Long Road Home

I just returned from a trip to Dayton to visit the kids. Actually, the trip was a three-fer. Visiting the kids was my top priority, but to get to Dayton from here, I had to drive northish and then eastish. Likewise, the return trip meant driving southish then westish and so I thought I'd swing by Richmond, Missouri on the way there and do a little research at the Ray County Museum and Louisville, Kentucky on the way back to meet some distant cousins.

Road Trip

There's no easy way to get to Richmond and once you arrive, there's no easy way to find the Museum. So I asked for directions.

"Well, it's just off the square." Okay, where's the square. "You see that hill? Just follow the school bus and turn left." Luckily, there were signs posted with arrows pointing to the fair grounds and the museum or I'd still be driving in circles.

The museum was once the Ray County poor house and contained artifacts donated by the area's first families: civil war uniforms, china, furniture and cases full of books, scrapbooks, handwritten notes, newspapers, photos and decades of ghosts ready to tell their stories. After the first 10 minutes I realized that I'd planned poorly; I'd need a week just to get started.

Lisa, the director of the genealogy library was very nice and pointed me at family history files for the Dudgeon and Pigg families. I opened the first file folder to find photos donated by my 2nd cousin 1x removed, Eleanor. Eleanor and I have been writing and sharing information for about 3 years now and so I felt a bit like a prospector who'd turned up the same yellow rock three times.

I opened the second folder to find more files donated by Eleanor. "Who are you looking for?" Charlie had grown up in Camden, Missouri, just south of Orrick. "Hicks, Dudgeon, Pigg, Dennis..." I replied. "Oh, I knew Arnie Hicks..." And so the stories started.

Stories are the real gold.

The genealogy library closes at 4:30, but the museum's director, Linda Emley, stayed to give me a tour of the museum and the county's history. As she walked me to the car, she mentioned that she had Elliott ancestors from Ray County, but hadn't researched them. "You don't mean Millie Elliott do you?" I asked. "Yes!" she smiled. Another cousin.

On the trip home, I met my third cousin Vickie from the Dennis side of the family. Her husband Jim met me at the door. "You look familiar!" we both called, recognizing smiles from Facebook photos. Again, I time-planned poorly and started the introductory meeting speed talking about my family interlaced with questions about hers and casual conversation about travels, their new home and landscaping plans over a wonderful lunch on the patio. We never really got around to looking at one another's research, sufficing to swap Ancestry.com invitations and a promise to write, but touched on stories of shared family in Cocke County Tennessee and another 3rd cousin I've not yet met and plans for another road trip.

I'm going to close with a couple quick links to the Ray County Museum and Genealogical Society. Call before you go. Ask for Linda or Lisa...and if Charlie's there, tell him Arnie Hicks's great niece says thanks for the roadmap (it was a lifesaver!) and the stories.

Ray County Museum: http://raycountymuseum.zoomshare.com/
...and their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RAYCOHISTORY

Ray County Genealogical Society: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~morcga/

William Leon Hicks

William Leon Hicks

My grandparents made pretty babies. I've always thought the Hicks family were a handsome lot. Uncle Bill in particular.

William Leon Hicks passed away in his sleep March 23, 2013; he would have been 90 this September. I'll miss the way he giggled when recanting family tales and the way his eyes danced. I say my thanks for having really gotten to meet him two years ago and kick myself for not having gone for a visit sooner. We tell ourselves that there's always time.

I spent some time this morning reading my past posts and realized that I'd not properly introduced my mother's family other than through the odd story. So here goes.

Thurman and Julia (Pigg) Dudgeon

Tillman Hicks was born 03 November 1894 in Cosby, Cocke County, Tennessee to James Wiley Hicks and Laura Jane Dennis. He married my grandmother, Fleda Frances Dudgeon 17 September 1921 in Richmond, Ray County, Missouri. Frances was the daughter of Thurman Emerson Dudgeon of Ireland, Taylor County, Kentucky and Julia Ann Pigg of Orrick, Ray County, Missouri.

Laura Dennis and Wiley Hicks

Frances and Tillman had seven children:
Bertha Frances (my mother); Billy Leon (who later changed his name to William)

Rosemary; Wilbur Gardner; Zella Mildred; Walter Thurman and Lewis Dennis Hicks. All of the kids were born in Orrick. Their high school graduation photos are posted below along with photos of Frances and Tillman as youngsters.

A couple of years ago, I ran across a self-published work by William E. Paulson entitled "Orrick, as I Remember." He wrote the publication in 1974 after reading "Ray County History" (1973) and not finding much about Orrick. So he knocked on doors and picked through old scrapbooks and sifted through deeds to piece together a really nice overview of the town's origins, who owned which properties,  how the schools evolved and what kids did to pass the time before Final Fantasy and Facebook. I ordered the book (really just a copier print with a stapled binding) from the Ray County Historical Society, but I'd be happy to look something up for readers. Email me at: hanson22d@hotmail.com or just leave a comment below.

Top left to right: Bertha, Rosemary, Mildred, Thurman. Bottom left to right: Wilbur, Tillman and Frances. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Dennis. Bill Hicks' graduation photo is included in the upper left corner of this post. 

Richard Parker

I rather like punctuation marks. Like signposts, they guide the reader through the written word: the colon indicates a list ahead, the comma separates each item in the list and the period affirms that the sentence and the reader have arrived at their destination.

Research comes with its own unique punctuation. Oftentimes, clues will generate new paths separated by time, location and events. And when that research yields a new personal story, the affirmation rings ta da! as I put a period next to another branch on my tree.

Then there's the question mark. Question marks tempt you with a period only after winding through false clues and half truths until even your arrival leaves you unsure.  I think most researchers yearn for a good ta da.

One of my friends asked recently if I were going to continue the blog now that I've found Ellen. I don't know that the blog is as much about Ellen as it is about the journey to find her. Ellen has taught me to reach out to strangers and ask personal questions. Ask for photographs. Ask for stories. Ask for help. She's given me the courage to unearth the paths my ancestors walked and revel in their tenacity and perseverance. Even if I don't like what I find.

We rented the movie Life of Pi this weekend. I'd been struggling with things I'd uncovered recently and as the credits rolled, I reflected on the story's alternate points of view. Of Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger who shared a lifeboat with the shipwrecked teenager. Or Richard Parker, the person that Pi became to survive the shipwreck. Walt reminded me that events occur. How we deal with them is a choice. Sometimes we don't have all of the facts. Sometimes the facts are so harsh that we turn our attention elsewhere. Sometimes all we have is our faith, our beliefs and our choices.

Sometimes there are no periods.

I Got the Music in Me

My grandfather was the Music Director for Miami radio station WIOD from 1929 until 1952. He attended Yale's music conservatory and claimed to have graduated in 1924 although Yale seems to have forgotten about all but his first two years. He was a concert pianist, composer and crooner and evidently relatively famous as newspapers from his hometown of New Haven to Miami carried the locations of his daily whereabouts from where he played, to what he ate for dinner.
Earle Barr Hanson was a Star.

I met Earle about 3 years ago through Google's digital newspaper archives. It's a shame that they've cancelled the project because I still have so many questions. What happened to Earl's manuscripts? Did he publish? Did he record? According to the Miami Daily News, his career began with an Italian orchestra which somehow translated into spaghetti cravings, yet the photo from this article would lead me to believe that he'd still not mastered the fork. Maybe he was really hungry. Maybe he was a ham. That would follow as radio was live until the mid to late 1950s and to keep an unseen audience entertained day after day, you had to be funny. Funny Earle the Star. I like this guy.

Google also revealed that Earle was an early adopter. Before Gene Roddenberry, there was the Dixie Fantasy Federation. Earle was President and reportedly the largest collector of antique dime novels of his day.

Science fiction fandom made its appearance in the United States in the late 1920s in the discussions column of Amazing Stories, a science fiction magazine launched by Experimenter Publishing in 1926, and Weird Tales which began publishing pulp fiction in 1923.  Fans stayed in contact with one another through newsletters and professional magazines known as "promags" and "prozines." These early chat boards turned into local science fiction clubs who published amateur magazines and newsletters called "fanmags" or "fanzines." Some clubs held conventions. The Dixie Fantasy Federation's fanzine was called "Les Zombie" or LeZ for short. LeZ was published about once a month for five cents a copy or fifty cents for a year's subscription. You can find digitized issues here: http://www.midamericon.org/tucker/currentlez.htm.

My birthday was 3 weeks ago, but Tuesday a box came in the mail from my youngest daughter. Inside was a Luke Skywalker action figure. A replacement Luke as the original had been secured to a Estes model rocket engine and launched down the driveway in a father-daughter science experiment long ago. He's found a place next to my monitor where he guards Tron...in case Walt gets any more ideas.

Thank you to Bob Tucker from Bloomington, Illinois for digitizing and publishing Le Zombie on the web and to The National Fantasy Fan Federation for publishing "The History of N3F" which can be found here: http://www.n3f.org/N3Fhistory.shtml.

From "Le Zombie" Number 47, May-June 1942

Zombie (Al Ashley)

Out of the earth that covered me,

Streaked and pitted from heel to poll,

I burst, to shuffle eagerly

In pursuit of my errant soul.

But halted now my questing dance,

I cannot moan or cry aloud;

echoing thru my voodoo trance

the master calls. My head is bowed.

Past row on row of empty biers,

All staring-eyed and mould-arrayed,

I hast to toil thru voidfull years

With other slaves that he has made.

Nor can the cons liberate

Full charged with punishment my scroll;

No longer captain of my fate,

I am a Thing without a soul.

High-Low

Today wasn't one of my better days; it wasn't one of my worst either, but as is the tradition in the Hanson-Hunnicutt household I thought we'd play a little round of internet high-low.

"High-low" refers to an end-of-day round robin with whomever happens to be at the dinner table. The object is to recount the best part of your day: your "high," and the lowest part of your day: your "low." Walt adds another dimension in that he asks himself who he was at his best and who he was at his worst and then strives to do better the next day.

Walt has better Karma.

It's 5:28pm CST as I write this and so my day isn't over but I'm not reading anymore email tonight, I have a nice cold glass of white wine within reach and there's a new episode of Gray's Anatomy on at 8pm, so the evening's likely to end on a high note.

Both of my high-lows came from something I read on the internet today. Silly, I know, but I spend quite a bit of my free time researching dead relatives (genealogy) and I've really become quite proud of them, their passion and beliefs, and the lives they led. Even the rascals. 

Through time, on every ancestral continent, there have been many consistencies but none so pointed as conflict. I've watched from a generational distance as families, communities and countries merge then fragment and merge again like lungs breathing in and breathing out new boundaries; new rules for engagement and cooperative cohabitation. Change is good. Change is life.

My low today was reading a CNN report stating that at last count, 20 of our States have constituents who've initiated and signed petitions to secede from the Union. I would like to say that I don't understand their line of reasoning, but I'm afraid that I do. I just don't agree with it.

I needed a "high."

One of my favorite quotes was from John F. Kennedy when, in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, he talked about making peace between the Soviets and the United States. It seemed appropriate. 

Five of my grandcestors fought in the war of 1812; one wore a red coat, the other 4 wore coon-skinned caps. Three fought on the same battle field and I thank my lucky stars that they couldn't shoot worth a hoot, or I wouldn't be here today. Six of my grandcestors were in the Civil War; most fought for the Confederates, but two fought on the Union side. 

I like the sound of that word: Union. Like marriage it denotes change, growth and compromise. Breathing in and out new boundaries; new rules for engagement and cooperative cohabitation.

Life.

So, thank you Mr. Kennedy for my happy thought tonight: for my "high."

[Exerpt from John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961]

"So let us begin anew — remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us..."

"...let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah — to "undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free."

And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor  not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."

Patience

"It's such an insult, thay dunt bauthr." David was born in north central England, but over the course of the past ten years working in Australia, his accent has morphed. He and Walt are stacking wood on the lower deck most likely chipping away at the presidential candidates, tomorrow's election and the electoral process as a whole as they work.

I can usually count on David to have an opinion: an opinion about Formula One racing, about the best hot sauce on the market, and about world affairs. He's fairly knowledgeable about current events and passionate about his position. I try to listen but often find the hairs on my arms tingle as I fight the urge to balance the equation with an alternate point of view, the success of which is doomed to failure. And so I shut up (which I might add is not the same thing as being silent).

The general election is tomorrow, but we voted early today and were delighted to find an hour and a half of our fellow constituents in line with us waiting patiently to exercise our right to complain.

I tend to look at the election process as an interview. Each candidate brings a resume full of party-backed opinions and promises, most of which I put in a mental bucket. My eye is on the candidate with broad shoulders. The candidate who looks at the greater whole and considers solutions that will stand the test of time. The candidate who pauses to consider the questions put before them and considers options from all sides; the candidate who chooses integrity over popularity. The patient candidate.

One of my high-school girlfriends shared a post on Facebook yesterday that pointed to the challenges that women faced before they were given the right to vote. Although the 19th Amendment had passed in 1920, only one of my grandmothers were of voting age and I'm pretty sure she voted for Harding. I'm not sure that this particular history lesson has anything to do with today's voters and I'm particularly annoyed by the group's catch phrase: "Don't iron while the strike is hot." Walt irons his own shirts.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas engaged in a series of seven debates: true face-to-face debates, with no moderator. They took turns. My guess is that there was a coin toss, followed by the winner opening with a one-hour speech on the topic of his choice. His opponent was then allowed an hour and a half to rebut, followed by a half-hour closing remark by opening speaker. Then it was the other guy's turn.

They listened: each candidate reflected on the comments of his opponent before responding. They showed respect: each candidate waited his turn, giving his opponent the floor to share his thoughts and opinions. And each speech was timed meaning that retorts waited until the full breadth of each man's bluster had expended itself across the crowd.

The first televised presidential debate was held on September 26, 1960 between US Senator John F. Kennedy (Democratic nominee) and Vice President Richard Nixon (Republican nominee) in Chicago. It's interesting to hear many of the same issues we rehash today. But I marvel at their discipline; their composure: a gentleman's debate. That took patience.

Thanks to YouTube and the JFK Library for this wonderful video: (http://youtu.be/gbrcRKqLSRw)

Old Dogs -- New Tricks

My current contract requires that I edit a technical manual using Adobe's flagship desktop publication application, InDesign. I'm a fairly good technical writer and over the years have become proficient in several text editors. InDesign is not a text editor.

In the last three hours, I've watched two how-to videos on Lynda.com, read three chapters in "Adobe InDesign CS6 Digital Classroom" and written one paragraph. The paragraph's content is artfully written but the format stinks because the previous author used 10,206 layers for each object in the document and so I'm having a mental margarita at 11:26 am, letting my thoughts flow effortlessly into the simple text editor provided by Google's Blogger application.

Hurrah for simplicity.

I graduated from high school in 1971. Although Benjamin Franklin's kite and key experiment in 1752 set the stage for electrically-powered devices to become rampant across the planet, electric typewriters hadn't quite made their way to my high school Typing 101 classroom. The tap-tap-tap-ching! of our Royal manual typewriters filled the first-floor hallway, softened only by the occasional shuffle to the principal's office for carbon paper or replacement ribbons.

SR Model 33 Teletype

In 1971, typewriters were a luxury. Term papers through my junior year in college were handwritten on college-ruled paper in black pen. Liquid Paper, originally called "Mistake Out," was invented in 1956 by a Dallas housewife named Bette Nesmith Graham who used her kitchen blender to mix tempera paint which she bottled and provided to her co-workers to correct typing errors. The invention was a lifesaver as professors wouldn't accept a paper with crossed out misspellings or edits. The alternative, of course, was to re-copy the paper which took time. Any attempt to hurriedly re-print a paper always resulted in a fumbled crisscrossing of constants or a forgotten word. College typing labs were available to day students, but for those of us who worked during the day and attended school at night, the labs too were a luxury.  Rarely did you find a student with a personal typewriter.  The telltale middle-finger dent and ink stain from our ballpoint pens clearly distinguished the haves from the have nots.

My my first year in college I worked as a data input operator for Brooks Uniform Company, a subsidiary of Blue Bell Industries and sister company to Wrangler. For the first three months, I used an SR Model 35 Teletype machine: a 110 baud terminal that transmitted keystrokes onto paper punch tape. Completed reels of tape would be stored and then loaded one-by-one onto a DX paper tape reader that would send batch transmissions to a mainframe computer for processing. Any more about the SR Model 35 would yield another "uphill in the snow" story that I'll cover at another time; suffice to say that it was only a step up from the manual typewriter. Corrections made to a typed error required scissors and a tape splice.

One morning, an IBM sales representative walked into our little data room at Brooks Uniform and explained that we were all transitioning to a cutting-edge product that used magnetic media to store data versus paper tape: the IBM 3741 Data Station -- code name: IGAR.

The 3741 was cool in that if you made an error, like a manual typewriter, there was a backspace key. No Mistake Out; no scissors were required to correct errors. At the end of each day, our 8" floppy disks were loaded into a high-speed station (1200 baud) and transmitted as a batch process to a System 370 mainframe for processing.

We were in heaven.

Technology improved rapidly and by 1996, my primary workstation was a Sun Microsystems Sparc server; a respectable UNIX server in 1996. And when I look back over this technological landscape, it makes me sit up a bit straighter having been part of this evolutionary transition.

So why am I having so many problems with layers.

Thanks to the Internet Archive for posting this wonderful video: http://archive.org/details/basic_typing_1