Memories and Musings

Snow Apple Tree  As I thought about this week's challenge from Generations Cafe my mind wandered to the many beautiful sights I've seen in my 82 years. I've traveled in 47 states and a handful of foreign countries. I've seen the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge, Lake Louise, the North Woods of Wisconsin and the Sonoran Desert, oceans, rivers, bridges.... I could go on. However, in flipping through photos my eyes landed on this picture and my brain was flooded with memories. I grew up on a 5 acre farmette on Orchard Avenue in Northern Illinois. There were a couple of old apple orchards nearby but on our property there was only this one apple tree...the Snow Apple tree. It's fruit was snowy white inside and deep pink on the outside. It made great applesauce but that's not why I loved it. Look at the tree! So great for climbing.  My friends and I spent many hours in this tree. This is my Mom and me and the shadow of my Dad.  I always think of the song, Oh...

 This week the Generations Cafe 52 week challenge was BRICK WALL. Well I have so many brick walls in my ancestry search that I didn't know what to write about. Then Serendipity happened. I received a message on Ancestry from a distant cousin, Douglas, on my Dad's side wondering how I was related to his family, the Juhrends...one of my Brick Walls. Turns out Douglas and I are connected through my Great Grandma Amelia Juhrend, his Great-great Grandma. Amelia came from Germany in 1882 and I have not been able to uncover anything before her arrival in America. I run into this Brick Wall when someone comes from Germany. I have the same problem on my husbands paternal line.  Douglas thanked me for the pictures I shared and as I looked at the pictures from Amelia's 80th birthday I realized that I had a crack in the wall. Amelia had 10 children with 2 husbands. I have the names of all the children but I've never researched each of them although I actually knew most of them as m...

 The Generations Cafe challenge for the week was GREAT and my mind kept going back to Grandma Great aka Amelia Phelps, my paternal  Great Grandmother because she was the original owner of the Grandma Great table. I figure she bought the table around 1885 in Highwood, Illinois when she married Mr. Henricks. That makes the table 136 years old! The solid oak table with several leaves that get inserted in the middle when it's pulled apart seats 12 people easily. It is the table that my family gathers around at Thanksgiving.  Over the years there have been attempts at refinishing. The picture shows that a couple of the leaves got lost and didn't make the refinishing job! There's some fancy woodwork at each end and the legs are on little wheels.  When Grandma Great went to a nursing home and her household was broken up, my Dad got the table. All through my childhood this was the dining room table where my family celebrated birthdays and holidays. Many of my Mom's siblings ...

 When I saw the challenge word for this week,  MUSIC,   I thought, wow, I could write 52 posts on music in my life. I'm not a professional musician but music is the thread that runs through my entire life.  One of my earliest music memories takes me to a hospital bed when I was four and had pneumonia. I had a roommate named Cathy and as we recovered we broke into song as we jumped on our beds.  Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? LOL..You can google the first two words and find it is a popular song by the MERRY MACS in 1944. Cathy and and I recovered (penicillin saved us) and I went on to enjoy a life filled with music. I lived north of Chicago, Illinois where WLS was the popular country radio station. No TV in my early years so the radio music was our main entertainment including, yes, The Grand Ole Opry! But music was my life in so many other ways. I started taking piano lessons and dance lessons around ag...