Costume Dances

Subtitled: “Excuse me, Miss, could you put down your pipe and dance with me?”



For as long as I knew her, my mother-in-law, Louise, loved to dance.   Her father, Casper Kluthe, taught her to kick up her heels at his barn dances in the 1930s, when he wasn’t busy on stage playing his accordion.  The smell of the hay, the noise of the crowd as they whooped and hollered, the thundering stomp of feet and the clapping of hands got her hooked for life.  She grew up to be one of the founders of the Tri-County Dance Club in her small town, and as seen in the photo at left (that’s her in the dress), she never missed the opportunity to show someone a new dance step.





Some of her best stories came, in between bouts of laughter, the day after a costume dance.  You never knew who would turn up as your dance partner…

A witch, a hairy old guy, a strange pipe-smoking lady, a dirty bum, a ghoul, or perhaps… is that Michael Jackson on the right end??

Even Abe Lincoln might show up…

While his wife was on the dance floor, donning long-johns and a rubber chicken-head mask, her husband Herb was listening to the sad tales of this poor depressed snowman…or is that a snow-woman?  Who knows!

Wordless Wednesday - Destruction at Stephan Mission

Below are photos from the devastation caused by a tornado in 1938.  The twister tore through Stephan Mission, in Hyde county, South Dakota, on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation.

What’s left of the barn

 

Another photo of the barn

 

The milk shed, with pieces from the barn on top of it

Day Three of the Genealogy Road Trip

The Genealogy Road Trip culminated with the primary purpose for the trip: a visit to Princeville, Illinois, to the Heritage Harvest celebration at the Princeville Heritage Museum.  What a great day! 

In 2004, the Akron Townhouse School was was moved to the grounds of the PHM's grounds.  It had closed its doors as a school in 1958, and was the last of Peoria County's one-room schools.  It has been taken from a state of disrepair, to a wonderfully restored piece of Peoria County history. 

We also got to witness a sawmill demonstration - this may not be new to anyone else, but I've never really thought about how boards were made, starting with a tree.

Next was an incredible demonstration by T. C. Gill, "The StumpCarver".  His creations are incredible!

 The master stump-carver at work

One example of what you can do with a chainsaw and a steady hand...

Check out his website for more info, at http://www.stumpcarver.com/

The above photo depicts a typical one-room cabin of the early settlers.  Incredible - from the wonderful paint job on the walls, which look like logs, to all of the materials on display.  I wanted to jump the barricade and go see that old quilt on the bed behind the table, but I kept myself under control.

I enjoyed the demo of the 1920's knitting machine - she had a pair of socks in progress.  Much neater than any knitting I've ever produced, and even *I* could turn a crank without messing it up! The rest of it, though, I'm not so sure about.

I learned alot from the threshing machine demonstration.  Being a city kid, I had no real clue about what this machine did, but thanks to this demo and my husband's patient explanations, I have a handle on it now.  :)  I can also have a much greater appreciation for my great-great grandfather's steam thresher.

This short post doesn't even begin to cover everything that we saw and enjoyed today.  There were numerous historical photos, tons of genealogical scrapbooks filled with old newspaper articles, obituaries, etc., a rope-making demo, crafts, a dulcimer artist, and so much more.  It was well worth the trip.

Also, we have another Neat Sight of the Day -

We spied this pair of handsome roosters grazing in the ditch outside of the Dollar General store in Wyoming, Illinois.   All in all, a fun day.

But wait - there's more - our day also included an awesome Bonus Event, which will be another post.

Genealogy Road Trip, Mission #2

First on today's agenda is West Liberty, Iowa, to find the graves of Frank and Retta (Gladfelter) Lair.  Frank was the much younger brother of my gr-gr grandmother, Nettie Belle Lair of Princeville, Peoria county, Illinois, being 16 years younger than Nettie.  Frank and Nettie were two of the nine children of Lawson Fuller Lair and his wife, Margaret Nickeson, who farmed just outside of Princeville.  As a young man, Frank spent some time living with Nettie and her husband, Tom Graves, before marrying Retta Gladfelter in 1901.  Frank and Retta moved to a Muscatine county, Iowa, in 1907, and there lived on several different farms before moving into West Liberty about 1919.  His bride, Retta, was the daughter of Frederick and Julia (Bane) Gladfelter, and born in 1882, also in Princeville.  They lived out the remainder of their lives in West Liberty, having no children.  Frank died in 1945, at the age of 67, and Retta in 1959 at the age of 77.

We learn our lessons fairly easily - this time we called ahead and checked with the city clerk, who told us exactly where the graves were located, and exactly where Oakridge cemetery could be found - 

and we located their former home...

Misson #2 Complete.   On to Mission #3, and The Land of Lincoln!

Wordless Wednesday – The New Coupe

My grandfather’s new coupe – Beadle County, South Dakota.  Date unknown.

I Write Like...

I've been a little bit Out Of The Loop the last month or so, and as it turns out, I've missed a lot of fun with the "I Write Like..." application at http://iwl.me/


For fun, I pasted my blog post "Thought on an Old Farmhouse" and found out I write (at least that post) like

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I did not know he wrote "Fight Club."  I've seen the movie...Not sure what to make of that comparison.

Thought I'd try again with "Adventures in Iowa", a little different post, and here's the result:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Reading up on Wikipedia, I find that the Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years."  Hmmm!  Good!  However, reading on, I see that Wallace committed suicide 2 years ago.  Hmmm.... not so good.

Well, if nothing else, it was fun.

An Historical, and Personally Memorable, Site in Huron, South Dakota

No place in the world says “home”  to me like the Third Street Bridge area over the James River, in Huron, South Dakota.  Over my years in Huron, it became a place I frequented.  As a high school art student, I’d go there to sketch.  I’d go fishing with friends there in the summers, and snowmobiling in the winter.  I considered a dare to walk across the spillway one summer when the water was low, and numerous dares to zip across the trestle and hope a train didn’t have the same idea at the same time.  I took my kids to eat our McDonald’s lunch there, and watch the trains go by.  And sometimes, I’d go there just to peacefully contemplate life, and ponder the mystery and the tragedy of the lives lost in those waters over the years.

One of the earlier versions of the bridge is shown in the above postcard.  Unfortunately, years ago when I scanned it, I did not scan the back, and do not know the date this photo was taken.  However, the book “Huron Revisited” has a similar photo, dated at 1922, and notes that the river was at flood stage.  Note the adventurous souls in the rowboat.  Perhaps that was their version of crossing the spillway or trestle…

Above: A more recent photo of the railroad bridge, and the automobile bridge in the background.  
On my increasingly rare trips home, driving into town and seeing the river, the bridge, and the trestle, and all of the familiar sights that follow, warms my heart and soul like nothing else.