Family Archives

November 16, 2012November 10, 2023

Mother’s Gone Nuts

I mentioned the other day that Mother and I picked up pecans in Dutchtown on one of our jaunts. As soon as we got home, she dug out the Rocket Nutcracker that’s been cracking Steinhoff pecans for better than half a century. She clamped it in the vise on Dad’s workbench and went to digging in the basement food cupboard he built at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Before long she found the very same cigar box and nut pick he used sitting his recliner, watching TV and filling jar after jar with nuts.

Metal fatigue caused handle to break

The metal fatigue from cracking thousands of nuts eventually caused the handle to break, but that didn’t stop Dad. He just welded the handle back on.

You can buy one that looks just like this one except that it has a wooden handle at the end.

She’s ready for more

I figured cracking and picking out the nuts would keep her off the street this weekend, but, no, she got them all cracked and picked out in about four days. She’s ready to go out picking up more.

Pecan cracking photo gallery

Here’s a gallery of photos of Mother hard at work cracking pecans. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

October 20, 2012

Wyatt Survives Boot Camp

Back on July 15, I ran some photos of Wyatt Perry, Wife Lila’s nephew, at his going-away party before he shipped out for Marine boot camp.

It gives me great pleasure to say that the high school boy who went away is now a Marine. After a too-short visit, he’s headed to Camp Pendleton. From left to right, Dad John Perry, Sister Laurie Everett, Wyatt and Mom Dee Perry.

October 17, 2012

91st Birthday Season Kicks Off

After my preview presentation of Ordinary People in Altenburg Tuesday night, the staff of the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum surprised Mother with a cake, flowers and balloon, kicking off the start of her 91st Birthday Season. Several of Wife Lila’s Class of ’66 showed up, including Terry Hopkins, who came all the way from Florida.

Friend Shari and her mother attended. It’s not often that someone can say that his first high school girlfriend and his last high school girlfriend are attending an event. Brother Mark came down from St. Louis.

A very receptive group of 37 (if I heard correctly) watched my photos and videos and listened to my war stories. They were actually TOO receptive. My goal was to figure out how to cut about 30 minutes from a presentation I did this summer. Riding Partner Anne warned me that if I played off my audience’s reaction, I was going to go long, not short. That’s exactly what happened. Now I have 46 minutes to cut. I needed someone to yawn or check their watch to clue me in that the listeners were getting restless.

Thanks to Carla Jordan and her staff for doing a great job hanging my photos, offering hat-stretching compliments and recognizing Mother’s Birthday Season. I would go into more detail, but my brain is fried. I don’t see how teachers do this kind of thing every day.

October 12, 2012

Emblem of freedom

This 1942 lithograph, Emblem of Freedom, hung on the wall of my grandfather’s liquor store in the Prather Building in Advance. I was always fascinated by the perspective.

I lost track of what I had done with it. It was over the mantle in our living room for a long time, but we shuffled other images up there over the years.

When I was packing for my trip back to Cape Friday morning, I looked in the back of our guest room closet for some stuff I had stashed there. It was behind some framed collections of old press passes.

Not visible in 1946

The flag picture isn’t visible in this 1946 photo of Roy Welch’s store. That’s Mother and Grandmother Elsie Welch in the photo.

The store had been rearranged by the time I was old enough drive my toy tractor round and round the floor, looping through the small store room in the back left. In the winter, some of the regulars would cluster around the old stove visible toward the back right.

I remember the counters being on the north or right wall. The shelves with the bottles were on the left wall.

In background in Spin City

A copy of the flag picture showed up frequently in the background of a TV situation comedy. I’m pretty sure it was Spin City, starring Michael J. Fox. It got so I would look for it as the camera panned the room.