Donley Lathrop
Both my mom and dad had siblings. My dad had a brother and sister. Both he and his brother Donley had served in the U.S. Navy toward the end of the Pacific conflict. After his four years in the Navy Donley remained a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve for over 38 years.
I remember visiting Grams and Gramps for a picnic outside and Donley had brought back a submarine periscope, which he had hung up in the tree in their front yard. I must have been two or three and I cannot remember if my parents were still together at this time or not.
I remember being quite excited to look into the device but also puzzled when the view wasn't much different than what I could see by just looking around the tree. I don't think that I really understood that it was for looking around while underwater.
Both my dad and his brother had nicknames. My dad was nicknamed "Jiggs". I do not know where it came from, but everyone called him Jiggs, without fail. Accordingly I was nicknamed "Jiggsie" which is intended to mean "little Jiggs". This was my nickname with the Lathrop family and it was used about half the time by members of the Hanson family as well. Grandpa Lee had also nicknamed me "Bub" and it was used about half the time.
Donley's nickname was "Donk" and I don't remember anyone calling him anything but that. Donk seemed to be a really nice fellow. I am sure I encountered him only a few times as a toddler and once again later in life.
Donk's was married to Olga Lewandowski but everyone referred to her as "Dusty". She was a very sweet person and everyone seemed to love her. I think that my mother was very fond of her.
Donk and Dusty had eight children and I do not think that I've ever met any of them. Eight first-cousins that I've never met! I am working from Grams' list, provided in her book to me for their names and I believe she listed them in order from oldest to youngest.
Grams listed Frances as living in San Francisco; Christine as living in San Diego; and Cecelia as in the U.S. Navy. I would not be surprised if the older two were in the Navy as well or married to sailors.
Next came Dudley, nicknamed "Dud" and named after his grandpa. Then comes Mike and Catherine before Donley Jr, nicknamed D.J. and finally Dianne. Grams listed them all as living in Grinell, Iowa.
Donley passed away at age 72 in Madison, North Carolina. His obituary lists his son D. J. and his daughter Frances as preceding him in death. Christine was listed as living in Las Vegas; Cecelia (Blankenship) in Peterstown, West Virginia; Cathy (Walsh) and Diana (Bullins) in Eden, North Carolina; Dudley III in Stoneville, North Carolina; and Michael of Madison, North Carolina.
He had, at the time of his death, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
I have been able to make contact with a couple of these first cousins and hope to learn a bit more about my uncle "Donk" and these eight cousins.
Monday, December 30, 2019
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree
Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree
"Go play in the street!" I have heard an exasperated parent or two admonish their kids, providing a little comic relief for their frustrations. Back at the end of the nineteen forties, however, it was commonplace to have your toddler of two or three years' age go play in the street with minimal supervision, at least in Sparta, Wisconsin.
Grandpa Lee was gone on his route, driving all around some portion of Wisconsin, jobbing orders for the Pet Milk Company and Grandma Lill was in charge. My father was off trying to break into the business of working with Grandpa Lee and having a tough time of it. My mother was off doing something, probably going to classes to learn how to be someone's secretary. Aunt Jeannie was either doing the same or getting married or having just been married and on her honeymoon. Donna and John were likely in high school all day.
I was in the back yard and in the street.
This picture of Grandma Lill and me was taken at a cottage fishing. She wrote on the back of the picture that I was 2 years and 4 months old.
Grandma and Grandpa always had interesting back yards. Grandma Lill loved hydrangeas and there was always at least one big bush of them burgeoning with huge white flowers. She would dry them and put them in jugs and pitchers all throughout the house. She loved peonies as well, as did the little ants. When I related how the peonies always seemed to be covered with ants to an avid gardener, he told me that peonies attract the ants and that they will not open into a flower unless the ants gobble up the sappy fluids they secrete along the bud edges.
We have some of Grandma Lill's actual peonies growing alongside a deck. The ants still love them.
Grandpa Lee would order seed catalogs and it was an exciting week for him when they arrived. They were little magazines with pictures of all the little bushes, trees, and flowers that a person could order. He pored through them while drinking his morning coffee during the times that he was not on the road, circling many, many items and dog-earing pages. In the end he would order one or two things. He loved the planning more than the planting, I think.
When a couple of bushes would arrive, he would very meticulously dig the proper hole, line it with the proper amount of additives, spread the roots out and tamp everything down just so, before pouring several buckets of water over the whole thing.
Lee had been a scoutmaster when he was younger and was unrivaled, I am told, in his ability to supply the correct names for trees, bushes, and other plants in the woods. Lill just loved flowers and pretty, colorful things. She would plant flowers all around the house and in little spots in the back yard. At rummage sales, she would buy colorful little bottles, some the shape of violins, and place them on the window sills. She would sit and have her little glass of tea or Pepsi Cola while the sun shined through these little bottles and splashed colorful ripples on the window curtains, her serene smile revealing new windows into her kind, kind heart.
In the back yard was a crab apple tree. I don't know if Grandpa Lee put it there before I was born or if it had come with the place. The apples were little, about the size of an olive or a cherry and were orange-yellow in color. There would be copious collections of them all over the grass, long stems still attached. Of course I tried eating one and found no pleasure in that. They were bitter, as were all of the berries that grew on the bushes around the house. The birds would eat some of them, but nothing that I ever tried was palatable, and a toddler of two or three years puts everything he finds into his mouth at least once.
Across the street lived a little girl approximately my age. Her name was Jean, like my aunt, only they called her "Jeannie-girl". She and I would play in the street, which was rarely driven on. A lot of people didn't have cars and the ones that did kept them in the garage unless they were making a trip.
We could play in the street, ride our little tricycles in the street, and our caretakers wouldn't even be concerned.
Toddler memories are rare and fleeting and should be written down lest they be gone forever. One day I was toddling around in the back yard, playing in the little piles of apples which had fallen. Little "Jeannie-girl" from across the street toddled over and joined me. I don't know if we knew many words yet, we were only two years old or so.
After five or ten minutes of rolling around in the little apples, it occurs to a toddler to doff the plastic underpants and soggy diaper for the simple reason that it feels better to be rid of them. "Jeannie-girl" did the same, putting me and a female peer in a situation which was not to be repeated for decades. The scene began to take on disturbing characteristics of the story of the Garden of Eden in the Holy Bible. A boy and a girl prancing around naked in the piles of apples under the tree, giggling stupidly.
We gradually realized that some of the little apples would stick to us. The ones that had recently fallen were hard, but some of them had been lying around a few days. The ants and birds had injured them and they had started to decay and were just a little bit slimy. If you put one against your skin, it would stick a while, then fall off.
Funnier yet, when you lost your balance and sat down on the apples, a bunch of them would stick to your bottom when again you stood back up.
"Jeannie-girl" and I were laughing and sticking little apples on each other. I had probably just tried to pack a handful of them into her butt crack when her mother looked out the window from her daily chores to see what little "Jeannie-girl" was up to.
Our giggles were interrupted by her mom storming across the street, grabbing up "Jeannie-girl" in one arm and her little pants and shirt in the other. She paddled her and stalked quickly across the street and back home.
Confused, but fearing that she might come back for me, I meandered up and in the back door and asked Grandma Lill for a drink of water.
"Go play in the street!" I have heard an exasperated parent or two admonish their kids, providing a little comic relief for their frustrations. Back at the end of the nineteen forties, however, it was commonplace to have your toddler of two or three years' age go play in the street with minimal supervision, at least in Sparta, Wisconsin.
Grandpa Lee was gone on his route, driving all around some portion of Wisconsin, jobbing orders for the Pet Milk Company and Grandma Lill was in charge. My father was off trying to break into the business of working with Grandpa Lee and having a tough time of it. My mother was off doing something, probably going to classes to learn how to be someone's secretary. Aunt Jeannie was either doing the same or getting married or having just been married and on her honeymoon. Donna and John were likely in high school all day.
I was in the back yard and in the street.
This picture of Grandma Lill and me was taken at a cottage fishing. She wrote on the back of the picture that I was 2 years and 4 months old.
Grandma and Grandpa always had interesting back yards. Grandma Lill loved hydrangeas and there was always at least one big bush of them burgeoning with huge white flowers. She would dry them and put them in jugs and pitchers all throughout the house. She loved peonies as well, as did the little ants. When I related how the peonies always seemed to be covered with ants to an avid gardener, he told me that peonies attract the ants and that they will not open into a flower unless the ants gobble up the sappy fluids they secrete along the bud edges.
We have some of Grandma Lill's actual peonies growing alongside a deck. The ants still love them.
Grandpa Lee would order seed catalogs and it was an exciting week for him when they arrived. They were little magazines with pictures of all the little bushes, trees, and flowers that a person could order. He pored through them while drinking his morning coffee during the times that he was not on the road, circling many, many items and dog-earing pages. In the end he would order one or two things. He loved the planning more than the planting, I think.
When a couple of bushes would arrive, he would very meticulously dig the proper hole, line it with the proper amount of additives, spread the roots out and tamp everything down just so, before pouring several buckets of water over the whole thing.
Lee had been a scoutmaster when he was younger and was unrivaled, I am told, in his ability to supply the correct names for trees, bushes, and other plants in the woods. Lill just loved flowers and pretty, colorful things. She would plant flowers all around the house and in little spots in the back yard. At rummage sales, she would buy colorful little bottles, some the shape of violins, and place them on the window sills. She would sit and have her little glass of tea or Pepsi Cola while the sun shined through these little bottles and splashed colorful ripples on the window curtains, her serene smile revealing new windows into her kind, kind heart.
In the back yard was a crab apple tree. I don't know if Grandpa Lee put it there before I was born or if it had come with the place. The apples were little, about the size of an olive or a cherry and were orange-yellow in color. There would be copious collections of them all over the grass, long stems still attached. Of course I tried eating one and found no pleasure in that. They were bitter, as were all of the berries that grew on the bushes around the house. The birds would eat some of them, but nothing that I ever tried was palatable, and a toddler of two or three years puts everything he finds into his mouth at least once.
Across the street lived a little girl approximately my age. Her name was Jean, like my aunt, only they called her "Jeannie-girl". She and I would play in the street, which was rarely driven on. A lot of people didn't have cars and the ones that did kept them in the garage unless they were making a trip.
We could play in the street, ride our little tricycles in the street, and our caretakers wouldn't even be concerned.
Toddler memories are rare and fleeting and should be written down lest they be gone forever. One day I was toddling around in the back yard, playing in the little piles of apples which had fallen. Little "Jeannie-girl" from across the street toddled over and joined me. I don't know if we knew many words yet, we were only two years old or so.
After five or ten minutes of rolling around in the little apples, it occurs to a toddler to doff the plastic underpants and soggy diaper for the simple reason that it feels better to be rid of them. "Jeannie-girl" did the same, putting me and a female peer in a situation which was not to be repeated for decades. The scene began to take on disturbing characteristics of the story of the Garden of Eden in the Holy Bible. A boy and a girl prancing around naked in the piles of apples under the tree, giggling stupidly.
We gradually realized that some of the little apples would stick to us. The ones that had recently fallen were hard, but some of them had been lying around a few days. The ants and birds had injured them and they had started to decay and were just a little bit slimy. If you put one against your skin, it would stick a while, then fall off.
Funnier yet, when you lost your balance and sat down on the apples, a bunch of them would stick to your bottom when again you stood back up.
"Jeannie-girl" and I were laughing and sticking little apples on each other. I had probably just tried to pack a handful of them into her butt crack when her mother looked out the window from her daily chores to see what little "Jeannie-girl" was up to.
Our giggles were interrupted by her mom storming across the street, grabbing up "Jeannie-girl" in one arm and her little pants and shirt in the other. She paddled her and stalked quickly across the street and back home.
Confused, but fearing that she might come back for me, I meandered up and in the back door and asked Grandma Lill for a drink of water.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Dudley Lathrop
Dudley Lathrop
I have only the faintest shards of memory of Grandpa Dudley. What a shame. As I have written previously, we occasionally visited Grandpa Dudley and Grandma Clara at their farmhouse west of Sparta. I seem to remember him as sort of jolly and perhaps a bit large, although to a little cookie-cruncher like me, almost everyone was a bit large.
It occurs to me that it is possible to have personally known, even if for the briefest time, a maximum of about fourteen direct predecessors. This would be the unlikely case if one's parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all alive at that particular time. That would certainly be an unusual case and for someone to have known even more of them would be an extremely unusual case. I can claim only eight.
Julius Lothrope and his wife Barbara Howe were apparently immigrants from England and I am suspecting that, like so many people processed through Ellis Island, their names were shortened to Lathrop to make it easier to fill out the forms. This is just my guess.
Julius and Barbara were the parents of Frank Lathrop.
Meanwhile Theodore Cassabaum, his wife Alvina (Unschuetz), and their daughter Alvina were living near Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, their parents having migrated there from Germany.
Frank and the younger Alvina were married and became Dudley's parents.
In turn Dudley and Clara met, fell in love, and were married in 1921. I saved this wonderful picture for my few paragraphs about Dudley.
What a great photograph. Dudley is as handsome a young fellow as Sparta has ever seen and Grandma Clara is an absolutely beautiful young girl!
I believe that Dudley was quite intelligent as well as being handsome. I was told very emphatically by my grandparents that he built the first radio in Sparta. I have a nagging recollection that he worked for the telephone company but I could be mistaken in this.
Again, I would welcome more information in comments below about Dudley and Clara whom I am so grateful to be descended from.
I have only the faintest shards of memory of Grandpa Dudley. What a shame. As I have written previously, we occasionally visited Grandpa Dudley and Grandma Clara at their farmhouse west of Sparta. I seem to remember him as sort of jolly and perhaps a bit large, although to a little cookie-cruncher like me, almost everyone was a bit large.
It occurs to me that it is possible to have personally known, even if for the briefest time, a maximum of about fourteen direct predecessors. This would be the unlikely case if one's parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all alive at that particular time. That would certainly be an unusual case and for someone to have known even more of them would be an extremely unusual case. I can claim only eight.
Julius Lothrope and his wife Barbara Howe were apparently immigrants from England and I am suspecting that, like so many people processed through Ellis Island, their names were shortened to Lathrop to make it easier to fill out the forms. This is just my guess.
Julius and Barbara were the parents of Frank Lathrop.
Meanwhile Theodore Cassabaum, his wife Alvina (Unschuetz), and their daughter Alvina were living near Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, their parents having migrated there from Germany.
Frank and the younger Alvina were married and became Dudley's parents.
In turn Dudley and Clara met, fell in love, and were married in 1921. I saved this wonderful picture for my few paragraphs about Dudley.
What a great photograph. Dudley is as handsome a young fellow as Sparta has ever seen and Grandma Clara is an absolutely beautiful young girl!
I believe that Dudley was quite intelligent as well as being handsome. I was told very emphatically by my grandparents that he built the first radio in Sparta. I have a nagging recollection that he worked for the telephone company but I could be mistaken in this.
Again, I would welcome more information in comments below about Dudley and Clara whom I am so grateful to be descended from.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Elsie Nottestad
Elsie Nottestad
Lee worked on the road, traveling all the time, so when they did any additional car trips, they tended to be short, out and back affairs, to see Lill's relatives. We would ordinarily go to one of three destinations: La Crosse, La Farge, or Westby.
Westby, of course, was common to both of them. Lill's parents had moved into town. They had a small house a few blocks west of the main street through town. Westby had a huge ski jump a couple of miles from town and was a somewhat famous for this. My mother told me that back in the day, a hot-shot from high school rode his bicycle down it in the summer on a dare, breaking the majority of his arms and legs when he landed on the turf below. I have climbed on the ski jump and looked down it, and I just can't imagine anyone having the pluck to ski down it, much less ride a bicycle down it in the summer.
We called Grandma Lill's mother, Elsie, "Grandma Two". Grandma Two was like Grandma Lill, only on steroids. She was a stout, stern, woman, built much like a barrel and her word was law. If you wonder how the human race manages to survive in this often hostile environment called "the world" you need look no further than people like Grandma and Grandpa Two. Every family has them and they are survivors. They are why softies like us are even here.
Grandma Two and Grandma Lill were so much alike that I often got them confused. They were both loving and nurturing but you'd better not cross them. Like Grandma Lill, Grandma Two baked cookies. There were three main cookies in that day, and I liked them all. Most delicious were the ones called "sandbackles". We pronounced them as sun-buckles. They were made of white cookie dough pressed into little tins that had zig-zag edges. Once baked, they were tipped over to cool and would pop right out of the tins. They were wonderful.
Similar cookies that I can remember were called "hats". These, I think, were made by pressing the dough on the outside of the tins and then covering them with colored sugar, thinly sliced almonds, and the like. They were kind of a Christmas cookie.
The third most common to my memory was the standard round white cookie with a pecan pushed into it. Sometimes it would be a walnut half instead. At Christmas time, of course, the specialty cookies, made by rolling the dough tin and using cookie cutters shaped like stars, snowmen, candy canes, and the like, appeared. They might have shaved candy cane pieces on them or powdered sugar made to look like snow.
Yet another cookie to appear during the holidays, was the doughy round, thick, cookie with a prune in the middle. It had a name, something like "kolashes".
All around Grandma Two's house, a plant called "touch-me-nots" grew. It was bushy and had nice little unassuming flowers, but little beans, about a half-inch long and shaped like tiny little green bananas grew along the stems. When they were ripe, these little beans would fly apart if you disturbed them. I can remember spending hours toddling around the perimeter of the little house, touching the beans and watching them explode.
One trip to Westby is indelible in my mind. I was riding in the back seat and so was Grandma Lill. I had been intently searching for white horses all the winding way up Cashton ridge and along the top over to Westby, because she was paying me a "virtual" quarter for each one I counted, as usual.
We finally got to Westby and pulled up in front of Grandma Two's house. Grandma Two had noticed and had come out of the house and was walking toward the car to embrace her daughter. Grandma Lill opened the back door, swung her feet out, and using the door as an aid, stood up.
Cars in that day were real boats. They had wide bench seats because other kinds of seats were not yet invented. Seat belts had not been invented either. You just piled in. You could easily get three in the front and three or sometimes even four people in the back, depending upon their size. The cars were built like tanks.
It is probably lucky for me that Grandpa Lee had bought a Mercury or a Buick or a Studebaker or Oldsmobile rather than something very expensive and well machined, because when I slid over to exit the back seat behind Grandma Lill, she abruptly took hold of the door and gave it a good slam shut.
I had gotten so far as to extend my puny little right arm outside the car, grasping for something to hold onto. The door slammed shut with me on the inside and my wrist and hand on the outside, and clicked. It had completely closed.
I let out a yell that was probably heard in Viroqua, Coon Valley, and perhaps even in the states of Illinois, Iowa, and southern Minnesota. It was good fortune for Grandpa Lee that he had exited the driver's side or it might have adversely affected his hearing.
Grandma Lill turned around and saw the rear door of the car completely closed with a little hand mysteriously protruding from the crack, and did just what anyone would expect her to do. She grabbed the door handle, pushed the button in, and with a mighty heave, pried the door back open.
It is amazing how rubbery little children's bones are, because there are two of them in your forearm and neither of mine snapped during the ordeal. They just adjusted to the small space between the door and the jamb. The panic and staccato syllables of Danish subsided and after feeling my arm and examining it, they all gradually extinguished my crying with hugs, pats on the back, comforting words, and probably a good many of the above-described cookies.
Lee worked on the road, traveling all the time, so when they did any additional car trips, they tended to be short, out and back affairs, to see Lill's relatives. We would ordinarily go to one of three destinations: La Crosse, La Farge, or Westby.
Westby, of course, was common to both of them. Lill's parents had moved into town. They had a small house a few blocks west of the main street through town. Westby had a huge ski jump a couple of miles from town and was a somewhat famous for this. My mother told me that back in the day, a hot-shot from high school rode his bicycle down it in the summer on a dare, breaking the majority of his arms and legs when he landed on the turf below. I have climbed on the ski jump and looked down it, and I just can't imagine anyone having the pluck to ski down it, much less ride a bicycle down it in the summer.
We called Grandma Lill's mother, Elsie, "Grandma Two". Grandma Two was like Grandma Lill, only on steroids. She was a stout, stern, woman, built much like a barrel and her word was law. If you wonder how the human race manages to survive in this often hostile environment called "the world" you need look no further than people like Grandma and Grandpa Two. Every family has them and they are survivors. They are why softies like us are even here.
Grandma Two and Grandma Lill were so much alike that I often got them confused. They were both loving and nurturing but you'd better not cross them. Like Grandma Lill, Grandma Two baked cookies. There were three main cookies in that day, and I liked them all. Most delicious were the ones called "sandbackles". We pronounced them as sun-buckles. They were made of white cookie dough pressed into little tins that had zig-zag edges. Once baked, they were tipped over to cool and would pop right out of the tins. They were wonderful.
Similar cookies that I can remember were called "hats". These, I think, were made by pressing the dough on the outside of the tins and then covering them with colored sugar, thinly sliced almonds, and the like. They were kind of a Christmas cookie.
The third most common to my memory was the standard round white cookie with a pecan pushed into it. Sometimes it would be a walnut half instead. At Christmas time, of course, the specialty cookies, made by rolling the dough tin and using cookie cutters shaped like stars, snowmen, candy canes, and the like, appeared. They might have shaved candy cane pieces on them or powdered sugar made to look like snow.
Yet another cookie to appear during the holidays, was the doughy round, thick, cookie with a prune in the middle. It had a name, something like "kolashes".
All around Grandma Two's house, a plant called "touch-me-nots" grew. It was bushy and had nice little unassuming flowers, but little beans, about a half-inch long and shaped like tiny little green bananas grew along the stems. When they were ripe, these little beans would fly apart if you disturbed them. I can remember spending hours toddling around the perimeter of the little house, touching the beans and watching them explode.
One trip to Westby is indelible in my mind. I was riding in the back seat and so was Grandma Lill. I had been intently searching for white horses all the winding way up Cashton ridge and along the top over to Westby, because she was paying me a "virtual" quarter for each one I counted, as usual.
We finally got to Westby and pulled up in front of Grandma Two's house. Grandma Two had noticed and had come out of the house and was walking toward the car to embrace her daughter. Grandma Lill opened the back door, swung her feet out, and using the door as an aid, stood up.
Cars in that day were real boats. They had wide bench seats because other kinds of seats were not yet invented. Seat belts had not been invented either. You just piled in. You could easily get three in the front and three or sometimes even four people in the back, depending upon their size. The cars were built like tanks.
It is probably lucky for me that Grandpa Lee had bought a Mercury or a Buick or a Studebaker or Oldsmobile rather than something very expensive and well machined, because when I slid over to exit the back seat behind Grandma Lill, she abruptly took hold of the door and gave it a good slam shut.
I had gotten so far as to extend my puny little right arm outside the car, grasping for something to hold onto. The door slammed shut with me on the inside and my wrist and hand on the outside, and clicked. It had completely closed.
I let out a yell that was probably heard in Viroqua, Coon Valley, and perhaps even in the states of Illinois, Iowa, and southern Minnesota. It was good fortune for Grandpa Lee that he had exited the driver's side or it might have adversely affected his hearing.
Grandma Lill turned around and saw the rear door of the car completely closed with a little hand mysteriously protruding from the crack, and did just what anyone would expect her to do. She grabbed the door handle, pushed the button in, and with a mighty heave, pried the door back open.
It is amazing how rubbery little children's bones are, because there are two of them in your forearm and neither of mine snapped during the ordeal. They just adjusted to the small space between the door and the jamb. The panic and staccato syllables of Danish subsided and after feeling my arm and examining it, they all gradually extinguished my crying with hugs, pats on the back, comforting words, and probably a good many of the above-described cookies.
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