Catching up

It has been so long since I last wrote on this blog – not too sure where I stopped but I think our family was preparing to move to Seattle – March, 1959.

During the past weekend I have been in Wellington for a friend’s 60^th birthday.  She is someone who I knew here in Pukekohe for a few years after we returned in 1984.  She had five children  who were (are) near the ages of ours -   Our friendship has continued since then and has been really meaningful to me.

I got to meet her cousins, see her grown children with their own kids, meet many friends who she has in Wellington – and enjoy the very unseasonable weather.  Wellington is the windy city of New Zealand and the winters can be horrible.  Two years ago when I went down for a visit, I told my friend that I wasn’t ever coming back at that time of year again….ever.  Her fireplace wasn’t working, her flat wasn’t insulated and it  is located against a hillside – reduced sun – whatever – but I did do it  this time and Wellington was actually sunny and warm – in July – no wind that almost knocks one off their feet, no rain that soaks one’s clothes….just nothing but clear, blue skies and sun during the day and mild at night.  My friend has also now got a heat pump and her flat has been insulated – totally helps.

I don’t remember much about the move to Seattle except that in March, 1959 it seemed a lot colder then Portland, Oregon.  We moved into an older house in the University District, near University of Washington campus, and across from a large park (Ravenna Park)  that was actually a ravine.  It was filled with many large trees and had pathways that we often walked. 

As usual, my mother got to know a lot of the neighbours and some of them were really wonderful.  They made our stay in the area memorable.

Marlene Village

We moved to Marlene Village in the Sunset area of Beaverton when I was almost ten.  This was a neighbourhood about 100+ houses built after WWII.  I believe that there were three or four types of houses with fairly large sections.  The streets were sealed but there were no footpaths. 

I got my first bicycle while living there.  The area was flat, safe and not much traffic, so I spent quite a lot of time riding my bike.  I also had school friends who lived on other streets close by.  When the weather was reasonable, I would ride my bike over to their houses and spend the afternoons there following school.

My mother enjoyed living in that area.  She made a couple of friends who lived close by.  One of them was Donna Jean Lamoureux who was about my mother's age, had two kids, Kathy and Ken, and her husband traveled as much as my father did for his job.

Donna Jean and my mother spent a lot of time together.  Mothers didn't work outside of the home very often then. I remember my mother helping Donna Jean work on her house and then Donna Jean helped my mother with ours.  They were constantly "doing things up", visiting "barn sales" (now secondhand stores and garage sales) - you name it -  if the Internet had been around, they would have spent a lot of time looking at furniture, etc. on it for sure.

Donna Jean was quite talented at remodeling things.  She and her family later moved to Lake Oswego outside of Portland and she had their home remodeled.  It was beautiful.

In the areas beyond Sunset (Forrest Grove, Hillsboro & Scholls) lived a variety of relatives who came from my Grandfather Stretcher's side - this was my mother's father.  These were the people who we got together with for holiday meals.  The meals at which my sister and I, with our cousins, ate ourselves crazy.

We usually met at Aunt Hazel's in Hillsborough.  She was  the one with the huge pipe organ in her dining room.  She would play the organ at the end of the holiday meal - arms and legs flying over the keys and the pedals.  The temptation to sneak a touch of those things was almost impossible to overcome - but I don't think that either my sister or I gave into it.  Who knew what would have happened if someone found out?

We had quite a full life while living in the Sunset area.  Both of our grandmothers were still alive and living in their own homes in Portland.  The drive was about thirty minutes away to each of their neighbourhoods.  My parents were part of the founding group who started a new Episcopal Church in Beaverton. My sister and I were involved in after school activities such as Girl Scouts and I started riding lessons near Beaverton at Nichol's Riding Academy.  My mother had ridden there when she was in school.  I almost forgot, too, that I took dancing lessons - ballet and tap dancing.  I had problems with my feet and it was decided that dance lessons plus the most insane amount of other "therapies" were going to help me later.  They did but it was a total hassle - more for my mother than me.

My feet ended up being rather a major part of my life for years.

Cornell Road

When we moved out to the Sunset area, I felt that I would never want to leave.  It was very much like the Pukekohe area that we now live in.  There were parts of it that had been large farms - many of which were still there.  There were new housing developments built after WWII and a new shopping centre about ten minutes away that had a large Safeway grocery store.  Beaverton itself was twenty minutes away and it had everything:  indoor swimming pool with a high diving board, "The Dark Horse" - a new women's clothing store that was beautiful, a movie theatres - one indoor and one outdoor, a number of churches, and Beaverton High School where I would have gone when I was older, and of course, a lot of businesses were beginning to open up in the area.  I loved going into Beaverton with my father on Saturday mornings.  After doing errands, we would end up at a coffee shop - he would drink coffee and eat a piece of pie and we would have cokes and doughnuts - totally healthy, of course.  This was about 1955.

The first house we lived in the Sunset area was on Cornell Road.  It was on the country side of the area and was very established with a large yard, a garage that had a large workshop, a large glass house that my mother spent quite a bit of time in and just beyond a white wooden fence in the backyard, there was a large playhouse with a front and back door.  I can remember spending summers in the playhouse with the doors open for a breeze,  the  radio playing "Queen for a Day" and my sister and I eating lunch together. 

The next door neighbours were friendly.  An older couple lived on one side in a two story building which they used the main floor of for making Christian movies.  I don't remember too much about it except that my sister and mother were asked to be in some of the movies.  I got to go and watch them and later we saw the movies they had appeared in.

I will never forget that down the road from this house was a meat slaughtering business.  There were large barns and many trucks.  My mother wanted a dog as we had the area to keep one and she felt it would be good as my father was often gone on business trips.

A couple of days after we got the dog, we got up one morning and heard my mother yelling for us to look out the front window that faced the lawn.  It was an awful sight.  The dog had been down the road and somehow got hold of  cows  heads and brought them home.  There were a number of them on the lawn.  Yuk - my mother was going nuts.

She got us in the car and we drove down to the slaughter house - we had never been there before -  she told someone what had happened.  They came up to the house and got the cows heads - and we thought that was the end of it.  They said that it wouldn't happen again - they didn't know how the dog got the heads - but it did happen again.

We ended up giving the dog away. My mother didn't want to keep the dog tied up all the time and obviously the dog liked the slaughter house.  Not a good combination.

Across the road from us lived Dr. Stalder and his sister on what was left of their family farm.  Their home had been in their family for a number of generations.  I can remember going in there and thinking it was like something I had seen on TV or in the movies.  Everything seemed  very old, very well kept and beautiful.  Eventually they sold the property and Sunset High School was built on it.

If we were sick,  my mother would ring Dr. Stalder and he would make a house visit.  I think that he did that for many people in the area.

We lived in the Cornell Road house for a couple of years and then moved to a housing development in the area named Marlene Village.  It was on the other side of Sunset Highway and I can remember it quite clearly.

Same Ocean - Different Location.

So, now we move on a few years to another location on one of the Oregon beaches.  This one is Gearhart Beach - three miles north of the well-known Seaside Beach.  It was the location of the Episcopal Church's summer family camp. 

I don't have a lot of separate memories about the years we attended this camp - I just know that I loved it.  My family was happy there.  My parents had friends who they were able to socialise with and everyone seemed quite relaxed.

Most of the families stayed in a huge two or three story building named The Scott House (thanks to my sister Candace for this memory of the name).  Neither Candace nor I are sure what this building had been used for, but we think it was some kind of a nunnery for the Episcopal Church or maybe it had been Catholic. 

It was made of wood with shingles on the outside and there were many rooms that were the same size and they were very plain.  One could hear through the walls - I remember friends being in the room on the other side of the wall - and we could talk back and forth at night while our parents were downstairs drinking wine and having religious discussions.

The main camp was a couple of blocks from Scott House.  There were cabins and a large dining room.  There was also a large yard where sports were played. 
Close by was a church/chapel where daily communion was held in the mornings - early.

Last but not least, there was the beach.  It was beautiful during the summer with large sand dunes and  rolling waves.  After morning classes held separately for the kids and adults and then lunch, most people would go to the beach for the afternoon.

By the end of the week, I was usually sunburned and being careful with cuts and bruises I got from walking on the large pieces of wood (old trees, etc...) that had been thrown up by the ocean onto the beach.

One afternoon - I was probably ten or eleven at the time - while at the beach with my family I decided I needed to go back to Scott House - can't remember why.  It wasn't too far away and my parents said to just go and come back as soon as I could.  I left the beach alone and was bare foot.  I had a towel with me and knew that I didn't want to take the long way back - I would just cut through the open lot that separated Scott House from the beach access.

This lot was not well cared for - it was a mass of prickly weeds and  rubbish.  I started to cross it and suddenly realised that I wasn't going to get very far with bare feet.  It was a hot day and I started to panic in the heat and seeing that I was in a predicament.  I could only hope that someone from our group would see me - when they were coming or going to or from the beach -  and help me.  No one came - no one saw me -

What to do?  The only thing I could think of - I put the towel down on the weeds length-wise in front of me and walked to the farthest end, somehow turned the towel around so that the end  that was behind me was now in the front position and walked to that new position and kept doing that the whole length of the lot - mostly on my knees with my hands spread on the towel to keep the action in motion.  That's what painful weeds will do to you.  Forget walking on a bed of hot coals using positive thinking - where there's a will-there's a way.  I do not think that I ever told my parents about this - I was mortified that I had to do it - dumb.

All the camp meals were shared in the main dining room.  The food must have been fine and the mothers didn't care anyway.  They didn't have to make it.

The only problem was the Friday night dinner.  It was observed as "fish on Fridays" - so we got served clam chowder.  This was not the deluxe type one might  serve or be served today with a beautiful base, etc... No, this was something that looked like grey goop and it smelled pretty bad, too.

The third summer we attended  camp my father did something extreme.  Friday afternoon he informed us  that we were not eating dinner at the camp.that night.  It seemed quite radical to me.  He was taking us to Seaside to eat - I believe that he thought no one would see us there.  Of course we ran into other camp families  who were also escaping the clam chowder -

In thinking back over this, I believe that either my sister or I had got sick the second year after dinner on the Friday night - real sick....or maybe it was other people who did.  My father decided that we didn't have to go through it again....or he used it as an excuse -

Of course my whole life wasn't spent at the beach.  Most of it was spent attending school during the year.  Sunset Valley School outside of Beaverton, Oregon -

Oregon Beaches

The Oregon beaches have a special place in my memory.  Both my parents spent time there and told us many stories about their summer visits to various locations on the Coast.

My mother's mother. Grandma Stretcher, loved going to Twin Rocks Beach.  Twin Rocks is just a classic Oregon beach - sand dunes, big waves rolling in, beautiful scenery.  I believe that my grandmother paid for our family to spend time there in a rented house for one or two weeks each year. 

It was almost always fun because the house she rented was  big and had a beach view.  We could sit upstairs in the lounge and see the waves roll in from the main windows and outside from the porch.

Something happened one year that changed our experience.  Maybe the reservations got mixed up by the owners - I am not sure - but we didn't get the big house.  We had to stay on the property, further in the back,  in a little two room cabin.  Most of the time it was okay but the last week it rained most of the time and it was horrible.  I can remember my mother trying to keep the door open so that we could get some air into the place. 

We got to know the people who were renting the big house while we were there.  They had kids our age and we visited them when it was raining.  These kids had a HUGE collection of comic books - Donald Duck, Archie and Veronica, Little Lulu - you name it - oh, also romance ones, too. It was amazing.  My parents really discouraged us from reading comic books. We had a few but nothing like these kids. 

Our father drove back to Portland to work during the week and then returned for the weekend.  It was always fun except for the time we were in that cabin.  My mother, father, sister, me and Grandma - not enough room.  I remember things getting very tense - the rain was pelting down, food had been burned, something about a bad stove, no air in the place - you name it.  The worst was my mother's special camera getting stolen while we were at the beach one day. 

I don't remember us going back there again.  But I wasn't too upset because "Family Camp" replaced the summer beach time.

Grandma Stretcher

My Grandmother Stretcher was a character.  I remember her being involved in numerous activities but the one that stands out the most was her involvement with Christian Science.  I do not know when or how she developed this but it was the centre of her life when I was growing up.  I don't think that my grandfather was involved in it.

There were many practices that she commited herself to:  served at the Christian Science Reading Room in the village of Bybee near Sellwood in Portland.  Read all of the publications of CS - mostly "Science and Health" by Mary Baker Eddie and her copy of this was marked in many, many places.  Attended the Sunday morning service and the mid-weekly one, too.  Would not go to a doctor if she was ill - my mother had to almost call the police to get her to go into a hospital when she was really sick and then the whole time she was there, she threatened to "escape".  Taught Sunday School at the church - and she talked about CS all the time.  Her faith was very strong.

I admired my grandmother for this but we all thought it was a bit nutty.  Nutty or not, my grandmother got action from God - most of the time.  I can remember one summer afternoon when my cousins were visiting from California and all of us (my sister Candace, my two cousins, my grandmother and I) decided to walk to the local Safeway grocery store.  It was hot and we all wanted ice cream cones.

On the way home, dark clouds overhead burst into rain that was strong and seemingly unending.  We were soaked and had quite a way to walk home.  My grandmother told us that we were all going to gather under the big tree up ahead and pray to God for the rain to stop.  She told us to pray the Lord's prayer - and just keep praying it.  I can remember thinking that this was never going to work and we were going to be stuck under the tree for the next hour or more.

So we started praying outloud - in those days you never-ever told your grandmother that what she suggested wasn't going to work.  Well, the rain stopped - quite quickly.  The sun came out and dried up the sidewalk and we walked home.  When we arrived our clothes were dry and everyone was happy. 

My grandmother never said a word about it.  She had "perfect peace" (a phrase she often used) and that was it.

Grandma had grown up in Canada and most of her brothers and sisters still lived there.  My mother often took all of us up there to visit them.  It was fun and they spent a lot of time laughing and tell stories and eating amazing food.  I loved the food and the fact that they always had dessert.  There was also morning and afternoon tea with piles of muffins, cakes, etc....

One summer Grandma's brother  Uncle Arthur visited Portland.  I can remember being scared when I first saw him.  I wasn't that young but he was from "another time".  He had been living in Montana and working on farms.  He was huge with a handle-bar mustache.  What really impressed me was when  my grandmother asked him to tell my sister and me about the years he was a stagecoach driver in the midwest of the US.  She had photos of him driving the coaches with the horses.  It all seemed a bit unreal.

We wanted to know if he ever got chased by robbers.  Of course, they would have had to have guns as we had seen on television.   I remember thinking that maybe he had know Davy Crockett - I didn't know much about history when I was nine. 

No he didn't know Davy Crockett or Kit Carson but he had been the main driver for Theodore Roosevelt when he travelled the mid-west.  Now, this didn't impress me at all - who was that?  Oh, okay, he was President of the United States at the time and I did end up going to a high school in Seattle named after him - but I didn't think much of it then.

And every year - at least, I suppose, until I was about ten, she took us on vacation!

Lolo

Laurelhurst is an old neighbourhood in Portland, Oregon. My great-grand parents and some of their children lived there from 1912.  No one from the family lives there now but it is such a memorable backdrop to my memories of my grandmother.

Her parents lived in the first house built in Laurelhurst - 805 Hazelfern Place - phone number BE 4 8675.  It is easy for me to remember these things.  I sometimes look at her house on a google map - it looks the same as does the other houses in the neighbourhood.

The house was large and had a big basement that my sister and I used as a roller skating rink.  We put things in the middle of the floor and spent hours skating in a circle with our friends.  It rains a lot in Portland so during the winters we had to play inside.

My grandmother Lois Parker Peery (we called her Lolo) married when she was older - over 25 - had my father in 1914 and the next year  left her husband and returned with her son to Laurelhurst.  We do not know much about my grandfather. I never met him.  My sister Candace has told me that my father told her that his father was an alcoholic.  We don't know much.  This person's name was never mentioned in the family.  Never by my grandmother.

By the time I was born, she was sixty, still living at 805 (my father's name for her house) and working.  She continued to work part time until she was over seventy.  This was unusual for women at the time.

She was lovely to me and I have fond thoughts of her.  She was a quiet person but also very determined.  I was told that she was a very good Bridge player and was always popular (a word that I found funny as a kid to describe my grandmother - that word was reserved for my friends) but I believe it was true.

Good social training was important to her and very important to her sisters - my great aunts.  They were constantly after my sister and me to have good manners - they never let up. It was a drag but I am grateful for it now.  They told me that I would be.

I spent quite a lot of time at Lolo's house when I was younger.  She never learned to drive so we were often walking home from the bus or walking to an aunt's house and I got to know Laurelhurst well.

There are many stories that I could share.  One that stands out clearly is the Christmas we had  at her house with all of the relatives in the area who could attend. There was a large Christmas  tree standing in one corner of the living room and there were many gifts sitting under it. Very exciting as the gifts were piled up -  My sister and I got to hand them  out to the those there. 

All of a sudden the tree started to tilt - it sort of tilted one way and then another - and before anyone could grab it, the tree fell on  the ground - ornaments, lights, water from the container holding it - tons of "rain" - thin strips of shiny light weight foil that were put on  the tree branches  for added decoration - all of it a mess. 

My sister and I grabbed gifts and tried to salvage what we could - my father was helping while most of the relatives sat there looking on - it was crazy.  My Dad was able to get the tree back up and things went on all right after that - but it turned out to be family memory that was often talked about.

Lolo was a very good cook and she and my father made chocolates together, too.  There had been talk of them having a business making candy. It never happened but they did buy a lot of equipment and made candy during the holidays for friends.  Any holiday was a reason for this - Easter, Mother's Day, Christmas, etc...  When I learned to drive, I took boxes to friends for them.

I remember having chocolate, walnuts, hazelnuts, special boxes, brown paper candy cups, measuring scales, steel covered tables, copper bowls, temperature gauges, huge trays, Kitchen Aid mixers, flavourings  - all kinds of things around to make candy with.

Of course I have two parents - and so I have four grand-parents.  My mother's father, Grandpa Stretcher, I never knew, because he died when I was only two.  But Grandma Stretcher I certainly knew well.

False step

How Reese Peery and Lois Parker came to marry one another Susan does not know.  Their marriage may have taken place as late as the beginning of 1914, although it seems possible that it would have been earlier.  Reese would have been 31 then, Lois 27.  We suppose - and statistics may support the idea - that people tended to marry young 'back then.'  Sue's father - Edwin Parker Peery - was born 16 October, 1914.  There is no reason to doubt - and, with the knowledge we have of Lolo's character and beliefs, every reason to believe - that they were married more than nine months before that.

But beliefs and character may have been at the root of their separation.  'Parker' (as he was always known) was born - and never knew his father.  Sue does not know when Reese and Lolo were divorced, but from her memories, she is sure that it was when her father was still an infant.

One fact of the world they lived in is that scandalous facts - and divorce was certainly a scandal - were simply not spoken about.  One might be forgiven for thinking that a little more reticence about such things would not go amiss today; nevertheless, the greater openness of human relationships since, perhaps, the latter part of the Twentieth Century, might have been a good thing.

The fact is that Lolo appears simply not to have known that her son never met his father.  Sometime after Lolo's death (in 1983) Parker told Sue - perhaps by letter? - that Lolo had told him she had always assumed he had been in contact with his father - and simply chose not to talk with her about it.  Perhaps it might be upsetting to do so.

Parker's business through most of his life was in advertising.  He had an advertising business that took him, at times, all over the United States, and specifically, quite regularly, to various parts of California.

And Reese had, apparently, moved to California.  He had at least one brother and one sister - and Parker had, in fact, been in the habit of visiting them from time to time.  In 1962, Sue - about 16 years old - travelled (on the coach) to California, to visit her mother's relations.  And on this trip she visited a man who must have been Reese's brother: George Peery.  Sue's father told her that he himself had, more than once, visited George, and a woman, who might have been a sister, or perhaps a daughter or niece.

The matter is one of some poignancy.  One wonders what Parker's life would have been like had he had his father at home.  Better?  Worse?  Different, and perhaps different in important ways, one may be sure.

But, though Sue never knew her paternal grandfather, her paternal grandmother was of very great importance in her life.  Lolo may have been, in some ways, one of the very most important influences on her.

Reese Howe Peery

In 1828, in Tazewell County, Virginia, George Catlett Peery - two of whose great-grandfathers had moved from Northern Ireland to Virginia in the 1740s - was born.  George's great-grandfathers had settled first in Augusta County; both Augusta and Tazewell County are in the western part of the state, and, in the 1740s, must have been pioneering territory.

By 1828, however, the area may have seemed to tame - or too limiting.  George's father Archibald moved his family to Grundy County, Missouri, where George was born.

Perhaps George was afflicted with the wanderlust.  For his son Leslie Thomas appears to have been born in Minnesota - but his son Reese Howe Peery was born in Grundy County.

Leslie died in Multnomah Village, in Portland, and thus one infers that he took Susan's young grandfather there.  And about 1900 - when Reese was about 18 - Lois Parker, 14 years old, moved to Portland.

What is striking is that her grandmother Lolo and her grandfather Reese had lived some 10 or 12 miles apart in Missouri - and now lived 2 or 3 miles apart in Portland.  It seems likely to me that  this connexion is not purely coincidental.

Moving to a place like Oregon at the end of the 19th Century may have smacked somewhat still of pioneering to the intended emigrants.  I recall, in 1964, when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, talking with a co-worker in the language laboratory.  Roy was from Alabama.  He had experienced something of the relative ignorance of persons from that time of 'The West' when his great-aunt - who had never been out of her small town in Alabama before - came to visit him in Berkeley.  The lady - who had probably been born about the same time as Susan's grandmother - arrived in the evening on the train, and was taken by Roy to the apartment building where he lived.

The next morning he was awakened by a very worried great-aunt.  Had there been, she wanted to know, trouble with Indians recently?  She was very serious about it.  She took him downstairs to the tiny backyard of the apartment building.  Someone's child had apparently shot an arrow into a tree.

We laugh, but the changes from that time even to mid-century have been very great.  Jesse James was killed, at age 35, in 1882, the year Susan's grandfather was born.

Susan knows little of her paternal grandfather.  Somehow he married Lois Parker.  Perhaps they had known one another before moving to Oregon, perhaps not.  On 16 October, 1914, Sue's father, Edwin Parker Peery, was born.  Reese's and Lolo's marriage did not last long after that.

The Parkers

We have no evidence that Susan's great-great-uncle is "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker - but it is not impossible.

Charles Cracraft Parker was born the 28th of March, 1852 in Trenton, Missouri - at least, if he was not born there, he certainly lived there at the time that Susan's grandmother Lois (Lolo) was born.  I suppose, in fact, that any relation between CC Parker and Isaac Parker was distant.  Judge Isaac was born in 1838, apparently in Ohio, although his first work as a lawyer was in St Joseph, Missouri - some 70 miles away, and not on the river.  Interesting to speculate :-)

CC married Hattie Brockett (or Brackett?  The family name Brockett appears in Sue's Parker relations, but such skimpy information as the web yields spells her name Brackett), and, in 1880, their first child, a son, Elbridge Tracy Parker (always known as Tracy and as "Uncle Doc").  Tracy is one of the many essential links in the chain that leads to Susan, for Tracy, perhaps in 1899 or 1900, moved to Philomath, Oregon.

Tracy was an osteopath.

Osteopathy is called, in that Wikipedia article, an 'alternative medical practice,' and is, therefore, and perhaps for good reason, suspect.  It is, nevertheless widely practised today - but seems to have had its origins precisely in the time and in the area where Tracy Parker grew up.  Tracy was born in 1880; the article says the term 'osteopathy' was first used in 1874 by Andrew Taylor Still, who founded the first osteopathic training institute, A. T. Still University, in Kirksville, Missouri.  That Tracy was trained there is not, then, surprising.

How much training is required to be an osteopath?  Modern osteopaths, at least in the United States, require as much as an ordinary medical doctor - four years of medical school and three years of residency.  They are, in fact, fully-trained doctors, with a specialisation added.  In New Zealand they are more limited.

Tracy, by contrast, must have required considerably less, for, if Susan's memories are correct, he can have been at most twenty when, a fully-qualified osteopathic physician, he moved to Oregon.

CC Parker had seven children: Lucy (1882), Haddie (1883), Lois (1886), Vara (1887), Marcia (1893), and Helen (1900) - and Helen was born (14 July) in Albany, Oregon, whereas all the others were born in Trenton.

Susan's belief is that Tracy - "Uncle Doc" as he was by then - had qualified in osteopathy, in Missouri, and was then sponsored by someone in Oregon to come there to practise his medicine, in Philomath, and that as a result the whole Parker clan moved to Oregon.

Since Tracy was born in March, 1880, and his youngest sister was born in July, 1900, in Albany, I infer that he had qualified very young.

Susan says that the whole family, then, moved immediately to Laurelhurst, in Portland.  I think there must have been some intermediate residency elsewhere first, since the article in that link says that Laurelhurst was a housing development started in 1909 from the purchase of a large farm.  In any case, Laurelhurst was their home thereafter - and Tracy is said to have built the first house in Laurelhurst.

Having got this far - with Susan's grandmother Lolo, now about fourteen years old, living in Oregon, can we tell how her young grandfather Reese Peery got there?

Virginia, 1740

In 1606, King James I of England and James VI of Scotland (the same man :-)) began an enterprise - the Plantation of Ulster - one of whose consequences was the bringing into being of my wife, Susan Parker Peery.

I have tried for a year or more to get Susan to begin writing a series of memoirs - believing that if my children have wanted me to do this, they will much more want their mother's history.  As Sue seems unlikely ever to take this in hand, I have decided to try to tell her story myself.

I had thought, actually, of ghost-writing it - of telling it in the first person - but something in me finds that abhorrent.  Let you listen to the actual person!  Nevertheless, I will have to nag her for the facts.

But one fact I need not nag her about: the origins of the Peery side.

What appears to be the case is that a Peery was one of the very early Mormons.  And the Mormon interest in genealogy - based on St Paul's obscure (well, obscure to me; the Mormons think it is clear enough) reference in I Corinthians 15:29 to the 'baptism for the dead,' the Mormons teach that we can be baptised in retro for those who were not baptised in life - and thus have an industry established to search for dead ancestors for whom to be baptised.

This page is one of many on the web of Peery family history.  The very briefest outline appears to be:

• 1740 - 4 Scots-Irish (hence the reference to the Plantation of Ulster above - James's attempt to Protestantise Ireland) brothers came to Virginia (Augusta and Tazewell Counties)
• 1817 or thereabouts - Peerys began to migrate to Missouri (Grundy County)
• sometime before 1907 - George Catlett Peery migrates to Portland, Oregon - or anyway, to Multnomah County

And George Catlett begat Leslie Thomas, who, around the 16th of August, 1882, begat Reese Howe.  And, on 16 October, 1914, Edwin Parker Peery, father of Susan Parker Peery, was born!

Ah - but what is that 'Parker' in there about?

Johnny - and other stuff

We just heard from Johnny who is in Sydney. He has sent to us a couple of photos of Helen's kids. They are all in downtown Sydney while Helen's husband is attending a medical conference. It looks like they are having fun and the weather is good.

I am always glad when our kids can get together. Johnny will come home for a couple of weeks in April. We have a lot of jobs for him to do - cleaning the gutters, painting the garage wall, sorting out the numerous items of things he has has stored here since leaving home in 1995. There isn't too much stuff but I want him to sort thru it.

We are now gearing up for the coming weekend which is "concert time". John plays in an orchestra - on his new horn - and is at a rehearsal at the moment. There will be two concerts next weekend - one on Saturday night and the next is Sunday afternoon. The venue is now closer to our house - about twenty-five minutes away. I go to every concert and we have friends who are also going thru the year.

Gotta go! More next week. Or maybe not. Next week is the concert. More next chance I get

Helensville

It is Sunday afternoon and we have returned from Helensville. Eddie will be 29 on 14 March and we went up there to have an early birthday party with him and his family. We had a good time and I got to hold their new dog for as long as I liked.

Eddie's job is going really well and is not affected by the current economic trouble.

We had a BBQ and sat around talking and telling stories. No one in the family is really "shy or retiring", so it can get pretty loud....a lot of fun.

Helensville is a small town with a lot of history. It is located on the Kaipara Harbour and was important during the kauri milling many years ago. The past twenty years have seen it dip low in jobs but it is certainly making a come-back. The main street has been improved and the train from Auckland is currently running four (?) times a day which makes it possible for commuters to work in town.

I love the place. There are many old homes on the hillside and Eveline (Eddie's wife) and I often get in her car and drive around town looking at them. There are also shops to visit and we have fun.

Eveline's parents own a Bed and Breakfast inn on the mainstreet. It was originally the first hospital in Helensville. The building is very old and her parents have fixed it up - it is wonderful. There are two main bedrooms with private bathrooms and also a wing that has smaller, single rooms and two rooms for backpackers - The BB overlooks the harbour.

Eveline works at the BB for her parents when they need her. They can be very busy at times.

Furniture

My sister Candace has recently told me that she has been reading this Blog. She is three years younger than I am and she has helped me to remember details long forgotten.

I am not sure if she was as aware as I was of the next thing I will write about. There seemed to be a theme of "furniture" that ran through our family, especially on my father's side.

Most of our relatives lived in houses that were built sometime between 1905 - 1920. These houses had many similiar details that I later found out were representive of the "Arts and Crafts" design.

Both my father's mother, Lois Peery, and her brother-in-law, Frank Wire, worked at a large furniture manufacturer business in Portland called Doernbecher's. I have looked up information about this company and they often had over 1,000 employees.

Doernbecher's was functioning for many, many years in Portland. My grandmother worked as a payroll clerk and my great uncle as one of the managers. I can remember meeting Lolo at the furniture plant when I was young. It was located in a gully near the neighbourhood that she lived in.

The family on my Dad's side talked about furniture a lot: the names of various types, the manufacturers, the quality of various pieces - on and on. I can still remember the name of the importer of the carpets (Khartojian or something like that - I can pronounce it but not spell it!) they had on their floors - there were large Persian rugs in all of the rooms of the houses.

Another furniture topic was upholstery - who did the best job, where the fabric was from - I was often taken to furniture sales and displays. My great uncle would let the family know who was having a sale in Portland - we would go to it....just to look. These were boring Saturday mornings for me but I knew that if I behaved, there was a piece of pie and a coke waiting at the local café, later.

My grandmother and her sisters lived in Laurelhurst in Portland. My grandmother's house was the first one built in that neighbourhood. I learned this from looking into the history of the area. There is a large park near one of the boundaries with a small lake. We spent a lot of time at Laurelhurst Park.

Well, enough of that for now, but I have always retained a real interest in furniture - at least browsing on ebay and dreaming :-)

The Farm and Candy Making

The farm had a number of buildings on the property besides the main house. There was a building not far from the house on the main driveway that was quite large and had a porch. This may have been used as a "gatekeepers" house originally.

Now that I think of it, my grandfather probably stayed out there when he was alive. As I said earlier, the farm was purchased by him for his retirement and he travelled to it frequently from Portland.

My memory is that my father used it as an office and storage space. It was painted white with a tinge of pink and had gingerbread decoration on the outside - we called it the "candy house".

My father and his mother, Lois Parker Peery, bought a candy making business in Portland that was for sale after World War II. Their intention was go into business together but it never happened. I am not sure why but we had many of the untensils, candy trays, copper pots, marble slabs, metal covered tables, etc... for a long time. I never gave all this stuff much thought when I saw it around our homes later.

What my father and his mother did do was make candy at various times during the year as gifts to family and friends. Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day - I think that was it.

They made "creams", toffee, rocky road and taffy (sometimes). When we moved from Portland to Seattle, they divided up the job and my father would make some of the candy in Seattle and my grandmother would make some in Portland.

I remember the candy boxes, the small, dark paper cups that held the individual pieces candy, tons of chocolate, flavorings, crused peppermint, walnuts, filberts that was used. Oh, and the themometers - they had very big ones to test the chocolate, etc.

I spent a of time putting candy into the paper cups and then in to boxes and when I was able to drive, I also did the deliveries.

The last time my father made candy was December, 1982. Lolo (what we called his mother) had died earlier that month at 97. She had long finished making candy but she always loved to get a box from him and also know that some friends were also receiving them....so he never quit until she died.

I remember that they loved to go into "See's Candy" and "van Dyne's Candy" in the Portland area just to taste the latest types that were available. They would buy a selection and then talk endlessly about the quality, etc....

Shall I next time write about the furniture interest that also existed in the family? Okay - that was even more intense than the candy making.

Square Dance

Before I forget - my parents belonged to various community groups in the area. My father was a volunteer fireman - very exciting for us. He belonged to the Boring, Oregon Fire Department. This group had functions that the familes could attend.

Square dances were really popular and also the food provided at them. They were held in the Boring Community Hall.

I can see couples swirling around a huge dance floor with some guy dressed in a cowboy shirt and boots singing up on the stage -"Hey Goodlookin' - Whatcha Got Cookin'? - How's About Cookin' Somethin' Up With Me." I remember thinking that maybe he was a baker.

I knew a lot of the people on the dance floor but until those evenings I hadn't known that they could dance like that. It seemed very fast, confident and orderly. I wanted to squaredance, too.

All for now -

Mum

September 1946

Spokane, Washington was where I was born. I know nothing of the place as my parents returned to Portland, Oregon the following year. I have a few photos of the year we were in Portland staying in a house near my mother's parents. The house was in the Sellwood District - Bybee Avenue.

When I was nearly two, we moved to a farm outside of Portland. This place I remember a lot about. It had been bought by my mother's father, Everett Stretcher.

At some point I will check the location and include it.

I do not know when my grandfather bought the farm, but I believe that it was in the early 40's.

It consisted of sixty acres and the main house was located on a corner of the property. The house was two stories and we could see Mt. Hood in the distance from the kitchen window.

This farm was my grandfather's "retirement farm". He continued to live in Portland with my grandmother, Clara Stretcher, and drive out to the country to work on the farm.

I have photos of Grandpa Stretcher wheeling me in a wheelbarrow loaded with pumpkins.

Unfortunately, he died in 1948. I believe he was 67 at the time. My parents continued to live on the farm until 1953.

Grandpa Stretcher had grown up on a farm in Indiana and then moved to Portland, Oregon as a young man. He had lived in the city but had always wanted to own and work on a farm again.

His farm provided many things for us. There was an apple orchard, nut trees, vegetable garden, a barn with hay to play in, and old truck left in the barn that my sister and I played in.....but what I remember the most were the neighbours.

Across the road, south, were the Wetzel's. They had a big farm and two boy who were older. Mrs. Wetzel made bread and I would cross the road to get loaves from her to take home. She would often give me a piece of the bread with butter and jam on it. The smell was wonderful.

Across the main road, east, were the Potriff's. They were an older couple who had a big piece of property with a huge vegetable garden. They also grew a lot of berries. I can remember going over with my mother to pick strawberries.

The Potriff's were originally from Canada. They were wonderful to us and really enjoyed our family. Mr. Potriff thought that my sister Candace was very cute. She always showed interest in his garden. He called her "Kansas".

I knew that when we went to the Potriff's berry patch it was jam making time. This was stressful as my mother would have huge pots of berries cooking on the stove at home and then the berries would hang in a cotton bag hung from an open ladder to strain before they were then made into jam.

There are certain events that stand out in my mind while living on the farm. We saw television for the first time (Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, 1953) at a neighbour's house. I remember coming into their livingroom, which was filled with people sitting on chairs, and seeing this large, wooden box against one wall with a small screen at the top of it - we were all suppose to be watching the coronation......well, sort of.....the reception wasn't very good, the screen was small and the event wasn't very interesting as I was six years old.

I can also remember my mother sitting in front of the new radio/record player combination that my parents had recently bought (another big box that was made of beautiful wood with doors) trying to listen to the coronation. My sister and I must have been bothering her because she was trying to tell us to be quiet so she could listen. We were used to hearing children's radio stories coming out of this new box not this boring event that seemed to go on forever.

My mother had told us quite a bit about the new Queen. She had even bought us a children's book at the bookstore near her mother's house in Sellwood - bookstore on Bybee Avenue - that showed the life story of these sisters in England. I remember thinking, "What happened to them?" Now all we have is this unclear picture on the television to see and nothing good on the new radio to listen to because of this world event involving these sisters.

Never finished the section about the neighbours but that will be later. I also went to school for the first time while living at the farm.

I could go on forever! Maybe I won't :-)