The Moon and Writing

Here’s some information that I wanted Gail to make into an article to post online. The article was never completed, but I’m sharing here her research on this interesting topic of how the signs of the moon affect writers.

” I also found that the signs of the moon inspire what we write. One week you do creative writing; another week researching goes best; a third week you write letters to friends and family and the last week is for organizing. Sometimes this one extends to my whole writing room. I found this information in a Farmer’s Almanac. In checking back through my journals I found that it was right. “

Graphic from Pixabay

Here’s what Mom found on the subject:

Increasing Moon

“An increasing moon going from new to full means writing will flow easily.  At that time, a writer is more prolific and productive. Ideas come easily and facts pop into your mind.”

Waning Moon

“When it goes from a full moon to the new moon, that’s the waning moon. For writers, the flow begins to dry up. Shift into doing editing, organizing.” She then has “great for news columns or for magazines.” I wish she would have elaborated on that part.

Mercury Retrograde

“When Mercury is retrograde, it’s a good influence on research, taking notes, and for the preparation of a writing project. It slows the thought process, so you need to allow more time for the writing process. Proofread carefully.

Mercury retrograde slows the thought processes, communications, and transportation.”

The takeaway from that is to allow more time for the writing process and factor in the time for mail to get delivered and for possible delays. Proof read carefully.

Here is the Farmer’s Almanac chart for the moon for the current month.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you considered the effects of the moon sign on your writing?

Love Local Cookbooks?

I’m guessing that every household has a spiral-bound cookbook filled with recipes from local cooks. Gail Lee Martin collected some of these and wrote about them for the Butler County Historical Society in Kansas. She submitted the research to their annual history essay contest in 2001 and received honorable mention for it. She donated 7 cookbooks to the museum’s collection. She also contributed her recipes to a number of  local cookbooks that came out after this article.

Hometown Sharing

Through the past hundred years, local cooks have shared their favorite recipes with friends and neighbors in many ways. Reunions, church suppers, picnics, fish fries, ice-cream socials, birthdays, weddings, Sunday dinners, and every occasion that could get a group of people together. The theory being, if you invite them to come eat good food they will show up at your meetings or events.

By early 1900 organizations around the town began to get on the bandwagon of publishing cookbooks as fund-raisers. Churches, businesses, schools, grocery stores, even radio stations discovered the fun of compiling favorite recipes from their members into a cookbook for sale.

So the call went out to all cooks in their organization to submit their favorites recipes. Catchy titles were sought to encourage sales. Some of the more interesting ones I found were: Meat Recipe Rally; Country Cooking; Regal Recipes, and the Partyline Cookbooks to name just a few.

The cookbooks reveal much more about the community than just the cooks and recipes. Local advertising was found here and there in the books to tell of businesses, some that are still here and others that have faded to just memories. The Meat Recipe Rally by Joe Browne’s Market advertises Joe’s own Hickory Smoked Sliced Bacon and Hams and Open Kettle Pure Lard. In the 1959 El Dorado City Directory Joe’s Market is listed as “ Browne’s Market, the complete food store since 1905.” The Market stayed on the same downtown corner of 200 W. Central until 1973.

In The Art of cooking in El Dorado, a Senior Citizens of El Dorado cookbook, Walnut Valley Bank and Trust listed their advertisement this way. “Recipe For Financial Service. Take instant mix of Walnut Valley people, know-how, and concern . . .AND JUST ADD YOU!” Their ad certainly fit the book‘s theme.

The El Dorado Senior Center celebrated their 10th anniversary in September 1985. Around that time the cookbook was planned and Cathlin Buffum was director of the center and contributed a handful of recipes herself. Other businesses contributing their ad’s to the senior’s project were El Dorado Cable; Mc Cartney Pharmacy; PT Machine & Welding; Farmer’s Insurance; Arlene’s Beauty Shop; Castle of Lighting; Flavor Maid Do-nuts; AAA; Best’s Cleaners and Dale’s Service.

Family and community cookbooks that have Gail Martin’s recipes included.

In the late seventies and early eighties, the area radio station KOYY Kountry had a listener participation program called Partyline. Many recipes were shared in this morning phone-in style get together. In 1979 Partyline hostess, Jean Plummer compiled the many recipes that had flooded her office and published the first Partyline Cookbook . Two years later, when Connie Phillips was serving as hostess, the second edition of the Partyline Cookbook was published by popular demand. Together, young and old, men and women filled these cookbooks with their best cooking efforts.

A 1982 ‘Benton Community’ project producing a Country Cooking cookbook went all out with ten pages of advertisers, two full pages listing their supporters, some community history dating back to 1913, local artwork by Jo Bell for a drawing of a windmill and surrounding countryside for the cover and a unique list of what you could buy from the grocery store for a $1.00 in 1931, all from a small town of around 600 residents. Many contributors were Benton High School alumni from the 1920’s; Benton Busy Bee’s 4-H members; Girl and Boy Scouts, the Lions Club; Golden Agers; Jaycees Jaynes and Tops members.

El Dorado is the home to many churches and these churches have many church dinners. Food in every available form is brought. Everyone wants to take their best. As they taste tested their way through the many varieties, the women begin asking “Who brought this or that dish, and then ask would you share your recipe, it tasted wonderful.” This is one reason almost every church in the county has at one time or another put out a cookbook.

The United Methodist Church has been publishing cookbooks since the turn of the century. The recipes of a 1909 cookbook, Regal Recipes, were collected and arranged by the Kings Daughters of the Methodist Episcopal and is being preserved at the Butler County Historical Society Museum. This same group put out another book in 1924 with additions of new recipes from Circle One of the Methodist Ladies Aid. The women of this church but probably another generation or two published again in 1985 and the current one of 1996, Lord’s Acre Cookbook, Naomi Circle is still available. In the miscellaneous section is a neat saying, “Happiness is like jam. You can’t spread a little without getting a little on yourself.” Recipes in this segment include Homemade Apple Butter, Easy Grape Jelly, and Jalapeno Jelly.

The Towanda United Methodist Church of Christ published a Tribute to Our Past, Our Joy For Today, The Hope For Tomorrow 1885-1985. Some of the other cookbooks from their past were known to have been in 1907, 1924, and 1979.

The Christian Women’s Fellowship groups of Potwin and El Dorado compiled cookbooks in the 1980s. Potwin put out a cookbook in 1981 and titled it, Favorites Recipes From Our Best Cooks. They included a picture of their lovely brick church and a schedule of their Sunday School and Morning Worship services. The El Dorado women came out with a small handmade booklet in November 1983. With checkered oilcloth covers. The Young Women’s Group of the First Christian Church of El Dorado put out a three-ring notebook size cookbook in October 1986 to coincide with their fall money-making event, a luncheon, and craft fair.

Starting in 2005 the original El Dorado Farmer’s Market is planning a garden cookbook. So Butler County’s food sharing tradition just keeps going.

 

Gail’s Memories of the Flood of ’51

Last month, I posted a pieced-together account of the 1951 flood, but now I have recovered Mom’s account of it using the Wayback Machine. Here is Gail Lee Martin’s story of that event.

“My husband and I with our four children were living 3 miles northwest of Madison in northern Greenwood County, Kansas in the summer of 1951. We had never had to worry about the river, as it was a good half-mile away. But in 1951, after several days of steady rain, the Verdigris river became fuller than ever before.

While we were asleep the river started backing up every creek and stream that normally flowed into it. When our youngest woke up in her baby bed and began to cry at the sight of water in our bedroom, she woke us up. What a shock it was to swing my warm feet into cold, muddy, river water.

The river had silently backed up the tiny stream nearby and overflowed everywhere. It had slowly crept into our back porch on the ground level, then up higher and higher above the two cement block high foundation, before spreading its dirty mess into our house.

We waded around through the house trying to put everything up high on cabinets, the sink, and the stove because they were already standing in two foot of water.

When we first discovered the situation, the water in the county road was already three foot deep, so all we could do was watch the water rise higher and higher to the door handles of our car, parked in the driveway.

Our children, Owen, Susan, Ginger and the baby, Cindy were wild with the excitement of actually ‘wading’ in the house, until they saw the rabbit hutches had tipped over into the water drowning their beloved pets. We never had swift water, I think my terror came from the silence as the water just steadily flowed backward, rising higher all the time.

My brother-in-law, Norman Harlan, waded in from the shallowest west side and helped carry the children to safety. Our toddler ran out to jump into his arms and not being able to tell where the floor ended, she stepped off into the water and would have sunk if he hadn’t been quick to grab her.

Gail’s sister, Melba and Melba’s husband, Norman Harlan in 1949. Their children – Vicki, Tim and Bob.

I’ll never forget the beautiful breakfast my sister, Melba, had ready when my bedraggled, wet family arrived on her doorstep.

Of course, the rain did quit, the water went slowly away and we were left to clean out the mud and haul away what couldn’t be saved. Our children held a quiet funeral and mass burial of their pets.

To this day, some of our furniture has knee-high water marks, sad reminders of what can happen while you sleep.”

Going, Going, Gone…

A Guest Post by Gail’s daughter, Karen Kolavalli (written in 2014 for Bubblews)

“I spent the afternoon sorting, sorting, sorting! It’s a seemingly unending job of sifting through boxes of photos, letters, and documents. In doing so, I came across a printout from a page at Genealogy.com that shows a listing of my Mother’s stories that were archived there. It says that “Gail Martin created this page with the help of the ‘My History is America’s History’ website.”

I was able to pull up the page at Genealogy.com with the list of her stories, but when I tried the links to go to the stories, all I got was “The connection has timed out.” And when I tried the link to “My History is America’s History,” it took me to a page showing that the domain name was for sale, so that site went belly up at some point.

I recognize many of the story titles as chapters in the books that my Mom published with the help of my sister, Virginia. There are some, though, that I’m not familiar with, such as Treasures from the Barnyard, More of the Treasure from the Barnyard, Carol’s Memory of the Flood of ’51, and Ginger’s Year 1948. I hope these stories survive in printed form and that my sister will be able to find them in my Mom’s files. Those files were transferred to her care and keeping after our Mother passed away a year and a half ago.
 
Mom didn’t start writing until she had all six kids raised and out on their own, and then she made up for lost time! From the late 1970s until her death in 2013, writing was her life and the stories poured out of her. Although she was an avid reader, she had always struggled in school and thought it was a miracle that she graduated from high school. So every award she received for her writing absolutely blew her away.

She loved to teach memoir writing classes at a senior center and was the much-loved moderator of a writers’ website, called Our Echo. When her daughter helped get her books published, she was over the moon. But at the end of the day, she was proudest just to be able to share her stories.”

Gail Lee Martin hard at work on her Star Writer word processor.

J is for Journaling

My mom, Gail Lee Martin, kept a journal in whatever blank book came to hand over the years. She wrote in school type notebooks back when her children were little. She called them her blue books. I don’t know if the covers were blue or if she wrote about the things that made her blue. Perhaps in those spiral notebooks with lined pages, as an isolated young housewife, she could pour out her heart.

Somewhere along the way, these early journals were lost in the many household moves. Life became too busy with six children to raise, so she gave up keeping a diary for those hectic years. In retirement, she took it up again.

Now, there’s a whole shelf of these slightly battered books. The entries stop and start, sometimes with more than one year sharing a book. Often the entries are pretty ordinary with the small events that made up her day. She noted a visitor, a phone call, a baseball game watched on television, or the activities of a neighbor.

She kept the current one on the side table by her chair in the living room.

 

Photo from Pixabay

 

Along with her journal, she maintained a variety of notebooks. Each featured some aspect of their life. One documented the sales made at the farmer’s market with a meticulous count of how many jars of jelly or loaves of bread were sold. Another notebook traveled with her back in the days when they drove to Prescott, Kansas on weekends. She noted short descriptions of scenery that perhaps she planned to use in her writing or to turn into a poem someday.

The notebook above lists the books they collected. That was a small one that she could carry in her handbag for consulting when she found a book at a yard sale or shop. In another one, she kept a log of the fish they caught at Sugar Valley and photos of the catch.

For the most part, the journals and notebooks served as a mostly mundane record, mere fragments of her life. Her real writing about family history and about her childhood went into her essays. She labored over those and wrote a number of versions of the memory pieces. These eventually became her published memoir, My Flint Hills Childhood.

 

 

After Graduation in 1942

In May of 1942 I graduated (barely) from Hamilton High School in Greenwood County, Kansas. I lived with my folks in the Seeley school district where Daddy worked as an oil field pumper for Phillips Petroleum Company. By the time school started in September I was offered a job caring for three-year-old Ann Neumayer and doing light house work for her family. Her mother taught at the Seeley grade school, her dad was a pumper for the Ohio Oil company, and she had an older brother, Robert and an older sister, Peggy, who went to school with their mother.

Hamilton High School in Kansas where Gail Lee McGhee graduated.

My job was like any babysitter of today. Ann was a darling toddler, who loved to tag-a-long doing whatever I was doing. That family ate big servings of fried potatoes every night for supper, with fried meat and gravy. I used to say after peeling that big pile of potatoes every night, “I might as well be on KP in the army.”

At the start of the next school year, Mrs. Neumayer was allowed to take Ann to school with her. So I was wondering what I was to do, then we heard about the government’’s NYA program for the young people of America. The closest school for girls was at Winfield, Kansas. My folks agreed for me to go and they took me down there. My boyfriend, Johnny Faylor, had been sent to Fort Leonardwood for training in the army. Our friend Clyde Martin was rejected when he was called up because he was a farm boy and was needed on the farm as his older brother, Ralph was already in the air force. He went to the boy’’s camp in Cherryvale and took welding classes.

1942 postcard of Cherryvale, Kansas’ downtown.

My parents took me down to Winfield shortly after school was out in May of 1943. There they tried to teach me to be a riveter. But I was a skinny kid weighing only ninety-nine pounds so I couldn’’t hold up the big heavy rivet gun. So they tried to teach me to hold the bucking bar on the back side of the sheet metal. I couldn’’t even do that the way they wanted. I was so disappointed that I wasn’’t going to be one of the famous ‘Rosie the Riveters.’

NYA poster  (source)

Due to politics and shortage of funding the NYA closed down July 12, 1943, just a week or two after I arrived. Most of the girls decided to take the bus to Wichita and try to get jobs in the aircraft factories. I went with them. I was lucky and got a job with Boeing helping build the B-29s in the electrical wiring department. I was thankful that Boeing was not union! After all the Phillip’s employees trouble with City Service union guys, I didn‘’t want anything to do with unions.

I found a room in a castle looking house at 1313 N. Emporia. I was on the second floor and in the north turret. The biggest problem was having to go downstairs to the basement for the communal bathroom.

Photo by Karen Kolavalli. The rooming house that Gail Lee McGhee stayed in during WWII while working at Boeing.

My paycheck sure looked good but the money disappeared so fast. I had to pay for my room and all my meals plus bus rides to work and back. No matter where I went I had to ride the bus or walk. The winter approached and I had to buy a warm coat, mittens and a stocking cap that would pull down around my ears. I bought a few things for Christmas presents but also had to save money to buy my bus ticket to Emporia in Lyon County for the holidays. My parents and little sister, Carol drove up from our home in Greenwood County to  Emporia to pick me up. Being with my loved ones was so good that I do not remember what gifts were given to whom.

After working in the electric wiring department for several months I became unhappy when the inspectors ran a slight electrical charge to see if my work was OK. They didn’’t tell me when they were going to do it and I became scared that the charge might get stronger so I asked to be transferred to another department.

The next department was in the tool shed, where the employees checked out tools they needed to work with. I enjoyed this after learning what each tool was called and where each was stored. It was kinda like working in a library only at the end of the shift all tools had to be checked back in and I had only a short time to get them put where they belonged before I could check out.

(Aug 11, 2012 email from Gail Lee Martin to daughter, Virginia Allain)

 

Gail’s Early WWII Memories

On December the 7^th, we were all shocked when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Now World War II was not just looming, it was a reality. Rationing became a way of life; my friends older brothers were inducted into the army, navy or the air force. All eighteen-year-old males had to register for the draft. Everyone was worried. My friend, Clyde Martin’s brother Ralph, who had been working at Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, enlisted in the air force.

Scrap metal and rubber collected during WWII for the war effort. (photo taken at WWII museum in NH by Virginia Allain)

Life struggled on as we all tried to be patriotic by saving scrap metal and grease. We went on scrap hunts to find unused and abandoned metal. Sugar, meat, oil, gasoline, and rubber went on the ration list. Families were issued ration booklets to keep everybody honest.

War slogans became my classmate’s secret passwords, “If you don’t need it, DON’T BUY IT” and we interpreted that slogan to mean we did not need any more studies; we wanted to help win the war.

 

Christmas was very quiet that year. Packages of home baked goodies were mailed early to our relatives, friends, and neighbors in boot camp or overseas. No one went any place unnecessary because of the shortage of gasoline and tires. My family usually had relatives come to our home for Christmas for lots of good food, togetherness, and exchange of homemade gifts, but not the Christmas of 1941.

The spring semester dragged on and I managed somehow to get good enough grades to let me graduate. No one knows how worried I was about passing the 12th-grade exam. However, I must have known more than my teachers and I had every thought of. As long as I was not rushed or having to recite out loud I did well. This exam was a written test; anyway, I passed and attended baccalaureate ceremony and the graduation ceremony. Back in those days, we did not wear floor-length dresses except for fancy weddings. At least in the Midwest and in a county that was made up mostly of farmers and oil workers.

(emailed to daughter, Virginia, on Saturday, August 11, 2012)

C Is for Company’s Coming

This piece is an unpublished essay by Gail Martin. It was in one of her writing notebooks. She may have planned to use it for an eHow article.

“Company’s coming up the road. When that happens, many families prefer to dig into their pocket books or pull out the credit cards and take the surprise visitors to a favorite cafe or pick up some food from a take-out place.

In the era of my mother and mother-in-law, there was always their pantry to fall back on. They stocked their pantries with food they grew and preserved for their families. There was no panic when someone sighted company coming up the road.

Clyde and I continued this tradition. Even when my husband worked on the drilling rigs, he found time to grow a large garden. When our six children were in 4-H, they took gardening, preserving and rabbit projects.

Our garden was a family affair with the planting, weeding, hoeing, watering, picking and preparing the vegetables. Everything was saved. These were served to our large family summer and winter.

All too soon our children grew up and started families of their own. We moved to town and gave up the milk cow and the rabbits but still maintained a large garden. Jars of colorful beets, green beans and corn fill our pantry shelves.

When my cousin called on her cell phone to say they were on their way, I knew we had plenty of home grown food ready to feed them.”

Clyde Martin picking tomatoes with a visitor.

Mom’s Writing Tools

This is a comment that Mom wrote on a blog I had. It’s dated November 7, 2008 at 6:53 pm. She was 84 years old.

“I started writing with a pencil and a big chief tablet with lines across the pages. Now I am writing on a computer and posting online. In between I advanced to writing with pen and ink, ballpoint pens, typewriters, improved typewriters, Cannon Starwriter 80 word processors, I wore out at least three, so the repair tech. said.

I began to receive requests to teach others my writing ideas. What a thrill! I also had five daughters who gladly critiqued my ramblings. Now I’m on my 4th computer with grammar, spellchecker, and a grandson who keeps my computers doing what they are supposed to do. What writer would ask for more!” Mom

Old and new posters by deemac1

Mom’s Hubcap Story

“The hubcap story is a real funny one. We were going with friends to swim in the river and then have a wiener roast. My friend grabbed the package of wieners from the freezer (back in those days wieners came wrapped in butcher paper).

At the river, we had a wonderful time as our friend’s kids were the same age as ours. When it came time to fix the fire & roast the weiners, it was ground sausage instead 😦 and of course, we had wiener buns. So we washed a hubcap in the river and made long sausages and fried them. Funny but good!

Dogs in the whole county smelled our hubcap for weeks after the event.”

Here’s Mom’s sister, Carol, with Gail’s children, Susan and Owen. I don’t think Carol was there on the occasion of the sausage cookout, but I wanted a photo of a car to go with Mom’s story.