Back East, Part II

St. Michael's parish in Mitchell Township. My ancestors helped to build this church. They are buried next to it.

(Scroll down for Part I of this thread if you haven’t read that bit yet.)

Do you know who your great-great grandparents were? Do you know their names and where they lived?

Most people don’t. In the years that I spent researching Tainted Legacy, it occurred to me more and more that I had never thought past my grandparents. (I suspect my mother was always secretly glad of that, since she didn’t want to talk about her grandmother to anyone before the family secret was laid bare by her curious and persistent daughter.) Genealogy, in the pre-discovery-of-Bertha-Gifford days, was boring to me. I mean, I knew that my ancestors had come to America from Ireland—Dad never let us forget it. But, let’s face it; those were dead people. What did they have to do with me? Sigh. What a self-absorbed little ingrate I am at times.

I began to change in my thinking during long conversations with my cousin, Danny Fiocchi. We talked about Bertha a lot because I was immersed in writing the book and then I was immersed in finding a publisher. But those talks eventually led to him sharing about discoveries his brother Mick had made about the Murphy side of our family. After Tainted Legacy was finally published, I began traveling back to Missouri every summer to promote the book, give talks on Bertha, roam around in cemeteries where Bertha and others are buried, and visit all the new friends and cousins I made during the writing and research. And with every year that passed, Danny encouraged me to take a summer out and head up to Wisconsin to visit one particular graveyard up there.

Well, Danny my love, I’ve finally done it. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, that you are no longer around so that you could’ve gone with us—although I felt your presence with us every step of the way, let me tell you.

This is me, standing by the headstone--how grand it is!--for Jeremiah and Elizabeth Murphy.

My great-great grandparents, Jeremiah (Jerry) and Elizabeth (Betsy) Murphy traveled—somehow, dear lord, making that rough trip over the ocean—from Ireland to the baby country of America. After living for a time in Massachusetts, presumably to work and save their money, they made their way to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and then set out to find land on which to homestead in Mitchell Township, walking the twenty miles out into the country to find the perfect spot. And they found it, boy howdy, they found it.

Cousin Mick was our tour guide when we drove out to Mitchell. From his careful study of plat maps and other historical information, he has been able to determine precisely where that early Murphy family built their home (which is no longer standing). Oh, the countryside there! The green rolling hills and fertile soil, the trees and trees and more trees! (Actually, the trees are so thick, they have obscured a view of where the house would have stood. Had I taken my hiking boots with me, I would’ve been game to tromp on through.)

Can you imagine it? No paved road, no electricity, no phone lines, twenty miles from town. “Yes, dear, I think you’re right; this is the perfect spot for our new home.” Of course, they had to get a house built before the winter came on. I hear Wisconsin winters can be a bit chilly….

The courage of those two! Oh, wait, did I mention that five of their six children had already been born, and that Jerry and Betsy were nearly forty by the time they booked passage on a barge to travel down the Erie Canal to Lake Erie, then travel by steamboat across the Great Lakes to Sheboygan? Yeah. And then the seven of them walked to Mitchell Township. (“Mary, keep on eye on your little brother! You know John is always running so far ahead I can’t see him!” I can just hear Betsy….)

But I know something about wanting a better life for your children… and how you just gird yourself up and then keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how tired you are…. But hey, I’ve always had the comforts of electricity and a car and running water and a functional indoor toilet. Well, most of the time, anyway.

Two years after homesteading, Jerry and Betsy gave birth to their youngest son, Peter Henry Murphy, my great-grandfather. My dad was named after him. He would later marry Julia O’Brien, and the two would have ten children, including my Grandpa George. George and his wife, Delia, had seven children, including my father, who was also born in Mitchell Township.

Beneath this humble stone lie Peter and Julia Murphy, my great-grands.

Knowing all this history (which has been gleaned from multiple sources and carefully set down for the family by Cousin Mick), I stood over the graves of Jerry and Betsy, Peter and Julia, with profound humility and gratitude. Our family, down through the generations, has never lacked for work ethic. We have always been less interested in amassing wealth and more interested in the values of family and home life. Well, and the value of a good Irish whiskey, let’s be honest.

I am grateful as well to Danny and Mick, who gently encouraged me over the years to take this trip until I finally did it. There is a sense of respect that is cultivated in learning of one’s ancestry, one’s own personal history. Thank you, Jerry and Betsy, for agreeing together to leave one beautiful land to come to another. It is an understatement to say that I am privileged to be here because of the sacrifices you made.

Peter and Julia Murphy, my great-grandparents, with their youngest son between them, surrounded by nine of their ten children.

Back East, Part I

I spent some time in Wisconsin and Illinois last week, and I have some thoughts on that trip. But today is Father’s Day, so this first part is going to involve tattling on my dad.

My dad was born in Wisconsin but his parents moved to Illinois when he was a wee lad, and my dad grew up in the area of Highwood and Highland Park (roughly 25 miles west of Chicago). At one point, they—and by “they,” I mean Grandma and Grandpa Murphy plus their seven children—lived in this house:

I know this because my sweet cousin Donny scooped us up the morning after we arrived in Illinois and drove us on a tour of Highland Park, Highwood and Fort Sheridan—where my dad would have gone when he enlisted in the army. (Yeah, it was a goose-bumpy moment, to realize we were traversing the same ground he would have covered as a gung-ho twenty-two-year-old who was eager to get overseas and serve his beloved country in WWII.)

Donny showed us the house, and we had a conversation about what it must’ve been like for nine people to be living there—with the only bathroom being an outhouse in the back yard. (Side note here: How on earth did mamas potty train babies when they had to run them across the yard to get them pants-down-and-seated in time?)

But what really made me happy was when Donny drove us to this hill:

I had to get out and take a photo, and I hope you can see from the photo how steep the hill is. Now close your eyes and imagine two things: 1. The hill is covered in snow. 2. There is no rock barrier between the bottom of the hill and the lake (aka, "the big lake," Lake Michigan). Hold that thought.

When I was fifty-ish, it occurred to me that, since my father had died when I was only eight years old, and for other reasons which are just sad and don’t bear repeating here, most of my impressions of him had come from my mother, who, as it turns out, wasn’t the most reliable narrator of my dad’s life story. When I had that revelation, I wrote to my dad’s sister, my very sweet Aunt Betty, and I asked her to tell me about what my dad was like before he married my mom. I’m going to skip over the back story of everything that happened to that letter after it arrived in Illinois and was passed from aunt to uncle to cousin and back again, and just say this: Some months later, a CD arrived for me in the mail. On it were the voices of my Aunt Betty and my cousin Mick, the latter interviewing the former about my dad. Since then, I’ve wept my way through that CD numerous times—all the more so because Aunt Betty has now passed. But my favorite story involved that steep hill… and my dad… and a sled… and my Aunt Betty. Here is the story in Betty’s own words:

“There were nine of us stuffed in that little brick house--Mom, Dad and seven kids. One winter Saturday morning Mom had things to do so she told my older brother, 'Pete, you can’t go any place until Betty is dressed. You take her with you today.' Little did she know what a treat I was going to have!

I was four or five at the time and Pete was three years older. He grumbled but he got me dressed and set off with me and a sled. ‘This is going to be the most exciting day of your life,’ my big brother promised me. ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. All he’d say was, ‘You’ll see when we get down to the lake.’

It wasn’t that far a walk. Soon we came to the bluff overlooking the lake. There was a path that Highwood people used to get down to the lake. Pete stopped there and told me, ‘Listen to every word I say. I’m going to lay down on the sled. You lay on my back and hold on for dear life because it’s going to be a rough ride.’ I grabbed on with two hands. Once he made sure I had a good grip, off we went bumpity bumping down that cliff and out onto the lake. We flew through little whiffs of snow. The cold air was blowing on my face so hard I had to put it down on Pete’s back, but I kept lifting my face up because I wanted to see everything. We went far out onto the lake. ‘How far can we go?’ I asked my brother. ‘Until the ice cracks,’ he said. I wasn’t scared. I just thought, ‘Okay, he knows what he’s doing. He’s my big brother.’ Just as I thought that, the ice cracked. Peter quickly turned the sled sideways. We flew that way for a while because we were going so fast. It was a long walk back, and I was tired by the time we got to the shore.

When we got home, my mother said, ‘Look at your rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes!’ Pete hadn’t told me not to tell, and I didn’t notice his frantic signals. I said, ‘Oh, Mom, I had the best time!’ As I told of our adventures, my mother’s smiling face changed like a witch woman’s! Peter had to go to his room. I felt terrible that he got punished.”

This story is all the more endearing to me because every time I hear it, I think of all the times my big brother—three years older—placed my life and limb in jeopardy by pulling similarly dangerous stunts. Just as Aunt Betty trusted my dad, I trusted my big brother to always keep me safe, and he did. For the most part….

How fun it was, though, after hearing that story for so many years, to stand at the top of that hill, look down to the lake, and imagine the wild ride down and the slide across. At least my brother had the sense to always warn me: “Don’t tell Mom!”

Remembering Barb

Sam Maloof with one of his iconic rocking chairs. Photo from Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts.

In the late 1990’s I began writing a weekly column for the Colton City News newspaper. The gig lasted for several years, and I loved every minute of it (except, perhaps, the Sunday evening deadline). I met a handful of my readers along the way because they reached out to me via letters to the paper or by finding my website and emailing me. Barbara Tinsley was my dearest and longest enduring fan. She passed away in March.

I wish I still had Barb’s original email. I don’t know what the subject line said—something about my column, I suppose—but the body of the email was relatively short and to the point. She told me she enjoyed reading my columns, and that she’d been close to canceling her subscription to the paper, but my columns had given her something to look forward to each week in the little “throw-away” paper, so she kept paying for her subscription, and she hoped they were using some of that money to pay me. I assured her they were, and I thanked her for reaching out. Some months later a particular column resonated with her—I don’t remember which one—and I heard from her again. My daughter and her very young children were living with me at the time, and I wrote about our joy-filled chaos quite often. Barb responded by exchanging emails with me about her own children and grandchildren. Like me, she didn’t feel she’d been the best mother in the world, and she hoped to make up for some of that by being a fabulous grandma.

Over the years, our email exchanges became longer and more personal. After 9/11, I began signing all my emails to friends “Love, K.” When I signed off in this way to Barb, she wrote back immediately to let me know she wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She wasn’t raised by parents who said “I love you.” She hadn’t married a man who said it. She felt the words were something people said frivolously or superficially. “We are friends,” she wrote, “but does that mean we love each other? I don’t know.” After that, she began to sign her emails “Fondly, Barb.” So at least she was fond of me.

Barb and I stayed in touch even after the owners of the newspaper stopped paying me so I stopped writing my column. I met her in person for the first time when she came to a book signing for Tainted Legacy. Somewhere around that time, she mentioned wanting to take the tour of Sam Maloof’s home in Alta Loma (aka Rancho Cucamonga). We planned to go together, and my oldest son, also interested in Maloof’s brilliant wood-working, came along. I have many pleasant memories from that day, and no photographs, I’m sorry to say. We enjoyed every minute of our conversation over coffee beforehand, then the tour, then walking in the gardens of the estate. We promised each other we would plan similar outings in the future, my son included. Although Barb and I met for lunch two or three times in the years after, we never did visit any of the places we’d talked about going together.

When Barb moved from the Colton area to Hemet after her husband’s death, I didn’t see her again. My life was busy back then with teaching, writing, book promotion, helping with my grandkids, sorting out my quirky dog, and occasionally finding the time to hike. I just never made time for the long drive out to see her, and she was getting older and was no longer comfortable with driving long distances.

I was hopeful, though, when I moved to Calimesa a couple of years ago. Hemet is 30 minutes away. I shot off an email to Barb to ask if we could meet for lunch, though I hadn’t heard from her in quite some time.

She never answered. Then, finally, just after New Year’s, I received an email from her. The subject line said “I found you.” In the time that I hadn’t heard from her, she’d suffered a series of strokes. “I’m writing this on an iPad my son gave me to keep me occupied,” she told me. “I’m getting better, but I’ve had to re-learn some things.” It was a short email with quite a few errors—something unusual for Barb, but not surprising, given the circumstances. And she signed it, “Love, Barb.”

Over the next weeks, we corresponded, and her writing improved as she explained that, when she came out of the hospital, she needed more care, so her son moved her up to Petaluma, where he lives. Definitely too far for us to meet for lunch. But at least we were exchanging family news again.

I asked Barb for her address, and I sent her a Get Well Right Away card. Two weeks went by, then the card was returned to me. I thought maybe she’d given me the wrong address, so I called the care center to make sure I had it right—and, I’m not going to lie, to see if I could get any information about her. That’s when the very kind woman on the phone let me know they had returned my card because Barb had passed away the week before the card had arrived.

I’m not going to reiterate that sentiment about spending time with people while you have the chance. Good writers show, they don’t tell, and I want to continue to make Barb proud of me when I write.

She had a good life. She married a good man, and they were married for decades. She had children and grandchildren, and she continued to be involved in their lives as long as she could be. She was in her 80’s when she passed away.

Some years ago, when I lived in that sweet cabin in the wilderness, I started writing these blog posts, and I let Barb know how to find them. She was thrilled. And if I didn’t post anything for a while, she sent me a quick email to nudge me. I loved that.

One more thing I have to add is this: Barb and I were very similar in our tastes in reading and writing and art and ethical, appropriate behavior. But we were far, far apart when it came to the political spectrum. Early on, we both acknowledged that fact—and afterward, we never discussed politics, which worked beautifully for our relationship.

Here’s to you, Barbara Tinsley! Cheers and Godspeed and now that you have passed, please feel free to meet up with my mom and dad and have some chats with them about books and art and me, of course. I’ll see you again eventually. I have no doubt of that.