It Didn't Start with Me

This slideshow has pictures from all four of my family branches. My story
started with some very strong people!

Art's Art

On June 19th, Emily, Brittany and I traveled to Lucas, Kansas to visit the Grassroots Art Center. We were there to attend the open house for a new exhibit on display in their museum. A display of my Grandpa Johnson's metal replica's of buildings he made in his later years. Arthur Theodore Johnson (Art) died back in 1986 but you can find his buildings all over Kansas.

Grandpa, the artist, fit right in with the others that have their work displayed in this gallery. Most of them were self taught artists who developed a passion for a specific medium and began creating the majority of their work after they retired. Grandpa fits this description but his creative work began many years before he retired.

For as long as I can remember, Grandpa has loved creating things. He was a farmer with a Swedish accent and a lot of ideas rolling around in his head. I recently learned from my dad that Grandpa would begin work before sunrise on their farm outside McPherson and, many times, when his sons had finished their chores and were ready for farm work, he would find a reason to go to his metal shop or wherever he was working on his latest project, and work for a while there. He couldn't resist the call to create. It was important enough to take up valuable daylight. I understand this and so, have developed an even stronger connection with him.

Besides farming, Grandpa was an inventor. I learned much later that at least one of his inventions, a handheld machine that would pick up grain from the ground and deposit it in a truck, was produced and marketed. Grandma and Grandpa's old crank telephone hangs on my wall. The insides have been gone a long time. I wonder what project they ended up in. He definitely was ahead of the times with the whole reuse recyle, reduce idea. That's all pretty cool but not what I remember him for.

When I was young, I was never wanting for original play equipment. My swing set was the tallest any of my friends had ever seen. The only ones as tall were on the school playground and Riverside Park. It was made entirely out of recycled parts from farm machinery carefully fitted and welded together to form a strong frame. The swings had long chains that made me feel like my feet could touch the clouds and we sat on tractor seats to ride the glider. The merry-go-round in my backyard spun over a huge tractor tire.

That was all really neat but not even close to the coolest thing he made us. When we went to the farm, we were sure to find something new to entertain us.

One of our favorites was a gas powered car. The body was metal, of course, and it had a seat and steering wheel. This is me in one of his earliest cars. It was a lot of fun to drive around the farmyard. At least once a year we would arrive to find that our car had been updated. Sometimes it had two doors and other times four. I remember when it had been transformed into a four seater, painted green and sporting a hood ornament. Then more of us cousins and siblings could ride.

I think I believed all grandpas made things like this for their grandchildren. It was later when I realized that this had been a very special "grandchildhood." Not every grandpa made cars or rowing machines with a (you guessed it!) tractor seat. The homemade camper, complete with bunks was my favorite place to sleep when I spent time there during the summer. Didn't every grandpa make one of these? My sisters, cousins and I were allowed to use the equipment in his metal shop. We learned to use his riveter to make swords out of scrap metal. The only rule was to leave everything the way we found it. Now that was trust!

Well, most grandpas do finally retire and their interests adjust to a new lifestyle. That is when grandpa started crafting buildings out of metal. He worked from memory and pictures creating two or three hundred little metal buildings in his basement workshop in a little house in McPherson. People would bring him pictures of the sides of their favorite building or house and he would recreate it on a smaller scale. At Christmas all of the kids might open a present and find a very small church or windmill. That workshop was always open to us also.

I am fortunate to have acquired several of his buildings over the years. They are some of my favorite things and have a special place on my mantel and in my heart. Several Kansas museums display one or two, also. Looking at them brings a flood of memories of my Grandpa Johnson.

Portal to the past

My mother-in-law, Helen, handed me an old canning jar during one of our trips to pick up more stuff for a garage sale we are preparing for. She said I might be able to sell it. Emily, standing on my other side, said, "Mom, that would look good in your kitchen". She knows me very well! It's now sitting in my kitchen window with it's glass lid clamped down tight and proudly displaying it's logo, "Ball". According to the Internet, it was made in the early 1930's.

I like how it looks, but even more, I like how it makes me feel when I look at it. This jar would have been in kitchens when my mom was a little girl. She would have watched and helped my grandmother and her sisters can all sorts of things in jars like this one.

I look at it and immediately smell dill or vinegar or tangy apple or sweet preserves. I see sunny windows in Aunt Ella's farm kitchen near Kingman, Kansas. This is the same kitchen my grandmother helped her mother in when she was growing up and my mom visited and cooked in during her childhood. Embroidered dishtowels hold clean jars ready for some yummy food that is being prepared by skilled hands. Steam is rolling above tall, well used pots on Aunt Ella's gas stove. There is talk and laughter as sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, daughters, cousins and granddaughters all find a way to be a part of the process of preserving fresh food and fond memories.

Without all of the sensory input of those days, the memory might be buried deep in my mind forever. There is no chance of that happening, considering the activity of the day.

One small object, like my canning jar, opens a portal into my past that allows me to experience again the love and rich heritage I share with so many special people.

New technology

I'm trying out some new technology on my iPhone. I hope it works!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I sat down with 2nd cousin Glenna and her mom, Donna Mae, last night to put names on some pictures I had come across a while back. Donna Mae hurt both of her ankles last week and is sitting in a wheelchair while she heals. I know its wrong to take advantage of a situation but right now she can't run away very easy so I had her captive for a few hours. Very mean, I know, but necessary! Actually, the 3 of us had a great time looking, guessing, arguing and writing the names of people in pictures that are only 15 or 20 years old.

Even pictures that new, relatively speaking, proved to be a challenge. If I am studying a picture that is 80 years old, imagine the difficulty! Take the picture above. At one time it was so newly taken that anyone in the family would have known exactly who everyone was. How silly to write names on a picture like that! Now it is a very difficult task. Never write something like "Grandma and me" on a picture. In 80 years, your decedents will not have any idea who that refers to and it will become one of the mysterious pictures that gets set aside as unidentifiable. Do you see where it says "Great Grandmother Warnken"? This would be okay if we knew who labeled the picture but there is no clue as to the writer. I'm lucky that Henry is in the picture which would be "Great Grandfather Warnken", so this must be my Great Grand Aunt Sophia. Henry is my Great Great Grandfather but his first wife, Wilhelmina was my Great Great Grandmother. This is Henry's 2nd family after his first wife died and he had remarried her sister. This is where names REALLY help!

Still, it's a lot of fun trying to solve these mysteries.

Treasure Hunting

For almost a year now, I have had two large boxes of old color slides sitting in my livingroom from my last trip to visit my dad. Along with the slides came a slide viewing table and a slide projector. One of my scanners has a place to put slides but I haven't been very impressed with the quality. The process of trying to search through these slides in the midst of my schedule plus the cumbersome setup required just to look at the slides, let alone save them to my computer seemed too much. My eyes are not good enough to use the light table anymore and setting up the projector and then transfering the one or two slides I want out of the tray and into my computer was too complicated! It was definitely like hunting buried treasure!

For Christmas this year, Emily and Dave got me a slide converter that quickly puts the slides on my computer for viewing and saving. All I have to do is put the slides in the tray and slide it into the little machine that is already hooked to my computer. The slide pops up in live view so I can quickly decide if I want it or not. If I don't, I slide to the next one and if I do, I save it with one click. In the last week I have had to fight off the urge to sit down and open "just one more" tray of slides many times a day. Here is one of my favorites, so far.

My grandmother, Frances Dibbens and Vera Johnson, my mother

This picture was taken on the Royal Gorge Bridge near Canon City, Colorado about 1952. The reason I like it so much is that it seems so natural and lets me imagine them stepping out of the car on a chilly day to walk along the same bridge I have explored a couple of times since. They are wearing everyday clothes that I might not see in a more formal shot. This was about 3 years before I was born.

More treasures to come!

Still Standing

The Dibbens homestead is still standing and used! Over 100 years ago, the two story kit home was ordered and brought to the Dibbens land between Cheney and Murdock by wagon. I've heard there is a picture in Souders Museum of the arrival of their house. That's a picture I would love to see. The house was not a little cabin. It was a 2 story home complete with dormer windows and a bay window.

I have a feeling the arrival of the kit was very exciting for the Dibbens family, who were living in a dugout on the land at that time. I'm sure it was big news among the neighbors, also!

The river chased away many of the residents since Arthur Dibbens, Sr. died in 1932. After sitting vacant for 20 years in the 80's and 90's, it has had one owner for the last 10 years. The last time I had passed the house, I wasn't sure it was original. I stopped along the country road and snapped pictures from there. There were varying stories among contemporary family members about the location of the original homestead.

Enter cousin, Carmen and her sister Marcia, who compiled the Field genealogy book that first piqued my interest in genealogy more that 15 years ago. Marcia has more information than I do about the Dibbens side. They are the two daughters of my great uncle Preston. We spent a day this summer talking genealogy, visiting cemeteries in the area and getting better acquainted.

After a few hours of visiting and digging into the past on paper, Marcia and I took off to visit some sites for ourselves. We visited Pleasant Valley School where the Dibbens children, including my grandpa, Forest, attended school. I have an old picture of them standing on wagons outside the school. Standing in the field next to the building, I realized that as they stood on the wagon, they would have been able to see their home, which sat a couple hundred yards from the house shown above. The only thing left of their home now is the silo shown in my last post.

After visiting the school, we drove to the old Dibbens homestead. This time, with strength in numbers, we knocked on the door and talked to the owners. They let us take pictures of the house and promised to send us some pictures of the floor they had just uncovered. The old carpet was covering the original wood floors! Can you imagine? This house has stood against floods, teenage ghost hunters, a small fire or two and time and is still standing.

Here is a picture of the house as it looked last week:

The owners asked us to not look too closely at the front porch as they are in the middle of a big remodeling project. They bought the home knowing that it is pretty old so they were very interested in it's history.

They sent some pictures of the wood floor. I think it must have been beautiful and probably will be again. Here is a picture that shows the design.
Another fun genealogy day!