First up, a little housecleaning: I heard back from our McIntosh cousin Sue McIntosh Adams about my May 2 question: "She speaks of a dance she’s been 'advertising' for, and calls it a 'Basket Dance.' Does anyone know what a basket dance was/is? I don’t have a clue."
Sue responds: "I believe it is probably the same as a box dance. What a box dance was is that money needed raised for whatever occassion and they would hold a box dance to raise it. The gals would fix a picnic lunch and go to the dance. Sometime during the dance they would auction off the box, with the gal as company, to the highest male bidder. This would raise money and the guy and gal then shared the food and conversation and a dance. Anyway, that is what a box dance was and as I say, a basket dance was probably similar."
So, there we have it. I'm sure she's correct. Thanks, Sue.
Now, for the 1914 letters. I'm afraid I've been getting a little carried away, and so I'll mae this partial posting, then come back later and get the rest of 1914. Please read on ...
As I’ve mention time and time again here, going through Grandma’s letters to Grandpa – OK, they weren’t yet married, but they would be – I really appreciate her sense of humor. I find myself comparing it to our considerably coarser way of conveying humor and sarcasm nowadays, and I wish I was more like her instead of more like, well, me.
A good example of this is in her first letter of 1914. On Jan. 5, she wrote of being invited to supper at Otto’s hotel (for those of you who know Otto, it makes the mind fairly spin to imagine a day when it could support a hotel, of any size) by her friend Ruth, who was spending time with quasi-boyfriend Wayne:
“They ate supper at the hotel at Mr. Daley’s expense. He is a friend of Ruth’s from Hyattville. I think she wanted me to go over so she wouldn’t have to entertain both of them. I don’t know which one she would have turned over to me.”
She skewers them all pretty well there, but does it all so politely that you almost overlook it.
Her mood could turn from sarcastic to downright depressed, though. In the same letter, she writes of her mother literally worrying herself sick over Ira, Mary’s brother. Her mother suspects he may be going “drinking” after basketball practice, and she gets so worked up she has to be medicated. She doesn’t hold much back when she describes her feelings to Grandpa:
“I surely will be glad when she is well again. I can hardly stand to stay down here when she is sick. It worries me awfully. It is bad enough to have to stay here when everything is all right at home. I get pretty ‘miserable’ at time[s]. Something like I was for a while last summer at Thermopolis.”
Reading that kind of wakes you up, doesn’t it? She must have battled the “blues” or worse while working the summer in Thermopolis (Ther-MOP, as everyone in Wyoming refers to it). It’s the not knowing that makes such lines in these letters to intriguing but frustrating, too.
In the Jan. 20, 1914, letter, she speaks of her culinary talents, or lack thereof:
“If you can’t read this, I’ll interpret it when I come home again. I was frying doughnuts tonight and burned three of my fingers. Consequently, I can’t handle my pen quite as well as usual. I made doughnuts enough to last a week. If you get hungry, I’ll send you a few by parcel post. I’m afraid you wouldn’t want me to send very many, though. They aren’t the ‘kind that mother makes,’ you know, and they might be hard on your digestive apparatus.”
Grandma’s letters also provide frequent peeks into the world of rural education after the turn of the century. Read this, from the Jan. 27, 1914, letter to see if anything seems different than today’s school experience (I’ll not pass judgment one way or the other, since I took a good whacking myself a time or two in Wyoming schools before corporal punishment was outlawed). She explains three of her male students have been misbehaving badly:
“I had the Board come down today and straighten them out. I’m to take them for a week on trial if they ask my forgiveness. It was a pretty serious offense, so if it is repeated, I’m to send them home and not let them come back. Harold Kirkpatrick was one of the boys. His father went out and got a switch and whipped him awfully hard before me and the rest of the Board. Then he made Harold tell me he was sorry and ask my forgiveness. It was more than I could stand. I squalled, of course. Mr. Hartman told me he was surprised to think it would affect me like that to see a youngster whipped. I never could whip one like that, I know.”
Does anyone know whether she stuck by that after she had her own children? I know Grandpa called for the children to “go cut a switch” when they misbehaved, but did Grandma?
In the Jan. 28 letter, she also speaks of being used as a pawn in someone else’s girlfriend-shopping. She speaks of going to a dance with Wayne, but:
“He wouldn’t have taken me only he knows his girl was coming up from Basin with another fellow and he wanted to get even. If I had known I wouldn’t have done it. He treats her shabby enough anyway, without me helping him out. I used to like him [Wayne], but he’s too badly stuck on Wayne now to suit me.”
Like I said, I really enjoy her wit and sarcasm. She doesn’t spare anyone she doesn’t care for, as in her Feb. 3 letter, when she allows that not only does she not care for a young man named Albert Welch, but that:
“I hate the Welch’s [sic] anyway, … and I wouldn’t think of going with such a thing as he is. You try to make me think, sometimes, that you are a bad boy, but if you were like Albert, I’d believe it and I don’t think I’d like you any better than I do him. As it is, I think you are a pretty good boy.”
A good example of this is in her first letter of 1914. On Jan. 5, she wrote of being invited to supper at Otto’s hotel (for those of you who know Otto, it makes the mind fairly spin to imagine a day when it could support a hotel, of any size) by her friend Ruth, who was spending time with quasi-boyfriend Wayne:
“They ate supper at the hotel at Mr. Daley’s expense. He is a friend of Ruth’s from Hyattville. I think she wanted me to go over so she wouldn’t have to entertain both of them. I don’t know which one she would have turned over to me.”
She skewers them all pretty well there, but does it all so politely that you almost overlook it.
Her mood could turn from sarcastic to downright depressed, though. In the same letter, she writes of her mother literally worrying herself sick over Ira, Mary’s brother. Her mother suspects he may be going “drinking” after basketball practice, and she gets so worked up she has to be medicated. She doesn’t hold much back when she describes her feelings to Grandpa:
“I surely will be glad when she is well again. I can hardly stand to stay down here when she is sick. It worries me awfully. It is bad enough to have to stay here when everything is all right at home. I get pretty ‘miserable’ at time[s]. Something like I was for a while last summer at Thermopolis.”
Reading that kind of wakes you up, doesn’t it? She must have battled the “blues” or worse while working the summer in Thermopolis (Ther-MOP, as everyone in Wyoming refers to it). It’s the not knowing that makes such lines in these letters to intriguing but frustrating, too.
In the Jan. 20, 1914, letter, she speaks of her culinary talents, or lack thereof:
“If you can’t read this, I’ll interpret it when I come home again. I was frying doughnuts tonight and burned three of my fingers. Consequently, I can’t handle my pen quite as well as usual. I made doughnuts enough to last a week. If you get hungry, I’ll send you a few by parcel post. I’m afraid you wouldn’t want me to send very many, though. They aren’t the ‘kind that mother makes,’ you know, and they might be hard on your digestive apparatus.”
Grandma’s letters also provide frequent peeks into the world of rural education after the turn of the century. Read this, from the Jan. 27, 1914, letter to see if anything seems different than today’s school experience (I’ll not pass judgment one way or the other, since I took a good whacking myself a time or two in Wyoming schools before corporal punishment was outlawed). She explains three of her male students have been misbehaving badly:
“I had the Board come down today and straighten them out. I’m to take them for a week on trial if they ask my forgiveness. It was a pretty serious offense, so if it is repeated, I’m to send them home and not let them come back. Harold Kirkpatrick was one of the boys. His father went out and got a switch and whipped him awfully hard before me and the rest of the Board. Then he made Harold tell me he was sorry and ask my forgiveness. It was more than I could stand. I squalled, of course. Mr. Hartman told me he was surprised to think it would affect me like that to see a youngster whipped. I never could whip one like that, I know.”
Does anyone know whether she stuck by that after she had her own children? I know Grandpa called for the children to “go cut a switch” when they misbehaved, but did Grandma?
In the Jan. 28 letter, she also speaks of being used as a pawn in someone else’s girlfriend-shopping. She speaks of going to a dance with Wayne, but:
“He wouldn’t have taken me only he knows his girl was coming up from Basin with another fellow and he wanted to get even. If I had known I wouldn’t have done it. He treats her shabby enough anyway, without me helping him out. I used to like him [Wayne], but he’s too badly stuck on Wayne now to suit me.”
Like I said, I really enjoy her wit and sarcasm. She doesn’t spare anyone she doesn’t care for, as in her Feb. 3 letter, when she allows that not only does she not care for a young man named Albert Welch, but that:
“I hate the Welch’s [sic] anyway, … and I wouldn’t think of going with such a thing as he is. You try to make me think, sometimes, that you are a bad boy, but if you were like Albert, I’d believe it and I don’t think I’d like you any better than I do him. As it is, I think you are a pretty good boy.”
We have to remember, too, that she’s 22 years old as she’s writing these letters. Dave is, if I have my math correct, about 30. That puts some of her comments into perspective.
In the Feb. 18 letter, as in others, she describes what novels she’s been reading. She likes the writer Gene Stratton Porter, and recommends both the books “The Harvester” and “At the Foot of the Rainbow.” I haven’t Googled those titles or the author, so is anyone out there familiar with those titles or the author? She says “At the Foot of the Rainbow” that the “hero is a Scotchman and he’s all right. I like Scotchmen, anyway.” As well she should with a name like McIntosh and a beau named Henderson.
And now, an answer to an earlier question: Did Mary ever whip the kids? In the Feb. 23 letter, she writes:
“My kids were pretty unruly this afternoon until I whipped two of my boys. Then they straightened up some. I hated to do it but I had to. Ruth thinks it’s foolish to use a switch, but I felt much better after I had used it, so I guess it helped some.”
Finally, some honesty about the whipping! “I felt much better after I had used it.” Wow.
In the Feb. 18 letter, as in others, she describes what novels she’s been reading. She likes the writer Gene Stratton Porter, and recommends both the books “The Harvester” and “At the Foot of the Rainbow.” I haven’t Googled those titles or the author, so is anyone out there familiar with those titles or the author? She says “At the Foot of the Rainbow” that the “hero is a Scotchman and he’s all right. I like Scotchmen, anyway.” As well she should with a name like McIntosh and a beau named Henderson.
And now, an answer to an earlier question: Did Mary ever whip the kids? In the Feb. 23 letter, she writes:
“My kids were pretty unruly this afternoon until I whipped two of my boys. Then they straightened up some. I hated to do it but I had to. Ruth thinks it’s foolish to use a switch, but I felt much better after I had used it, so I guess it helped some.”
Finally, some honesty about the whipping! “I felt much better after I had used it.” Wow.
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