Did you know that in the 1930 U.S. Census, if you were a nun living in a convent, you were referred to as an “Inmate”? And so, Sister Reinilda Wigger, 36, was listed as an inmate. Her occupation was listed as “Embroiderer.” A decade later, the Census upgraded its nomenclature to include Sister as an option for the relation column. For occupation, Sister Reinilda was listed as a Housekeeper. At this point, the phrase Cleanliness is Next to Godliness comes…
Thanks to my second-cousin Mark, I just came upon a dozen or more poems Grandpa Vayo wrote shortly after he relocated to Paducah in 1926. He was the new Advertising Manager at the J.A. Rudy & Sons department store. Grandpa must have been so lonely! Paducah, Kentucky, is far away from Brewer, Maine. And this was a century ago. It was months before Grandma traveled all those miles to marry him on Thanksgiving Day. A poet, musician, and artist, Grandpa…
When we moved to Indiana in 1973, I innocently believed the Ku Klux Klan was a thing of the past. That is, until a trick-or-treater arrived at our door wearing a white robe and hood. When I questioned the young boy, he replied with a racist slur. I hollered and he ran off … In college, I remember learning about the 1915 silent film The Birth of A Nation. We were taught it was a technical breakthrough, a landmark in…
My godmother’s name fascinated me as a little kid. Her father’s name was George. Her mother’s name was Anna. And so they named their younger daughter Georgeanna. That formula sure wouldn’t have worked out as nicely for me. Haroldjoan doesn’t quite slide off the tongue as easily as Georgeanna. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1932, Georgeanna Helen Lane grew up attending Catholic schools. It was at St. Joseph College that she met Mom. Sharing an interest in poetry, writing, books,…
This month’s reads had something in common: habits. From a nun’s attire to questionable grammar to a drunken bet, the stories made me appreciate all the more this habit of reading books. Book 1: Maigret Sets A Trap by Georges Simenon It’s rather amusing that the latest detective in my reading life is a Frenchman. Created by a Belgian. My favorite fictional detective, after all, is Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, a Belgian who is forever correcting the misunderstanding that he’s…
When I wrote about my godfather, Bob Caplinger, last year (“The West Virginia Hillbilly”), I had a feeling there was something more. There was something else my parents had saved and I just had to find it. There it was, in amongst our family archives. In 1991, Bob wrote an autobiographical short story, dedicated it to my parents and younger brother, and dropped it in the mail to them. Here it is: SATURDAY NIGHT IN CAPITALS A short story by…
Gary has told me more than once that the saddest place in the world is the section of a graveyard set aside for babies. Thankfully, improvements in healthcare and the development of vaccines have helped tremendously over the years. Far fewer infants die at birth. But still, some of the most precious and fragile among us do not survive those early hours. Gary and I went to the St. Ferdinand Cemetery yesterday evening to pay our respects to a little…
Did your yearbook include a “class history”? I’ll have to go back and check mine from high school, but I don’t think we had one. Dad wrote the class history for his college yearbook when he was a Senior. Although the work is uncredited, he mentioned it in an autobiography he wrote in 1954. The Class History is an interesting compilation of facts and figures, sports and dances, from the earliest days until graduation. As you can see in this…
The news in the registered letter Dad opened on February 7, 1951, was something no college senior should have to receive. That same day, Dad wrote to his future wife: My Darling, I got an awful shock this morning. I got a registered mail letter from dad. He’s lost his job. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it the first time. For a while I couldn’t move or think. Golly, you never realize the blessing of security until…
Middle brother Dave recently came across a batch of photos he took long ago. I asked him if he’d like to put together a blog post about them; happily, he said yes. Here is his story: The Brownie camera, an inexpensive point-and-shoot, democratized photography in the mid-century USA. Mom and Dad gave me my Brownie Fiesta on either Christmas 1965 or my ninth birthday the following March. These photos all date from 1966 and are of places in and around…