#52stories - Week 15 (Apr 12th) - published late

Grandparents.

My paternal grandparents were John Addison Alexander and Janet Ingles Fultz. He died when my father was 3 years old.  She died when I was 2 years old.  So I never knew him and don't remember her.  John Addison Alexander was a farmer and a baseball player.  Family lore says he was asked to try out for the Washington Senators, but his mother wanted him to stay home and take care of the farm.  So he stayed home.  Here is a picture of him with his team.  And another that is a portrait taken in the early 1900s and the last one is of him on the farm.  His face is often obscured by the shadow from his hat.

John Addison Alexander Sr

John Alexander with his son, Jim.

While I didn't know Janet Ingles Fultz, I know she was a remarkable woman.  After her husband's death, she managed to raise three boys and run a farm during the Great Depression.  Before she was married, she taught school.  Family lore says that she attended Harrisonburg State Normal School, now James Madison University. She turned her home into a Tourist Home and rented out rooms to bring in income,  Dad and his brothers slept in one of the rooms in the house. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Here are two pictures of her.  The top one is about 1918 and the bottom one is more likely 1940s.

Janet Fultz Alexander with her son, Jim

My maternal grandparents were John Graham Barnett and Gracie Allen Van Pelt. He died before I was born, so I did not know him.  She was the only one of my four grandparents that I knew and remember.  John Graham Barnett worked for the Richmond Dairy. He also took care of his family.  He built a house next door to his own for his mother and sister to live in.  My cousin, Dorothy, told me that he was a very loving person and he really liked children.  My Mom remembers him taking her with him to visit relatives.  Here are pictures of him as a baby, a young man, and with my grandmother.

 

My first memories of my Grandma Barnett are when she visited us on the farm.  She stayed in the living room and slept on the sleep sofa.  She always had life savers on hand and sucked on them.  I also remember her at her home in Richmond and going to church with her.  She knew all the songs by heart and never looked at the hymnal.  She used to tell me that she had a very long name: Gracie Allen Van Pelt Royall Barnett.  The first three are her maiden name, Royall is her first husband's surname, and Barnett is my grandfather's surname. Here are pictures of her as a baby, a young woman, and one of her as I remember her,  The latter was taken about 1959.

Grandma Barnett and Ruth Barnett Finke

I remember visiting Grandma many times at her house on Florida Avenue in Richmond; it was stucco and the white rubbed off on your clothes and hands when you touched it.  An alley ran behind the house.  Her yard was full of flowers and she had a goldfish pond.  The house had a basement with a dirt floor and a big metal grate in the floor between the living room and dining room through which the heat was blown into the house.  The grate could get very hot and Mom says we all got burned at one time or another on that grate.  There was a swinging door between the dining room and kitchen; I think it might have been a Dutch door.  Her phone was on a telephone table at the top of the stairs and the table had a seat attached to it--these are sometimes referred to as telephone chairs or gossip chairs. She had a wooden Morris chair in her living room that I found fascinating.  I hope one of my cousins still has that chair! She had wooden book cases with the framed glass fronts that would swing forward and slide above the shelf--I think they are called lawyer's shelves.  Later I saw many of those in government offices, but hers were the first of that kind that I had ever seen; and last time I saw them, they were at my Uncle Scott's house.  She had a metal glider on the front porch.  She later had to move in with Ruth's family and then to a nursing home as dementia set in.  One of the last times she visited us in Winston-Salem, she ended up losing her diamond ring.  We were living on Araminta Drive at the time.  We searched everywhere for it but never found it.  We speculated that she wrapped it in a tissue and flushed it down the toilet by mistake.  She was so distraught. The last time I saw her, she did not really know who we were.  She died when I was in college.

#52stories - Week 14 (Apr 5th) - published late

Siblings. I have three of them: my older sister, Cathie; my brother, Graham; and my younger sister, Sally.

Here's an early picture of the oldest three of us.  Sally was born at the time this was taken, but the one picture I have of all of us taken in this sitting is not very flattering of her and she would not appreciate my including it. This was taken about 1958.

Nancy, Graham, Cathie

Cathie tells me she taught me everything I know.  She would return home from school, and I would be her student.  She is also the self-described "experimental" model, which has been somewhat confirmed by Mom not letting me do things that she let Cathie do, like take a bath with your socks on. What could go wrong?  When we lived on the farm, Cathie sprinkled horseradish powder on a slice of loaf bread and gave it to me to eat. She talked me into biting into an unripe persimmon by doing it first and saying how yummy it was.  Let me assure you that unripe persimmons define the word bitter.  And when we were playing cowgirls, she tied me up and pulled me off of a chair, my chin split, and I had to get stitches.  But that's about all of the bad stuff.  We were far enough apart in age that we didn't have that much to do with each other growing up; especially after Graham came along and Cathie started school.  We became closer after we became adults.  Right, Cathie?

Graham is only 17 months younger than I am, so I cannot remember him not being around.  And he's the one I remember playing with the most as we were growing up, especially on the farm where neighbors were not close by.  We explored the woods and creek together.  Once after my Dad had burned some trash out behind the house, Graham was waving a burning stick around and ended up burning my toe.  Also, in the Buena Vista house, he jumped off the wall, yelled "Geronimo" and started chasing me.  I ended up falling and getting a large gash in my leg; you can still see the scar today. I've told both of these stories before.  We also learned about dinosaurs together because he had a set of plastic ones whose names were imprinted on them.  After we moved to Winston, we spent less time together because we had other friends close by.  He thinks he's Mom's favorite.  But he's really only her favorite son. Right, Graham?

Sally is the baby of the family.  She was born when I was already in school, so I didn't really "play" with her growing up.  She is the only sibling whose actions did not result in my having a scar! One time, we heard a thump, thump, thump; it was Sally tumbling down the stairs.  She was just crawling at the time and Dad was supposed to be watching her.  Another memory on the farm  climbed up on a table and got some matches and lit one.  It dropped on some papers on a table, but I was able to blot out the flames before they spread.  She always seemed happy when we were children and still does today.  We also became closer after we became adults.  Right, Sally?

Growing up, I didn't always appreciate having so many siblings...too crowded in the car, not enough food for seconds, having to share the bedroom and bathroom.  But each of them have added to and continue to add to my life.  Love you all!

Here are a couple more sibling photos.

Graham, Cathie, Sally (see, happy!), and Nancy about 1958 in Fairfield

Nancy, Cathie, Sally, Graham in Fairfield - late 1970s or early 1980s