Archive for the ‘“Dear Medora”’ Category

100 Years Ago on This Date…

Saturday, November 22nd, 2014
The Espy Children in 1913 - Dale, age 2; Willard, 3; Edwin, 5; Mona 9; Sue, 10; Medora, 14.

The Espy Children in 1913 – Dale, age 2; Willard, 3; Edwin, 5; Mona 9; Sue, 10; Medora, 14.

November 22, 1914 was a Sunday and in this household in Oysterville the H.A. Espy family was looking forward to Thanksgiving. Medora, the oldest (she was 15), would soon be back from Portland Academy for the holiday – her first visit home since leaving for school in September. She was bringing her ‘chum’ Rosetta Klocker whose nickname was “Bunch.”

Sunday, November 22, 1914
My dear Medora,
Will you please bring two heads of celery and two of lettuce sure. I must have these for Thanksgiving dinner.
Those bottoms came, and no wonder you sent only three! They look a little better than the lids of the kettles which we have been using for some time, so probably we should be thankful.
            The wind howls! Which reminds me that the chimney of the fireplace burned out this morning. The roar was enough to scare anyone. Papa was at South Bend so the neighbors came to my assistance. I would like to know what ails our old chimneys. Other people’s chimneys are not forever catching fire.
            Things are not in good shape here at home and I don’t know what Rosetta will think.
The days will drag until you get here
Devotedly,       Mama
Enclosed find money order.

The discussion about “bottoms” had begun ten days previously when Mama wrote:

            Papa wants you please to get immediately five of those brown chair bottoms to put in our dining room. Ours are disgraceful. Look at the “ten cent store” or furniture houses or department stores.   Any place but please send immediately. Am rushing for the mail. Will enclose money for bottoms.

            In a follow-up note on November 18th, Mama wrote with annoyance:

My dear Medora,
Papa is getting out of patience about the chair bottoms.
I sent money and wanted seats immediately. Please mail at once. Those chairs are a disgrace.
                                                                        Much love in haste, Mama

            Crossing in the mail was Medora’s letter to Mama, also written on Sunday, November 22nd:

Medora, 1914

Medora, 1914

Sunday, November 22, 1914
Dearest Mother
I am going out to Aunt Dora’s on the 1:55 electric. I shall go right from S.S. I am going to wear my suit. I have so much studying to do that I hate to go
I had a real good time Friday night. Carl came up for me about eight and we walked down to Helen Morgan’s. We played 500; no prizes were rewarded. Mrs. Morgan is a charming hostess. Lemonade and candy were served during the evening and about half past ten we had ice cream and delicious cake. Carl brought me home about eleven. He is a real nice boy but so bright in school that he scares
me. Imagine he is trying for the Rhodes scholarship and only about three people out of the whole state ever get that…
I went to Ruth Connell’s informal tea. All the girls of the Black Cat Club were there. I saw a good deal of Pete, Marge’s youngest sister. Her real name is Anna May. Harry Clair goes with her all the time since he came back from the beach. She is perfectly dear and I don’t blame him.
I don’t know how we are ever going to accomplish all I want to do Thanksgiving vacation but I think we will finish it all for Bunch won’t need any entertaining. As long as she can eat cream and play with the babies she will be satisfied.
Miss C. is ready for church so I must hurry.
Lots of love,                Medora

One Hundred Years Plus One Ago

Friday, September 19th, 2014

 

Medora, circa 1913

Medora, circa 1913

On September 19, 1913 my grandmother wrote to her oldest daughter, Medora, who had just left home in Oysterville to begin her sophomore year at Portland Academy. The letter began:  There is nothing new…

I feel I could begin a letter with the same four words on this morning 101 years later. Some days seem that way.

My grandmother goes on to say: I put up more pears yesterday; also, a box of peaches pickling the latter as I do the pears.

Well, I must say that I am not nearly so ambitious. Our pears (same pear tree) are probably ripe – or as ‘ripe’ as they ever get. They are always hard as rocks and are only good for making pickled pears (a family favorite) or for canning. Even the birds don’t give them more than a peck. And for years, we’ve had to wait for the first real windstorm of the season to ‘pick’ them –off the ground that is. The tree is probably forty feet high – maybe even sixty – now, and the pears are way, way out of reach.

Our Pear Tree

Our Pear Tree

The tree is  totally entwined with honeysuckle (which is still blooming way up near the top.) There are also holly and salmonberry and ivy entwined on the ‘lower story’ and all manner of birds (and probably other critters) take refuge in its midst. Every year I expect it to blow down but I’m beginning to think it will outlast me.

And, for the record, here is my grandmother’s pickled pear recipe:

Peel and core 3# pears
Boil 1½ Q water; put pears in water. Cook until tender.
Add bouquet garni of 6 cinnamon sticks, 2 T cloves, 2 t whole ginger.
Add 2 C sugar.
Cook 5 min
Add 1 C white vinegar. Simmer 3 min.
Discard bouquet garni
Pack in jars; cover with syrup and seal.

‘the hole outline of the beast’

Friday, September 5th, 2014
New Zealand Lamb

New Zealand Lamb

Yesterday, when we did the periodic, somewhat obligatory, shopping at CostCo (and yes we were held up for an hour or so getting back to the bridge because of that roll-over accident), we noticed that there was a freezer case full of lamb. Whole lambs from New Zealand. Whole lambs wrapped in some sort of white shroud and, as Nyel said, “stiff as a board.” It was eerie,

It was a little beyond eerie as far as I was concerned. I have just finished reading The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) and if you have read the book, you know what I mean. Even though we are lamb fans, we weren’t tempted, mostly because we don’t have freezer space at home. And, because it was eerie.

Medora

Medora

Somehow, it put me in mind of the letter that my mother’s sister Medora wrote to my grandmother on November 6, 1908. Mama was in Portland awaiting the birth of Edwin and Medora, as the oldest of the three girls at home, took on the responsibility of writing periodically to keep her mother apprised of what was going on in Oysterville.

This particular letter is full of news about school – Geog is a awful test. Arith is pretty easy and so is spelling but Lang is hard. I reseived (I can’t spell that word.) 95 in spelling – about the relatives –          I forgot to tell you that Aunt Kate is going to make are butter for us. I haven’t tasted any butter since you left – and about the weather – Its so windy here and rainy I thought I’d be blown away when I went to Aunt Kates for Mrs. M. .The plaster in my new bed room is all coming off by the rain.

Drawing by Medora, 1908

Drawing by Medora, 1908

Medora also reported on Papa’s activities: Papa has killed three calves sinse you left. He bought down heads, tail, liver, tongue, and all the rest of the stuff except the hole outline of the beast. That phrase, “the whole outline of the beast” has stuck with me since I first ran across the letter some forty years ago. I sort of know what she means but not exactly.

Like so many of those ‘out of the mouths of babes’ expressions, it gives a little window into the way a child thinks and perceives the world. But, in this case, the window must be a little smudgy. I can’t quite understand what Medora meant. Nor am I sure why that phrase popped into my head as I was peering through the freezer door at CostCo yesterday. It was eerie.

Happy Birthday, Dear Medora!

Friday, January 3rd, 2014
Medora 1916

Medora, 1916

My Aunt Medora died on January 19. 1916 – just thirteen days after her seventeenth birthday.  It’s hard for me to realize that today marks the 115th anniversary of her birth.

Like all those who die before their time, she will forever remain young.  I can’t help wondering, though, what sort of adult she would have become.  Would she have married?  Would she have had a flock of children – cousins, somewhat older than I, for me to admire and look up to?  Would she have been a doting aunt as was her younger sister Mona, the only one of my mother’s two sisters still alive when I was born?

In her letters and diaries, Medora spoke often of her hopes and dreams for the future.  An August entry in her 1914 diary:

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Medora, 1914

 No, Dorothy and I haven’t quarreled, but I realize at last that she is not immoral but unmoral.  I have half worshipped her all year but now, well, now I just don’t.  I still love her, but she is no longer my ideal.  I want to be good – no strong, for I know we are in the world for some purpose.  Why not make the best of my opportunities.  Each individual counts; even I count.  I am looking forward to a home and children.  Therefore I must educate myself to the best of my ability.  My education will be valuable to my posterity.  A girl is not useless; I am glad I am a woman.  I don’t want to be married till I am twenty-five but oh! I will certainly adopt two youngsters if I am an old maid.  These poor little motherless tots and then hundreds of old maids worrying and fussing because they have been cheated out of so much.  Absurd!  I don’t want to become famous, but I want to help my children to become honorable and useful citizens.  So as they will inherit my traits, anything I don’t want my posterity to think, do, or say, I must overcome first.  It is wonderful that I have it in me to help the world, to make it a little better.  If I had continued to do everything with what will Dorothy say always in mind, I should have become worldly.  This next year I am planning to study.  Mother and Father will be so pleased if I really work hard.  I shall not give up all social duties, but some.  I want to attend church regularly, for though I believe in being broad-minded, we must serve our God faithfully on the day that He put aside for that purpose.  I think Holland Huston, Ruth Connell and Mama are the ones who are stimulating my present views….

The following year, on October 13, 1915, she wrote again about her future but, this time, in a letter to her mother who was suffering some ongoing health problems:   I firmly believe we are put in the world for some purpose and you have been faithful to yours and I shall live mine in single blessedness while I am making you and Papa comfortable. I’m sure I had no such thoughts when I was sweet sixteen.

Dear Medora CMYKOn her final birthday, January 3, 1916, she wrote:  My seventeenth birthday.  Why I am really becoming a young lady!  I shall live this year cheerfully without any sentimental attachment awaiting my prince, and preparing for him.  If in all the long years he never comes, I have lots to do for others.

As it is, Medora will always remain ‘barely seventeen.’  I dearly wish she had lived a long life – long enough for me to know her in person.  She’s been an inspiration, even so.  Happy Birthday, Dear Medora!

100 Years Ago Today in Oysterville

Wednesday, October 9th, 2013

This letter was written by my grandmother to her fourteen-year-old daughter who was away at boarding school in Portland:

Mama 1913

Mama c. 1913

                                                                                    Thursday Evening, October 9, 1913
My dear Medora,

It is an awful day.  The bay is lashing in foam and the wind howls and there is all winter ahead of us. It is wintry enough now so that we keep a fire in the bedroom all of the time and in the fireplace a part of every day.

 I was glad to get your explanatory letter regarding P.A. and am glad you are satisfied…

About your dancing, couldn’t you manage to save four dollars.  I simply can not ask Papa for that much just now when he is so worried. There have been some unforeseen things occur that make money even in small amounts unobtainable.  The bank has called for a payment of a certain note that Papa had not expected to meet so soon and he is distracted.  This is confidential.  Don’t say a word to the Ruths or any one else.  Can’t you save on your laundry?  Do your own stockings, bloomers, handkerchiefs etc. and an occasional slip put into Ruth’s wash.  Tell her what you are trying to do and she would gladly help you.  Then when you have the money saved, pay it down in advance for your lessons.  Where is it you get these eight lessons for four dollars?

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Medora c 1914

I am reading “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come” and tho it is fine, I think it most too sad to be enjoyable.

My leg has been so “gimp” that I have had to sit down off and on through the day, so am doing more reading than usual – so far have read just essays and famous authors, which I greatly enjoy.  Yesterday picked up “The Little Shepherd” and am in it now.  Did you read “On Christmas Eve” by the same author?

I have ordered ingredients for chili sauce to put up next week. It is going to be a task, but we all enjoy it so much that it is worthwhile.   The pears are all gone.  I have three crocks of pickles…     I made my first doughnuts yesterday and they turned out fairly well for a first attempt.

It is nearly ten o’clock and I want to get up reasonably early to do some needed cleaning tomorrow.  The kitchen floor will have to be gone at with a hoe.

Take good care of your dear self.  I wish you were here for a good night kiss.

                                                            Lovingly,  Mama

They flat out didn’t get it!

Monday, September 30th, 2013
The Book

The Book

Doncha just hate it when you read a book and then see the movie and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong!  Like what was the director thinking, anyway?

Case in point, we finally saw “One for the Money” the other night.  What a total bust.  Hadn’t ANYONE connected with that production read any of Janet Evonovich’s Stephanie Plumb series?

Re-issue Based on the Movie

Re-issue Based on the Movie

I love Stephanie Plumb.  She is quirky, outrageous and above all funny.  So is the cast of supporting characters – at least in the book.  Next to Stephanie, Grandma Mazur is probably my second favorite and there is no way that Debbie Reynolds comes close.  Too put together, too young, too not a grandmotherly type.  And don’t get me started on Morelli or Ranger!  Or Lula.

Dear Medora CMYK

Dear Medora

Once again, I vowed that if I ever get a movie offer (yeah, like that’s going to happen), no matter for how much money, I will turn it down flat.  It does occur to me, however, that in the case of Dear Medora (which I think would make a lovely film), my contract with the publisher might give them final say, not me.  Oh well.  I’m not likely to lose sleep over that remote eventuality!

But back to the situation at hand.  Another book series that has been translated into film – in this case a TV series – is Craig Johnson’s Longmire.  We have thoroughly enjoyed those books but when we heard the author talk about the casting for the TV version our enthusiasm waned a bit.  Johnson was speaking at a book signing in Portland just before the series aired last year, and we never have been able to wrap our head around his rationalization for Lou Diamond Phillips playing the part of Henry Standing Bear, also known as The Cheyenne Nation.  No way.

To_Kill_a_Mockingbird

The Book

The only film version of any book that I think really worked was “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.  After all, what wasn’t to believe about Gregory Peck as Atticus?  Maybe all those books by Jane Austen also worked in their film versions.  I’m not really sure.  I never could get through the books – BORING! – but I did love seeing them come to life on the screen.  I’m a sucker for period pieces…

But back to “One for the Money.”  Bottom line, the Stephanie Plumb books are laugh-out-loud funny.  I can’t imagine why Director Julie Ann Robinson didn’t get that.  When I Googled the film just now, I was somewhat gratified to read:  The film was universally panned by critics and flopped at the box office, not even recouping its $40 million budget (which does not include marketing costs.)

And as for Longmire – the first two episodes are now at the top of our Netflix queue.  Stay tuned…

June Thoughts

Thursday, June 6th, 2013

Medora 1916 The issue of the Chinook Observer just out is one I look forward to every year.  It’s the one that shows all the local high school graduation photographs.  This year, for the first time, there were none of “my kids” pictured; the first graders of my retirement year graduated last year.  (How could that be?  What happened to all those Junes since 2001?)

Even so, there are familiar faces – “kids” I’ve known in the community, sons and daughters of friends, young men and women whose Senior Project presentations I judged not so many days ago.  Some of these young people are already beginning to take their places in the work force of the community.

Medora in Portland circa 1915Inexplicably, when I think of past Junes, my thoughts fly swiftly past my son Charlie’s graduation.  Nor do I linger upon my own grand exit from high school.  Instead, it’s a diary entry written almost a hundred years ago by my Aunt Medora that comes to mind:

June 6, 1915
… Oh I had such a wonderful time last night.  Why?  Oh can’t you guess?  Two
dances with Alec and he wanted to take me for a ride during the 5th and 6th dances.  I certainly had the most wonderful evening.  I am so glad I gave Harry Stevens a bid for the prom or I wouldn’t have gone to this wonderful dance.  I can hardly realize that I, an Oystervillian, am considered by the newspapers a subdebutante.

Medora Espy was ‘sweet sixteen’ and a junior at Portland Academy when she wrote these buoyant words.  Although she was already giving some thought to her future (perhaps a librarian or a teacher…), the thought of graduation was still a hazy one.  And, as it turned out, she didn’t live to see that landmark day arrive.

Still, through that diary entry, Medora’s words seem to forever capture the wonder, the anticipation, the excitement of being on the cusp of adulthood.  (Did we all enjoy that time of our lives enough?  Do our current graduates even have a glimmer?)  Meanwhile… Congratulations, graduates, and may all your Junes be filled with promise and anticipation!

Is it ever too late to eat crow?

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Book Cover for Dear MedoraThe other day Nyel came home from Physical Therapy with the news that there is another writer ‘out there’ named Sydney Stevens who lives in either California or somewhere on the East Coast.  A friend of Victoria’s (the Queen of PT on the Long Beach Peninsula) is reading a book by her (or possibly, him).

So, I Googled Sydney (and Sidney) Stevens (and Stephens) in various combinations, but didn’t come up with the right (write) person.  There are several of us who share this name and who surface when Googled – among them a singer from Los Angeles, a physician from Palm Desert – but no other writer that I could find.

However, I did find several sites about myself that weren’t on the web the last time I checked.  (If you’ve never Googled yourself, it’s an interesting experience.  It’s a little bit like listening to gossip about yourself; sometimes you’d like to correct ‘the record’ but you realize the futility of such an endeavor.)  Most interesting was a review of my 2007 book, Dear Medora on a site called “Book This” which bills itself as “Assisting Northwest authors, book stores, libraries and book clubs to promote and interact with people who love to read.”

The review was fabulous – the best I’ve ever seen!  It was posted on March 4th of this year purports to have come from Coast Weekend.  If it’s the freebie insert Coast Weekend that comes with every week’s Chinook Observer, I certainly missed the review the first time around.  In any case, I commend it to my readers and fans.  It can be found at:  http://bookthis.eomediagroup.org/2013/03/04/book-reivew-oysterville-author-resurrects-a-slice-of-local-history/

Medora in Portland circa 1915The part of the review that especially caught my eye was the next-to-last sentence of the final paragraph:  Ask the author and she will speak to that strange relationship that often skips the natural arbitration of time to bind distant people together.  Certainly this is the case for Stevens.  She is more than a caretaker of family memorabilia.  She has brought back beloved Medora.  Getting to know the young lady is the greatest strength of the book.  Stevens has brought us home to a goodness so often lost or overlooked in the current charge of modernism.  This book is a must for teenagers.  For the rest of us, it is a joyful rendezvous with our pioneer ancestors,

It is the “teenagers” comment that strikes a resounding chord for me.  When WSU Press was planning their initial marketing strategy for Dear Medora, they suggested that it should be presented as a book for Teens or Young Adults.  I adamantly (and, in retrospect, no doubt wrongly) insisted that it be marketed for the general reading public.

Dear Medora has been anything but a run-away best seller.  I wonder if things might have been different if I hadn’t been so headstrong.  And is it way too late to be eating crow?

Dreams, Choices, Bottom Lines

Friday, April 19th, 2013

1975, Nov. 24, Publicity Shot for Words at PlayYesterday’s mail brought the unwelcome news that my book about Willard Espy “in its current form is not one that fits the current WSU Press publishing goals.”  The letter, while disappointing in the extreme, contained good news as well as bad.  Or at least it seemed so to me.

Editor Robert Clark went on to say, “What you have given us is a charming, personal history of the Espy family and the town of Oysterville, with Willard at the center of the story.”  YES!  I’m so glad they ‘got’ that!  That was the point of the book.

In fact, Mr. Clark’s description is a very succinct version of what I, myself, had written in my initial proposal to WSU Press:  “Espy’s Own: Willard of Oysterville” is part biography, part memoir, part recollection and part historical narrative.  It is the story of author Willard Richardson Espy’s relationship to Oysterville, the tiny southwest Washington village where he grew up in the early decades of the twentieth century and where he was to spend many of the most important intervals of his next 88 years.

Book Cover for Dear MedoraMy intent (and the main reason for submitting the book to this particular publisher) was to write Willard’s biography in such a way that it would become a companion piece to Dear Medora:  Child of Oysterville’s Forgotten Years.  That book was published by WSU Press in 2007.  Unfortunately, it has sold sparingly; it hasn’t flown off the shelves.  It is definitely a “niche book” and, no doubt, was an unusual choice for an academic press.  Perhaps the fact that they had a different editor then had bearing on that decision.

According to reviewers, the charm of Dear Medora is its personal touch.  It gives readers an insider’s view of the Espy family and of Oysterville in the early twentieth century.  Ironically, this was at the heart of Mr. Clark’s objection to the manuscript about Willard:  “These personal memories, combined with family stories and excerpts from family correspondence, have a rather narrow focus, and no doubt would be of most interest to family and friends.”

He goes on to suggest that I consider rewriting the book along the lines of a “more traditional biography” or, barring that choice, to look at the possibility of self-publishing.  Or, as a third alternative, he says, WSU could serve as a “book packager” providing “editing, design, layout, and production services, and deliver to you any number of books you wish to distribute.”

Of course, the bottom line is money.  If Dear Medora had made more money for them… If marketing and distribution weren’t so spendy… If I had the financial ability to self-publish a book with the look and feel I envision… Or, I could bite the bullet and rewrite.

Perhaps my thoughts will clarify as my disappointment dissipates…

Instead of stewing, I should’ve known…

Sunday, April 14th, 2013

Award Ceremony Yesterday I had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at an awards ceremony honoring twenty-six students from our two local school districts – Ocean Beach and Naselle-Grays River Valley.  The event is an annual one sponsored by the Masons.  The students, two from each fourth through eighth grade class in our area, were chosen by their teachers and principals for consistently demonstrating “Excellence in Citizenship.”

I was the speaker by default.  The gentleman who called me a month or so ago said that their first choice had cancelled for health reasons and since “everybody” knows me (YIKES!) would I please agree.  I demurred and refused but he was persuasive.  “Just talk for five or ten minutes about citizenship…”

Citizenship?  For nine to thirteen-year-olds?  I stewed about what to say every single day for a month.  I talked to some teacher friends to get their ideas.  I researched student citizenship on the internet.  I talked to some of the teachers who had actually selected the award winners and asked what criteria they used.

It wasn’t until Friday morning – the very day before the event – that I realized that I had the perfect message for those kids and for their parents and grandparents and friends.  I even had a little ‘show and tell.’

All my research and everyone I spoke with had used the term “role model.”  One of the characteristics and responsibilities of good citizen students is that they are role models for their peers, everyone said.  In one of those ‘aha!’ moments, I realized that when I was twelve I, too, had a role model.  She was my mother’s oldest sister, an aunt that I had never met.  But when I discovered her diary (written in 1914 when she was 15), Medora changed the course of my life forever.

Book Cover for Dear MedoraSo I talked a bit about Medora – the kind of girl she was.  And I talked about how she influenced me, not just in my behavior, but in very concrete ways.  She had wanted to go to Stanford and to become a teacher.  She never had the opportunity to carry out those dreams but, though I didn’t consciously connect my choices to Medora, it was I who went to Stanford and it was I who became the teacher.

And, of course, I eventually wrote Dear Medora, Child of Oysterville’s Forgotten Years.  I had the book with me and read an excerpt from that first diary I had found when I was twelve.  “And so,” I told those twenty-six good citizens, “you never know how you will end up influencing others or making a difference…”

One of the teachers emailed me last night that my message was “spot on!”  I thought so, too, and was once again reminded to write and speak about what I know best.  Apparently it’s a lesson I have to relearn periodically.