My grandparent's wedding picture in 1910
I was poking around looking at click bait on my computer and came across an article, with pictures, of things people found by surprise, in their newly purchased old houses.
I was surprised at how many of the old houses listed had wells in them that the owners had not known about. In one house a cellar with canning jars was found. Some of the jars were just old dusty jars while some of them has fruit in them that had been canned by someone's unknown family member how many years ago.
It made my mind wander all over the place. First made me think of my Grandma Thompsen's house. It was a funky old house. There was a tiny "shoe closet" with a tiny door in Grandma's bedroom. I think all of us, the cousins, played in that little cubby of a shoe closet. There was the bathtub with the claw feet. The string along the stairs that you had to pull to get the upstairs, stairway light to turn on.
And, yes, Grandma had a well. Off of the kitchen, at the back of the house there was a back porch. Grandma's wringer washing machine was there. And off of that porch was a canning room. I guess that's what I would call it. Grandma canned fruit every year and kept the glass jars with their paraffin wax tops in that room, on the shelves. On the floor was a "hatch" door that covered the well. I remember Grandma opening the hatch so we could look down at the deep well. One time she dropped a stone down the well so we could hear how far down it would go.
Those memories of my grandmother's house brought scents to mind. The soapy smell of the back porch with the washing machine. The musty smell of the well and canning room. And the smell of old shoes in the shoe closet.
My grandmother had five sons and 14 grandchildren. I think that there are 12 of us now though I am not 100% sure. My brother is gone and my cousin Patsy. We keep loosely in touch. All of us at one time or another spent time in that old house, playing in the shoe closet.
That took my mind off in another direction. One of the things in the article about things found in old houses was a pile of old letters. I have piles of old letters , many of which I have blogged about here before. But old is a relative thing. Most of the letters I have worked on filing were written in my lifetime. There are some older letters between my in laws written during WWII. I plan to organize them one of these days.
And then my mind wandered off even further to things I can only imagine. I was wondering about my grandparents. I only knew my Grandma Thompsen. I never knew my grandfather. He had died before I was born. I believe even before any of my cousins were born. At any rate, he had left America and returned to Norway where he die and is buried.
Nobody in the family, the five Thompsen sons, would ever speak about their father. Were there any letters between my grandparents after he went back to Norway? Did he correspond with my dad or his brothers? And what would they have said.
How did my grandparents meet? I know that they were not from the same parts of Norway . I know that they did not arrive in America together. How did they end up knowing each other. Getting married. Raising a family?
I have photographs and genealogy. I have been to the farm where my grandfather was born and lived as a child. He was only 17 when he came to the US, still a child, but a man on his own.
I have visited my grandfather's grave several times. I have met relatives who knew him- all of whom are dead now. I wish I could conjure him up and talk to him. Or even see him.
I used to sit in my father's lap a lot when I was little. And I used to comb my dad's hair too. I remember the scent of him. I wonder if his father had a distinctive smell? I am sure that sounds funny to some folks, but I am tuned into smells.
And that's all I can think of to write now.
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