atlanta blues band. He got word a couple of days ago that long time member, Adam Mewherper died there in Atlanta. Adam was a very talented, complicated musician. Chris was not going to attend the funeral because of the cost getting there. The working part of the band's fan base made sure that he could fly down and be with the rest of the guys. What a beautiful thing to do in memory of Adam.

Autumn is here

This is Wednsday which means a visit to Grace Village to see Aunt Count. She was passing out potato chips to her lunch companions and told us how she is doing in therapy sessions. Before her nap she will play Bingo. We are hoping she can go home in about three weeks.
I have choir practice and Bible study tonight.

It is good to be bloggin ' again

Almost everyone is back in school that belongs there. Lots of intersting things took place since May and summer will not officially be over until Monday midnight
A short summer recap would include several new friends,lots of dancing, helping a friend thru a heart attack, and watching some of our beloved family recover from serious illness and surgery.

Funny stuff my dad did.

FUNNY STUFF MY DAD DID: The lawn looked really sad in front of the house he had just convinced the bank could be paid off within thirty years. Job? Sign Painter. Regular? Well—pretty regular. Other income? Occasionally artistic commissions- ( he did not list poker and crap games).

Children? Three and a baby.

Just sheer force of personality and luck or prayer-who knows what made this careful institution trust an itinerate sign painter/ artist with a thirty year mortgage.

The house needed work. He could do work. He had plans: lots of brightening with paint and modernizing the Victorian era rooms. The outside looked fairly elegant . Large white pillars graced a sizeable front porch. Landscaping seemed to be the most immediate need if patrons were going to knock on h is door. The entry yard areas were kind of beaten down before he dug, raked and seeded the soil.

The victory garden he had worked so hard on at the rental house had been a success in lettuce, onions and beans but a huge disappointment in watermelon. Watermelon was his summer obsession. This spring he would be practical with a special effort toward attracting business.

Transplant hardy bushes from the farm where he was raised. Find some easy, cheap fertilizer and add a white painted wooden bench. This bench would be circular and fit around the tree directly in front of the screened in portion of the porch. Everything was good except for the faint fringe of grass that seemed to need stronger fertilization . Isn’t this what they did on the farm?

A guy up at The Buffalo Inn ( now Rex’s Rendezvous ) said he had lots of chicken manure that needed moving out of his chicken houses. This was free for the taking. Just spread it on and let it work its magic. A lush lawn should appear very soon. Perfect!

“What is that horrible smell”, she said. A clean and sweet smelling house had always been her pride and joy. Now her eyes were watering from the fumes rising off the quickly browning front yard area .Among many others this was one of the memorable funny things my father did as I was growing up. He messed up the kitchen when he cooked., washed the car in Pike lake, had great parties where he would dance like .Rudolph Valentino . When he was making Vinegar Bend he popped a wheelie on his tractor. You could expect just about anything.

How he lived into his eighties was a wonder to all of us He was a great father.

D-Day -2009

D-Day 2009
I was very moved by the ceremony just concluded at Colleville-sur-Mer, France for the 65th anniversary of D-day. It is now available through C-Span for streaming over the internet.(www.c-span.org)

Summer is here?

Chicago weather says we are now in their summer schedule. I will take their word for it and think summer fun.
Mornings have been misty but the swans, geese, ducks and great blue heron are loving it.
Here is a summer remembrance from my childhood involving Rapps.

I Remember: A childhood memory of 1942

We moved to a rental house on Center street. It was one half block from the library. Big brother K. was ten and I was nine. Our little brother, Hap, was pre-school.

The nearest neighbor was Ignota Roberts. She had social functions where ladies came in hats and gloves to play bridge. Our parents had poker parties with loud friends and late nights. I may have been slightly prudish because I wanted to be like Ignota.

January 26^th that year, things got serious because the U S landed in Europe to help stop Hitler. Dad was 4F but two of his brothers went. One did not come back.

The biggest song that year was “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”.

Well before the Bond sales and scrap drives , victory gardens and rationing our family was feeling the pinch and my brother and I thought we were sugar deprived. We search the sofa cushions and watched for any dropped change (from the loud friends), so we could run up to Annie’s or the News Stand to buy candy.

One weekend that summer our seven and eight year old Rapp (Jim and Tom) cousins came to visit. I chanced upon a small box of chocolate in the back of the frig. I shared equally with the boys and threw away the flat little blue box.. Hopefully no one would notice. They did when we all started having stomach pains punctuated with spontaneous evacuations and had to borrow our little brother’s old diapers.
I probably sounded out the words but did not read the fine print on that Ex-lax box. Any cautionary feelings I may have had were overcome by CHOCOLATE.Thank heaven the box was only half full and I thought I had to share or I might have been a very sick little girl.

Memorial Day

Had to call in the expert at "How Sweet The Sound " to get this up and running again. Grace and I are going out to decorate for Memorial Day at Stonypoint Cemetery. Uncle Jack told me yesterday that everything has been mowed and he, personally, put the American Flags on the graves. What a step up guy.

Remembering

Several years ago at a family gathering in Fort Wayne where Barb and Lee Shaffer had opened their home to extended family like me for a holiday or perhaps a christening of one of our mutual grandchildren an unexpected thing happened. Either Grace or I had brought a picture article of one of my father's paintings being donated to the old court house to be hung in the old court room.
The caption under the picture stated that the painting was by Don "Wop" Anglin. Barb and her sister Mary were sitting next to each other reading at the same time. It was when they read the word "Wop" that a small audible gasp came from their mouths. Having come from a very Italian family (Picchetti) ; that word was almost infamous.
I had to explain that my family was not Italian but my father looked so" Italian" as a child that his older brothers teased him and called him a wop. They probably did not know what the meaning of the word was but they knew it refered to Italians and was not good.
In the 1920s it was a derisive term used to put down people who did not obtain documentation. It meant "with out papers".
Barb and Mary's grandfather had worked very hard to get documentation and necessary sponsorship for many Italian families to settle south of Chicago in the farming community of North Judson , Indiana.
Jim ,Barb's son and my son in-law, googled his maternal grandfather's name and found a great web site that showed the early Italians in northern Indiana. Page 11 has a wonderful picture of Barb's grandfather and family. The guy who put this together is an example of excellence in genealogists. http://www.eboilini.com/PDFs/NjHist17.pdf is the link I can't seem to get to work here but is well worth the Internet search or just google Louie Picchetti -it is near the top of the list. They were all such great farmers and gardeners supplying Chicago restaurants and green grocers. The picture of the milk truck near the end of the pictures made me think of my farm experiences.

Barb

I lost a lovely friend tonight and we lost a part of our wonderful Ft. Wayne family. Her name was Barbara Shaffer and she was elegant, generous and fun. Elegant because she always seemed to know what was tasteful but not stuffy. Generous with her wit and inclusion. She entertained people who needed entertaining. Barb was fun with a beautiful smile and good natured zing. I will think of her every time I look into my Ft. Wayne grandchildren's eyes . They are so like hers. She was their grandmother too.

A little more about gardening is in order. Dad couldn't wait to get off the farm but he soon discovered the man could leave the country but the country does not leave the man. This is my brother, K. in 1942 watering dad's Victory garden and there I am waiting my turn. We followed the guide lines for a Victory garden. Dad was always going a little further. He loved watermelon but should have remembered the sun and soil requirements. We got lots of leaves - no melon's.
That summer we still rented the house on Center St. The next year we started buying 315 N. Washington St where we had an even bigger Victory garden but kept it simple. There were lots of other experiments in farming that went on later. Some were pretty funny.
I am going to post a story about life on the farm that my wonderful cousin Marge wrote. I also wrote a little about growing up on the farm when K. and I were small. All of that should wait until closer to warm weather in my thinking . Then there is the story about dad and the lawn problems before he just made it all into parking lot and shop. I wrote an entire writer's group piece that included the lawn debacle. Maybe I can find it and publish it here.

Lets do spring.

Yes! It is March 20th -the first day of spring. I'm going to give basket ball a rest for a while because I feel more like garden thinking and planning. My roots with gardening go way back. All my families were gardeners or farmers or both. Glen and I were both Master Gardeners. We took the training when Purdue just started certifying. Actual professors would show up once a week in North Webster to teach. Warsaw was not ready yet so the classes were held at the American Legion there in Webster.

For several years while we were in business as Tabatha's Garden I taught all day herbal seminars for Purdue at IPFW. They were challenging but great fun with packed classes. My favorite part was the luncheon they held often at Triangle Park.

Last friday our County Extention office called to ask if I would judge herbs at the Co. Fair again.
It is an interesting and easy way to make 50.00. The twins birthday is that day but maybe we can get together on Sunday before.

I have about 200 heritage tomato plants under lights. I hope to bring them along in time for the
Pound Store history days in mid- May. We all need to contribute something to sell.

County Tourney in my experience and beyond

Aannd- I'm back. Some of my favorite childhood and early teen memories are of the Kosciusko Co. basketball tourney time. We ate slept and lived basket ball from the ticket sales rush 'till the cutting down of the nets by the winners on Saturday night. It was cold standing outside in line to get into the old Armory building where all the Warsaw and county games were played . Both exhilarating fun and a miserable lack of comfort made it memorable. Much of the enjoyment depended on the weather and who you happened to be standing near. Ah youth.
Anyway at that particular time -late 1940s into the early '50s when there were 14 small county town basket ball teams our house on Washington St. was pit-stop central during the tourney.We would have a big pot of beef/vegie soup simmering in the deep well cooker that fit down into the top of our old electric stove. This perfumed the house from Tuesday night through Saturday afternoon tourney week. County family -cousins and Uncle Dal and the like would stop in for a quick bowl of soup and crowd relief. It was all very exciting in my "who knows what will happen next "mindset then. The fact that this way of playing basketball and in fact this very venue would fade away soon did not occur to me. The huge picture of a tiger that my dad painted on the wall of the gym would be gone. The place where my future husband was formally introduced to me and the location of so many wonderful events like school dances , proms and festivals-disappeared.
The concessions area where I sweated out the selection of a single cheerleader and got a standing O when I walked out on the floor; indicating that I had won by a vote of the entire student body. Wow ! How could that structure not always be there. It will always be there for me.

Well- enough about me and the essence of the era. Any guy will tell you that the game is the thing. I read that the Indiana High School Athletic Association began it's state tournament is 1911. Of course there were regionals and then the semi-states were played starting 1936. Part of that time Atwood (the Greyhounds) did not have a gym but I heard that back then- in the 30s-. they won the regionals after beating Culver in the sectionals. So they got to go play in the state tourney. What a thrill that must have been . I have to look up who was on that team.

Later Dan Anglin , playing for Atwood,was a stellar player in his younger days. One legendary game with Silver Lake , I was told, a ref called Dan for allegedly stepping on the line. It is still debatable but we will always believe the wrong team won because of that call.

School consolidations started in the 1950s, so just as everyone predicted, nothing was ever the same in Hi School basketball again.

More than one family

Sometimes I forget and think all Anglin all of the time. I guess it is where I am most comfortable.
However there are other families to consider and some of those memories are harder to dredge up.
This does not mean I am finished with b ball. The independent teams of the past are intriguing also my niece's grandfather was a popular semi-pro player and later hi school coach-so more of that later

My son Chris Long and I went to Burket the other day to see my Aunt Count ( Ina Mae Rapp Kiefer). She said the Anglin boys were like brothers to her. Her biological brothers named her Count (short for Countess), because they thought she acted too snooty when she was a little girl. She gave me some pictures of her grandfather Rapp who was a Nappanee business man until the great depression.
My kids get a big kick out of my cousin Jim Rapp who is Count's brother's son. He could be in Florida right now and does not take his computer with him,so I may write what I want about him. He told me he will be driving the Corvette down . With the two dogs luggage and Linda that should be fun.
Anyway our great grandpa Rapp had a REO auto dealership before the crash of 29 . Count said once he went to Michigan and brought home a bright red REO and it was not a fire truck. It never dawned on me that REO Speedwagon was named for the truck in this line until Chris mentioned it.

Here is Jack's post script : " Don Stephenson , a wonderful man, helped shape the lives of many young men. I know because when I was overseas during WWII I would receive letters from him and it was reported to me that he wrote letters to 100 service men over seas- End".

March Madness family style ect.

The other day while it was still almost 40 degrees above zero and just before the whole lake was socked in with dense fog, 2 beautiful big swans flew in and walked around on the ice. They made their way over to the open water close to the park. I guess there was a reason for them to be there and soon they were gone. The fog erased the girl scout cabin, a stones throw away, wafting in and out all morning.

Our primary source, Uncle Jack, was so generous taking the time to write a short article about how the Anglins were involved with basketball. He named it "Anglin Brothers Basket Ball" ( By John H. Jack Anglin). Anything in parentheses was plugged in by me.
" In the early 1930s Atwood, Indiana had a good Independent basket ball team. They were good enough to play exhibition games against Semi-Pro teams such as The New York Rens, the Ft. Wayne Incas and the Lafayette Lambs. In the spring of 1931 or '32 they entered the Independent
State Tourney at Tipton, In. advancing to the Semi-finals, losing by a narrow margin.
There were four Anglin brothers on that team, -Monk,Suze, Dal and Wop.
In the spring of 1934 a sixth brother, Wendell, graduated from high school.
The Anglin Brothers basket ball team was formed by Dale, Monk, Suze, Dal, Wop and Wendy.
Their father, Wash, acted as coach.
Their first public appearance as a team was an independent tourney at Bourbon on wednsday nite Feb. 7-1934. They were defeated by Etna Green 15 to 12. Through the remainder of the Spring of 1934 ,-then in the fall of 1934 and spring of 1935 the brothers played in several benefit and fund raiser games, including 1/2 a game against the Harlem Globe trotters who had been booked by the Bourbon school as a fundraiser. The faculty of the school played the other half of the game. The brothers team then retired because all were married and had families except Wendell.
In the spring of 1939 the youngest of the Anglin family, Jack, graduated from Atwood High
School and IHSAA restrictions. Brother Bill had graduated in 1937 and was already playing independent ball At that time Plymouth had a sporting goods store operated by Don Stephenson called "Don's Parlor". It was a hang-out for all young sports minded youth.
Don had become acquainted with Jack through summer soft ball games which had been played at both Bourbon and Plymouth. Don was a promotor of sports and sponsored a basketball tourney in the spring of 1939. Don called Jack to see if he could get enough of his brothers together to play in the tourney as a drawing attraction of interest. So Jack, Bill, Wendell, Dal and a couple of Anglin cousins from Leesburg forming an Anglin team for Don Stephenson's tourney.
We lost the first game but the mission had been accomplished and the era of the Anglin brothers basketball had come to an end."
(Uncle Jack has more to say about this great guy- Don Stephenson next post)

Thinkin' Lincoln

My Grandson Nick had his 19th birthday yesterday and I remembered last night that in Lincoln' 19th year he got a job taking livestock down the river on a barge. I think it was summer. That trip seemed to have a big influence on the rest of his life.

I was lucky enough to have been on several "history trips " with Nick when he was younger. I hope they will be useful to Nick in the years to come.

Back in the early 1960s I got to visit Lincoln's " birth site" when my sorority, Delta Theta Tau, was having a convention in Louisville. I was a little underwhelmed when the Park Ranger explained that this was a " representation " of the log cabin in the location where they think he was born. Anyway, there was good food, music and friends and a cruise down the mighty Ohio river on "The Bell Of Louisville" sternwheeler.

Still discussing the big snow of 1927-8 the horses used to pull the bobsled were the probably replaced by a tractor before I was born, but I remember the bobsled. It was pretty rickity by the time I experienced it's use. They would hook the tractor on to it and for some reason a bunch of us would attach our sleds to the back of the bobsled and it was a sledathon. I usually got tired of that not too far from the barn.
Anyway back to when they used the horses; they used two according to Uncle Jack,. Names? He said he remembered one was named Topsy and we could just use the name Frank until the other name came to him.
On the way home from church I was telling the kids, and Harley (Sebastian Long) said his name should be Turvy.
Lets play name the mystery horse. Whats your name?

explanation

My machine kinda messed the most recent blog up so it is in 2 parts.
One is titled "Bobsled rescue edit" and then "continued. They are in the list on the side. Better luck next time I hope.

continued

Bill was in third grade and Jack was in first. I can imagine their mother’s relief when the rig pulled out of the farm drive on to the road. I hope she had a cup of tea.

When they approached the school there was a little horizontal snow, but nothing unusual for that time of the year.

As the day progressed the wind picked up and the snow went from inches to feet. By mid afternoon everyone knew they would have a lot of trouble getting home and people who had lived through this kind of weather before declared that it would take several days to dig out of what was coming. The kids who did not live in town would have to stay with families close by. I suppose they used sleds to pull the little kids over the snow through the blizzard.

The smallest Anglin boys were taken to the only restaurant in town. It was run by Harold and Ethel Grossman. Harold was one of their mom’s nephews The Grossmans lived over the store and the little boys got to

sleep in a nice warm bed. There was plenty of food because they owned a restaurant. The older boys got to go home with friends.

Every one had to stay put as the storm took several days to subside. The storm started on a Wednsday but it was Saturday when, finally, Daddy Wash was able to hitch the horses to the big bobsled filled with hay or straw. The youngest boy, my uncle Jack, said he remembered being put down into the hay to keep them warm on the way home. It was good that the older boys had strong legs because they had to walk beside the bobsled to stay warm. Jack had been feeling a little

feverish for a day or so and Mrs. Grossman discovered that he had Chicken Pox ; so, once again, a little surprise for mother (Grandma Grace).

Bobsled rescue edit

This is the real story as edited by Uncle Jack. Kids see if you can tell the difference.

Bobsled Rescue from Atwood School, part 1

This little docudrama was set in the small town of Atwood, Indiana at the time of the big snow of 1927-8.

Early on most of the schools in the county (Kosciusko) were small with names like Frog Palace, Lick Skillet, Buzzard’s Glory and Bloody Corner. Atwood school was fairly new and larger. The first graduating Atwood Hi class was the class of 1912 the same year that Washington I. Anglin, aka Daddy Wash, started driving the school bus. These conveyances were called hacks at that time. They were motorized in 1916. The driver who was usually a farmer bought the flat bed truck that a bus body structure was mounted on at the beginning of the school year. This body was removed at the end of the school year so that the farmer could use the truck for farm work. One had to go to Bluffton In. to get this done.

The morning of the big snow showed no signs of a huge blizzard. This was before REMC but even if radios had been available to them then, the radio did not have elaborate weather predicting capabilities and the announcer most likely said “it looks like snow” at the end of the news.

Up early, Daddy Wash was starting up the school hack to drive through the few inches of snow about 5 miles to Atwood. Most of the kids in the early stages of the pick up came streaming out of his own house because they were his kids.

There was Dal ( Dallas), a sophomore in high school, Wop (my dad who’s real name was Don as you know) was a freshman, Wendy (Wendell) was in sixth grade, -----go to the next blog above.

We are so fortunate to have a primary source available to us in my uncle Jack. He is a witness to most of the family history I need to know about. He gives me the ideas. I work up a story then he corrects (edits) and I try to get it on the blog with as few mistakes as possible.

The Writers Group I belong to loved the bobsled rescue story I presented but I knew that some of the facts did not add up. Uncle Jack agreed to edit so the museum edition will follow on this blog. J.

Bobsled rescue cont.

Bobsled Rescue from Atwood School

This little docudrama was set in the small town of Atwood, Indiana at the time of the big snow of 1927-8.

Early on most of the schools in the county (Kosciusko) were small with names like Frog Palace, Lick Skillet and Bloody Corner. Atwood school was fairly new and larger. The first graduating Atwood Hi class was the class of 1912 the same year that Washington I. Anglin, aka Daddy Wash, started driving the school bus. These conveyances were called hacks at that time. The driver who was usually a farmer bought the flat bed truck that a bus body structure was mounted on at the beginning of the school year. This body was removed at the end of

the school year so that the farmer could use the truck for farm work.

The morning of the big snow showed no signs of a huge blizzard. The radio did not have elaborate weather predicting capabilities and the anouncer most likely said “it looks like snow” at the end of the news.

Up early, Daddy Wash and the older boys got the horses ready to pull the school hack through the few inches of snow about 5 miles to Atwood. Most of the kids in the early stages of the pick up came streaming out of his own house because they were his kids.

From middle down to first and second grade, there were five boys. I can imagine their mother’s relief when the rig pulled out of the farm drive on to the road. I hope she had a cup of tea.

When they approached the school there was a little horizontal snow, but nothing unusual for that time of the year.

As the day progressed the wind picked up and the snow went from inches to feet. By mid afternoon everyone knew they would have a lot of trouble getting home and people who had lived through this kind of weather before declared that it would take several days to dig out of what was coming. The kids who did not live in town would have to stay with families close by. I suppose they used sleds to pull the little kids over the snow through the blizzard.

The Anglin boys were taken to the only restaurant in town. It was run by Harold and Ethel Grossman. Five boys- plenty of food. It makes sense. The Grossmans must have lived over the store or had lots of emergency blankets and cots for just such a problem.

Every one had to stay put as the storm took several days to subside. Finally, Daddy Wash was able to hook the horses to the big bobsled filled with hay or straw. The youngest boy, my uncle Jack, said he remembered being put down into the hay to keep them warm on the way home. He had been feeling a little feverish for a day or so and right before they left for home Mrs. Grossman discovered that he had Chicken Pox.

Cool beginning

Well, I guess that most of what I am going to write is just for me and my kids-if they are at all interested. I did read today that writing a blog is actually good for your blood pressure so I hope that is true.
My uncle Jack was remembering the snow days when he was in grade school, so I decided to use the story for my writer's group. So I did. They were charmed, even the guys. Since I already typed it I am trying to just cut and paste it into this blog.
Stay tuned.