Passing It On

Toss it out today and you may regret it tomorrow

One morning not long ago, in a fit of domestic cleanliness, I swiped a damp dishcloth across the heating plate of our coffeemaker. Much to my surprise, a small cylindrical piece of plastic roughly the diameter of a pencil eraser, clattered onto the kitchen counter.

I immediately investigated, looking for its proper home. I checked every crevice, hinge and surface of the coffeemaker to no avail. Ditto for the pot’s carafe and other items in the general vicinity. It had to come from somewhere, I reasoned, perhaps someplace important. I set it aside, waiting for the inevitable malfunction that would make its role obvious.

That was weeks ago and I still don’t know the source of this miniscule chunk of plastic. I am certain, however, that to toss it would be a grave mistake for its serious purpose would become obvious the moment it was no longer available. So there it sits, forlorn on a windowsill, another source of clutter in my family’s life.

What does this have to do with family history, you might ask. I’m convinced that this reluctance to toss anything that might not have lived out its productive life is something that was passed down to me from my ancestors. Since my wife doesn’t share this trait, it will be interesting to see which side of the save-or-toss line our children and their offspring fall.

My grandmother left her heirs a cache of flour sacks that remain to this day flour sacks. Grandma clearly saw a higher purpose for them, doubtless from her hardscrabble upbringing. I grew up in a family where the women of the house kept cigar boxes or coffee cans full of assorted buttons and pins, knowing full well that you can never have enough of either in a fastening emergency.

For my part, I have in my garage a motley assortment of nuts-and-bolts-type fasteners gleaned by dismantling non-functioning appliances before disposing of them. Likewise, I have a couple of generations worth of scratch paper sliced from an assortment of sources over the years.

It just doesn’t make sense to get rid of something you might need someday. Does it?

Writing prompt for the day: Do you have any examples in your family of people hanging onto items for no obviously good reason?

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian and legacy planner. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of petercastleton.

Holiday music evokes memories of Christmases past

What do you think about Christmas music these days? Do you love it? Have you had your fill of it already? Perhaps you don’t give it a thought at all.

As I get older, I get more ambivalent about Christmas music every year but certain songs and artists still evoke pleasant memories of past Christmases for me. It’s probably the same for you.

As a youngster, I heard most of my Christmas music on television, the radio or in department stores while shopping. There was something soothing about the classic carols by the likes of Bing Crosby, Nat “King” Cole, Dean Martin, Fred Waring, Jo Stafford and Perry Como. All of these artists are represented in my own Christmas collection that spans four media – phonograph records, audiotape, compact disc and digital computer files.

I built my own collection around the first 45 rpm record I received as a gift – “The Chipmunk Song” – for Christmas 1958, the year I also got my first record player. Over the years, my Christmas collection came to include songs by rockers Chuck Berry, Brenda Lee and Elvis but it was Christmas albums by the Beach Boys and producer Phil Spector that really broadened my collection.

It’s a wide-ranging assortment of music from Eartha Kitt’s seductive “Santa Baby” to Bobcat Goldthwait’s “Rudolf the Nine-Inch Reindeer.” I’ve got update versions of the classics by Mannheim Steamroller and Aaron Neville, country-rock CDs by .38 Special and Lynnyrd Skynnyrd , simply odd versions by Walter Brennan, Spike Jones and Walter Brennan and funny tunes like Sherwin Linton’s “Santa Got a DWI” and satirist Stan Freberg’s hilarious “Christmas Dragnet” and prophetic “Green Christmas.”

Every time I pop in a CD, crank up my turntable, click on my iPod or uncase a tape, I’m transported to some joyous holiday point in my life. That’s definitely a good thing.

Writing prompt for the day: Write about the memories you associate with specific holiday songs.

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian and legacy planner who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy ofio Carvajal.

So you’ve got a famous cousin ... so what?

This may be genealogical sacrilege, but count me among the people who yawned when they heard this week that President Barack Obama and mega-billionaire Warren Buffett are related.

In case you missed it, here’s the story about these seventh cousins, three times removed. You may also have missed the earlier news that President Obama also counts former president George W. Bush and ex-vice president Dick Cheney among his distant cousins.

To which, I say: So what? Theoretically, if you go back far enough we should all be related, right? Some people in this celebrity-biased culture are driven to know which famous people might be perched on another branch of their family tree, no matter how large the tree or how far removed the celebrity branch may be.

Personally, I’m much more interested in the three or four generations that I grew up hearing stories about, people who had a far greater influence on me and the loved ones I have known than the relatives who let some prime real estate in the blue grass country of Kentucky slip away in the 19th century.

Family history is much more than names and dates from a distant time. It’s a wondrous, ever-shifting work in progress that all living beings play a role in through their very existence. This is not to demean the past for there are important lessons to be gleaned from our ancestors, whether through our research or through their stories that have been passed on in some manner.

So, if you learn that I’m a seventh cousin, three times removed, to some famous person, I’ll accept that information with gratitude, interest and humility. But what I’d really like to know are the circumstances surrounding Jessie M. Breckenridge’s first marriage in the 1910s.

That’s much more relevant to me.

Writing prompt for the day: Who’s the most famous living person in your family tree? How has fame affected your own family history project?

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian and legacy planner. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Say, is that really you behind that mask?

Are you the real deal? Or, put another way, have you always been you?

Before you get all indignant at the suggestion that you might be something of a pretender, give the question some serious thought before answering.

Truth is, most of us have done a little reality bending when it comes to our very own identities.

For example, when I was a child a bus ride in my home town cost a nickel if you were below the age of 12. After your 12th birthday, it jumped to 15 cents. I must confess that for a year or two after my 12th birthday, I rode for a nickel. So, if my parents had given me 30 cents for a round-trip, the difference between what I was supposed to pay and what I actually paid subsidized more than one cherry-filled bismark and bag of penny candy.

I’ll bet many of you have done the same sort of fudging to get into bars, buy alcohol or cigarettes or to qualify for a price break of some kind because of your slightly miscalculated age. I know of grandmothers today who, as girls too young to dance on American Bandstand, stuffed tissue into their bras to get past the doormen at WFIL-TV in Philadelphia.

Sometimes we go a bit further such as the time a friend and I passed ourselves off as touring rock musicians to a waitress in a small-town restaurant. Fortunately, we weren’t required to prove our musical skills so we managed to carry off the charade effectively for some time.

I believe the examples I’ve offered are harmless enough to not materially affect my own personal history, though they do add a certain texture to it. In some families, however, it could be a serious matter, particularly when an altered identity is used to mask criminal activity or out of fear.

In any case, it’s a good question to explore as you work on any family history project.

Writing prompt of the day: Identify the times you or your family members have pretended to be someone else.

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of exfordy.

Holiday baking season stirs up goodies, family memories

Around our house, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday baking season. It’s a very special time of the year when our thoughts turn to Christmases of the past, especially those of departed family members.

My wife and I have separate agendas for our holiday baking so rarely share time in the kitchen when indulging our passions for whipping up Christmas cookies, breads and other goodies. Her list includes many of her childhood favorites – decorated sugar cookies, spritz, gingerbread men, almond crescents and houska (from her Czech heritage).

While several of my favorites also come from my childhood, the one recipe I received from my mother wouldn’t be called a Christmas cookie by most people. But Mom always made her black walnut ice box cookies around the holidays, storing them in our unheated attic to bring out their full flavor.

Here are a few favorites I collected from my grandmothers:

Grandma (Ellen) Andersen: Aebleskiver and apple cake. Both of these reflect Grandma’s Danish heritage (she came to the U.S. from Denmark in 1920.) She always served aebleskiver, a small spherical pancake cooked in a special pan, plain or with a prune filling. The apple cake was always served cold, topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

Grandma (Jessie) Lehmer: Probably the best cook in our family, I only have one of her recipes. She was partial to candy creations, like divinity and fudge, around the holidays but the recipe I wanted was for something she called Butterscotch Goodies. She shared it with me apologetically, since it’s so simple to make. Now I’m sharing it with you:

Grandma Lehmer’s Butterscotch Goodies

½ cup peanut butter
1 package butterscotch chips (10-12 ounces)
5 ½ cups corn flakes

Melt the peanut butter and butterscotch chips in a large saucepan until smooth. Remove from heat and add the corn flakes. Stir well and drop by teaspoonful on waxed paper until set.

Writing prompt for the day: Do you have any holiday recipes that have been passed down from your family?

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of rochelle, et. al..

Losing a home is a jarring family history experience

Things were looking good for Harry Lehmer in 1927.

A 29-year-old father of three, Harry and wife Jessie had scraped together enough money to buy a home of their own in the country after seven years in a home much too small for their growing family and pinching pennies wherever they could, including Harry’s shuttling back and forth to work on streetcars.

So, in January 1927, the Lehmer family packed up and relocated to an acreage in the Lewis Township area, on a steep bluff about one mile northeast of the Iowa School for the Deaf. This would be a good place to raise their kids – Jack, Agnes and Phyllis – they thought.

While young Jack enjoyed romping in the rural setting with his recently acquired collie-German shepherd mix, Shep, the experience left its scars, too.

First came the fire that destroyed a neighbor’s home, leaving the children with recurring nightmares. Then came the accident that saw a neighbor boy chop off half of Jack’s left ring finger. The most jarring experience, though, came from city lawyers.

In 1931, they received a foreclosure notice despite dutifully making every required payment on their contract for more than four years. Harry and Jesse were caught totally unaware. This was the second home they had bought on contract from the A.F. Smith Company. Who expected him to go bankrupt?

So, for the second time in four years, the Lehmers packed up and relocated, this time to a rental home in the city. It would be three years before they recovered enough financially to buy another home. In 1934 they moved to 2731 Third Avenue in Council Bluffs which would be their home for the final 25 years of their life together.Harry and Jessie were my grandparents and Jack is my father. I heard nothing of this story while my grandparents were alive but I suspect stories of foreclosure are making a resurgence these days.

Stories of home loss through foreclosure, natural disasters, condemnation and neglect are a sad but necessary part of our family histories. I hope none of you are adding your own chapters.

Writing tip for the day: Do you know the stories behind the homes in your family’s history?

Larry Lehmer is a professional personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: Jack, Phyllis & Agnes Lehmer sit with their Uncle Warren Lehmer on steps of Harry & Jessie's home in Lewis Township near Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1928 (W.B. Lehmer collection)