Medora’s Diary
… Papa came home from the Bend with a useful present such as heavy shoes for each one. I wrapped Xmas presents while Mama strung corn for the church. Oysterville certainly is excited over this church Christmas affair – tree and program… We had wild goose for dinner. I do love Christmas.
So often it takes just one word or phrase to put me in mind of a time long past. It’s almost like getting a waft of a certain fragrance that brings forth long-forgotten people or places. In this excerpt from my Aunt Medora’s diary, it’s her reference to “the Bend.” I wonder how many folks on our Peninsula remember that as the common reference to South Bend, just as “the Park” is what my grandparents’ generation always called Ocean Park.
Medora 1915
Neither of those references was ever mysterious to me. They made perfect sense. What did seem strange was my grandfather’s continuing reference to “Sealand” rather than to “Nahcotta.” It had been back in 1889 that transportation magnate Lewis Loomis chose John Peter Paul’s newly platted town of Nahcotta as the terminus for his narrow gauge railroad. The rival town of Sealand, just across the tracks, became superfluous right then and there. My grandfather was 13.
Why he and the rest of his generation continued to refer to the town as “Sealand” I’ve never understood. I wish I’d been smart enough to ask him. I did ask my mother once and she just said something like “old habits die hard, I guess.” But Papa lived to the ‘ripe old age’ of 82. Thirteen years of Sealand versus sixty-nine years of Nahcotta? I’m not buying the ‘habit’ theory.
Papa and Aunt Dora — Sassy Twosome, 1896
Another thing about Papa and his siblings – their spoken English was not always grammatically correct, at least not according to the standards to which I was held by parents and teachers, alike. Papa, as well my great aunts and uncles, often used ‘don’t’ when they should have used ‘doesn’t’ (as in “That don’t really matter) – yet they were all college educated and their own mother had been a school teacher. I think in certain instances they even used the word ‘ain’t’ which was almost a wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap offence in my childhood.
I think of all of those expressions and grammatical peculiarities as ‘Pioneer Oysterville Colloquialisms’ under the more general heading of ‘Quaint.’ I wonder (no, make that shudder to think) what folks will file in that category a hundred years hence?
I loved “Accidental Tourist” when a lady was told that a man thought her family was quaint. She responded: “Quaint? We’re not quaint. We’re the most normal people I know.”