I found it in the shed of my parents’ home in Tahlequah. It was a strange-looking object; metal and heavy, sort of resembling an axe without the handle. “What is it?” I asked Mom.
She seemed surprised that I didn’t know. “Why, it’s an adze,” she said.
“What’s it for?”
“Papa used one for splitting wood shingles,” she told me.
So, I started wondering how many other people in this day and time would not know the purpose of an adze. I wondered if our hometown newspaper, The Daily Press, would be interested in a story about this tool of the past. As it turned out, they were. So began a “Looking Back” column centered around my mother’s childhood at Etta Bend. Mom didn’t think anybody would be interested in reading about life as it was in the early 1900s in Cherokee County because it was such a familiar thing to her. She didn’t consider it newsworthy but other people did. I am glad and thankful that she told me those stories because if she hadn’t, I would never have gotten to know my grandparents when they were bringing up their family on their Etta Bend farm. And I wouldn’t have known of the adventures shared by my mother, her sisters and little brother. Later, those newspaper stories became the basis for The Heritage of Etta Bend and Remembering Etta Bend.
Almost any object or experience can be a vehicle to carry readers on a trip to the past, sort of a magic carpet to transport us to another time and place. For example, the adze. Think about the things we see in antique shops or still have in our homes. Most of us have at least one kerosene lamp. They aren’t essential any more unless the electricity goes out but at one time, this was the only way people lit their homes. Just imagine what stories could evolve around a grandparent or a great-grandparent carrying that lamp into a dark bedroom to light the way for a child who was afraid of the dark.
I take my well-lighted home for granted but when my mother was young, it was a different story. Those kerosene lamps didn’t take care of themselves. Glass chimneys had to be cleaned, the wicks, trimmed. And of course, there must be a good supply of coal oil to fill the bases.
I enjoy a good cup of hot coffee to start the day. My electric coffee maker brews up several cups in short order. But it was not always so. On the Latty farm, my grandparents bought coffee beans and ground them at home. Pappy lit in the cookstove with kindling first, then put in sticks of wood and waited for the fire to burn. Only then could water be heated and coffee made. It took a while. Perhaps your story could center around a coffee grinder or coffee pot, or that first cup of coffee on a cold winter morning when at last the cookstove was burning well.
I want to encourage each of you to write. Talk about your parents, how they met and where, their wedding. Maybe you had an ancestor who was a soldier in World War I or World War II. I remember Mom telling me about a large group of friends and family going to the train depot in Tahlequah to see the young men go off to World War I. I can imagine the hugs, the tears, the shouted good-byes and soldiers waving as the train slowly huffed down the track, taking them into an uncertain future. The train doesn’t run through Tahlequah any more. The tracks and the depot are gone but it is important that people know it was there at one time.
And then, there is your own story. Your children or grandchildren would love to read about you. It’s nice to know chronological facts and they are important but you don’t have to start with, “I was born on…” You can jump right into the middle of a story. Use a familiar vehicle or a favorite memory to carry you and your readers back a few years. I’ve ridden into my childhood on the back of my brother’s horse Chappo and I took a trip in time back to some unfamiliar woods and felt again the panic of being unable to find my way home.
Do you have a necklace or a watch that belonged to a great-grandparent? Write about the person who owned it. In one of my favorite pictures of my mother, taken when she was probably 14 years old, she is wearing a cute two-piece dress she called a “middy”. It had a square collar that was patterned after the suit sailors wore. On her feet were button-up black shoes and on her head was a stylish hat. She told me that her aunt, Effie Stewart, made that hat. That was the first I knew that Aunt Effie was a milliner.
The world is full of stories and I admit I’m partial to tales of the past because they bring to mind a more peaceful, slower time and people who were by nature honest and trustworthy. Whatever your story, nobody but you can tell it. You don’t have to use somebody else’s words or ideas; use your own. They’ll do just fine. The really vital thing is, if you and I and others don’t preserve these stories, they will be lost forever. We need to know about the past in order to explain the present and point the way to the future.
Tomorrow, I want to take up the fun of writing books for your children or grandchildren. Oh, I don’t mean professionally bound books although I’ll admit, that kind is pretty nice. These are books you put together about events in the life of your special child. You can illustrate with pictures they draw or photographs. Take my word for it, they’ll love them! And you will be creating a bridge to the past that you and others will enjoy traveling.
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