1921 Picnic

Visiting with Helen last Saturday at Morgan's wedding, I said I would post some pictures from a picnic in 1921. Helen's comment was they didn't picnic like others as they used skillets. I'm guessing to cook fried chicken.

Eula, Grace, Edna and Jennie-October 1921

More fun in the road.

Helen, EA, George Bale, Percy, and Frank Faust in October 1921

I couldn't figure out the fascination for standing in the road, but it makes for interesting pictures. One wonders if EA is aware that Helen is strolling apparently unattended down the road.

Bud Walker, Marcie Walker, Mildred Faust, Marguerite Faust, Allan, Ethel, Bernice Bale and Helen in October 1921. Seven of Betsy and Edward's eight Topeka grandchildren. Missing is Walker Smith, son of Ada and Bill Smith. Bernice and her parents lived in Clay Center. Also absent are the three children of Lily and John Leib who lived in Kansas City, Mo.

The 1886 - 1912 Scrapbook Continues

 Today is an assortment of photos from 1907. The one at the left I would guess is Edna's high school senior portrait. Its only label says 1907 and in 1907 Edna would have turned 19 in May.

Next is one from that same year - at least that's what it's labeled as.The white dresses and hats covered with flowers caught my attention. I wonder if they would be Easter dresses?

The next photo is anyone's guess. I don't recognize anyone in it, except the one guy looks like Nick Collison, whom I'm sure it's not. The only identification says Meryl Parks and he's not anyone I recognize. Gotta love the newspapers.



The final one for today has no identification except the year 1907. It's here because I like it's composition.

Edna, 18 and Ada, 13, in 1907.

Meryl Parks 1907 - why the newspapers?

Mom's Notebooks

As you know Mary Grace put together numerous notebooks-scrapbooks they were originally-of her life, her parents, her in-laws, her children and grandchildren. What to do with them? That is the question.

Sally and I have decided that scanning them is probably the best plan. For the past few months, I've started doing that. Apparently so often, that even 3-year old Cameron says, "Don't you think you need to do your pictures?" I've shared a few of them, but I thought I should try and do it more often. Daily seems like an impossible goal, but maybe with Cameron's goading I'll get it done.

Mr. F E Vincent and his class in 1898. Edna is second from right.

Mr. Vincent's Class

Mr. Vincent

Edna on the end of the first row in 1900 so she'd be 12.

Included in the scrapbook is a thank-you note from Mr. Vincent to Edna for her visit while he was home ill. According to the letter he'd been absent from school for nearly two weeks. Considering that she saved the letter and photographs Mr. Vincent must have been important to Edna.She did teach after college until she married. It's hard to believe, but once she was married she could no longer teach. I guess the thought was that she didn't need a job because she had someone to take care of her. It was immaterial that she was earning more than EA.

Hope to be posting again soon.

Mom & Ernie

Edna on the left & Morna Collins.

 Mom had many stories about growing up and she wrote them all down in her collection, My Life. But one I've always remembered was about Ernie falling out of the car and no one noticing. Even back in the fifties and sixties when the only thing holding you in the car was a door, it was hard to visualize. As time has passed and children are now carefully ensconced in car seats, it's unfathomable.

I'm not challenging the veracity of the story, I'm just illustrating it with these pictures. The following is Mom's description: 

As I was growing up my parents were good friends of the minister and his family.  Their name was Collins. . . My mother liked his wife very much and they did things together a lot.  They had four children like my parents. 

The Collins-Burkhardt families--Mary on the right and Ernie the left.

The youngest one was named Ernie and we were not in school so we would be with the two women.  One day my mother was driving down the river road that ran beside the Kaw River on a dirt road going to my Uncle Percy’s cabin.  The door flew open and Ernie fell out.  They didn’t notice and it took awhile before I get their attention that Ernie was no longer in the car.  I did not push him.  I liked Ernie.  

Collins' Summer home on Crystal Lake, MI- 1928

The Kaw River from Percy's Camp in 1927.

The Collins & Burkhardt children. Mary & Ernie are the little ones in front.

Burkhardts and Collins' on the shores of Crystal Lake-1928.

 Her description continues:
We spent one summer vacation with them on Crystal Lake in Michigan.  At that time Women sometimes wore knickers while on vacation.  Evidently my mother didn’t like the way the pictures came out as she cut the bottom off all the pictures that she was in. The Collins owned a cabin on the lake.  Everything was very sandy.

One other detail she has in her memoir is that Edna allowed Dr. Collins to keep his beer in their refrigerator, because he couldn't in his at home. One has to remember that the twenties were a time of Prohibition so it would have been highly improper for a man of the cloth to have illegal substances in his home.

I've heard these stories multiple times, but it's nice to see the people involved.

The Shop

                    The Shop - That's what everyone called it, but I see from this 1924 picture that it did have a formal name, Burkhardt Battery Co. It clearly was a serious business matter for EA, but for his grandchildren it was freedom.Gussie, Edna, would gather us older grandchildren, probably on a Saturday night when she was babysitting us and say she needed to go to the Shop and finish some work in the office. We five older ones, Chris, Steve, Sally, Kerry and I were then turned loose in the other half of the Shop. By the time we were old enough to do this, EA had died and Allan was running the business. Looking back I'm sure Allan didn't know we ran rampant through the Shop, through the aisles of auto parts, bolts, nuts, etc.
                                      
                                                                              

Burkhardt Battery in 1924.

 I usually got asthma, but never has asthma been more fun. Steve and Chris usually had to start by checking out the girlie calendars the guys had up behind the counter and then things took off from there. The specifics are lost, but it was great. (I still feel a sense of security when I smell auto parts.) Eventually Gussie would come out and give us a nickel each so we could have a pop from the machine.

                               

Pictured from left are EA, holding Mary Grace, Ethel, Allan and Helen.

Once again while scanning in the pictures Mom had collected, I found these two. I came across the one at left and if you look closely the rear tire is painted with the words, Burkhardt Battery and Willard Battery. The Willard lettering was exciting because EA was a salesman for them when he and Edna were married in 1913. The story I remember hearing is that he made less money than she did as a teacher, but she wasn't allowed to teach after she was married. Another story I remember is that when he started the shop he was helped by his various brothers-in-law, An article from the Topeka paper describes a Christmas dinner, the 5th annual in 1924, they gave for their 20 employees.

The Shop was a focal point for Burkhardts for decades, but I guess I should get to my point. As we five Morgans and our spouses and our children are getting ready to sell the family homestead in Shawnee, I wanted to comment on memories and their relationships to specific places. As you can tell if you fall this link the Shop has seen better days. But as I realized when I looked at this Google link my memories are not related to its condition or the fact that I probably haven't been there in nearly 50 years. We Morgans should be fine regardless if we visit Flint anymore. Our memories are all with us and thanks to Mom's scrapbooks, we can refresh our memories regularly.
4th & Jackson

Bedroom 1913

In scanning photographs to share with recently rediscovered Walker cousins, I came across this one.

Its only identification is the date 1913 written on it. Below is the bedroom that was identified as being in the Walker home on Polk in Topeka and I don't think they are the same.

The photo at right was on a page with pictures of Edna and EA and Ada and Bill (grandparents of the recently rediscovered Walker cousins) from a walk to Topeka's Burnett Mound. With my detective skills I've deducted that it's EA's room, Bill's room or their room together. Continuing in this vein of detection due to the fact that there are two dressers I believe it's a shared room and let's say it's Bill's and EA's.

These snapshots of rooms fascinate -- in this one are pictures of President William Howard Taft and President Woodrow Wilson.Unlike their political positions Taft is on the left and Wilson the right. To refresh -- the 1912 election was a race between 3 candidates, Taft the Republican, Wilson the Democrat and former president Teddy Roosevelt. Wilson won with slightly less than 42% of the popular vote.Taft finished third.  The pictures of the walk are dated February 16, 1913 which I'm assuming would make this one of the same general vintage. And this is about three weeks before Woodrow Wilson took the oath of office marking the end of Taft's one term. Just a pure guess, but I'll say EA's the Wilson fan and Bill the Taft aficionado.  One fact is that Bill Smith ran for state's attorney general as a Republican in 1926, just 13 years later. I'm guessing it would be hard to go from a Wilson fan to a Republican in 13 years.

Another thing I was surprised to see was a typewriter. It's on the table, framed by the white bedstead. In my brief search of the Internet I couldn't find out how unusual that would be - to own a typewriter in 1913.

At the right are EA and Bill on that day, February 16, 1913 on their walk to Burnett Mound.

Goodbye to the Wildflowers

The riverbank this week since the city did its magic.

 We've lived in our current house for nearly 34 years. When we bought it the riverbank of the Arkansas River was a shambles, but the bike path was going in. Soon things were evened out and there was a wide expanse at the top before it sloped down to the river and the bike path. Because the kids were small we put in a fence, more to keep them corralled than to keep them out of the river. (My advice, "If you fall in, remember to stand up.") The area between our fence and slant of the riverbank appeared to be ours to maintain.

Through the years this plot of land became part of my mowing routine. To mow our entire yard usually took me nearly two hours with a walk behind mower. During this time I had much time to think I'm really not that fond of mowing the yard and especially not the bank, the city's part. Until three weeks ago I've never seen the city mowers even look at this part, and certainly not mow it.

Mexican Hat

In 1996, Debbie had an internship with Senator Kassebaum so Lee and I and the other kids decided we'd drive to DC and bring Debbie home. As we made our way to and from DC, including many stops, I noticed that there were daylilies along I-70. I thought if they can grow along the interstate, surely they can grow along the river. I knew I wasn't going to water them, but I'm thinking I don't think they get watered along the highway either. Soon I'd ordered daylilies and daffodils from White Flower Farms. It wasn't easy, but eventually I had them planted. The daffodils prospered, but the daylilies didn't like the competition from the Bermuda grass. Wildflowers seemed like they'd be more inclined to survive.

Indian Blanket

I worked again to prepare the ground and ordered a meadow from Wildseed Farms in Texas. The results were good and I no longer had so much ground to mow. Not everything survived, but Mexican Hat pictured above prospered. Well, at least until last week.

This year the flowers on the bank weren't as tall as that pictured above - it looked more like the photo at right. Three weeks ago, the city mower came up on that spot and mowed and carefully went around my plot in the center. But last week a different mower came up and mowed everything as you can tell in the first photo. I went out and asked why after all these years they were mowing down my wildflowers. He stopped to talk to me, but he said the city didn't like it because it attracted trash. I was astounded and I said in the 30 years I've lived here, no one outside of me has ever mowed that part of the bank and that I'd put in the wildflowers so I wouldn't have to mow so much.

Thanks for listening.