Gene Notes

Some random and some not-so-random thoughts on family history.

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Speak to Me! Bucket List Revisited. My Parents.

In case you are wondering why I am not anxious for my parents to "speak" to me, is that I've interviewed both of them years ago. I love them and miss them and most of my questions are related to Dad, in questions like: "How do you do that?" For Mom, "Tell me again how to make your cheesecake."

In fact, their interviews were pretty comprehensive, although Mom's was stopped at when her brother, my Uncle Jack, went in the Army. By this time, Mom was on her own at just shy of 18 when Jack enlisted in the Army and Mom was working for a couple who was moving to Connecticut. That job would also take her away from her sister, Margie.

Dad, on the other hand, told me what trouble he caused for his dad after his mother died in 1938 and Grandpa would send him off to Missouri to stay with family members there. He stayed with the Bowmans, his maternal grandparents, and his Grandma Percival (Helen Maitland Percival) and a first cousin twice removed, Isaiah Mansur Oliphant, known as Mansur. He also told me what it was like growing up during the depression. They had a neighbor, a son of whom dad hung out with. Apparently, the neighbor ALWAYS had good food and their house and Dad was often invited to eat with them. He says he remembers his parents saying they would eat later and Dad often suspected later they didn't eat or ate very little.

After World War II, when I was a very little girl, my dad worked for Healy-Gargaro construction company in Detroit. I remember going with him to the job site once and seeing this big hole in the ground and it terrified me. Dad said I screamed until he carried me well away from the hole. Not surprisingly, I am terrified of heights. Small wonder. I remember this incident vividly.

Maybe something comes up now and again that I wish I had asked them, but mostly it's a "how-to" question that comes up. If my Dad speaks to me from the great beyond, I know it will be prefaced by the sentence, "Listen to me."

Copyright 2010-2018, ACK for Gene Notes

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