My Father's Hands

I wrote about my Dad, Curtis Henry Cline, in his early years a few weeks ago.  I want to reflect on him as a father today.  My father was physically strong due to working with his hands.  I loved my Father’s hands.  They were large, strong and tough from hard work.  On the emotional side, he was a tender-hearted man.  He used to read the Herald Of Holiness magazine from our church and tears would run down his eyes when he read of the needs throughout the world, or of an uplifting article.  He often picked me up in his arms and toted me around with him, when I was small, and I could feel the love he felt for me. I was a lucky child. I remember wanting a swing when I was about five years old.   I kept asking him to build me one in my sweetest voice. I knew he worked from sun up to sun down, but I was sure he could squeeze in time to make my swing.  He had a welding shop behind our home, and I guess I thought he would make it there.  One day he kneeled down on his knee to my level and with tears in his eyes said “Margaret if you want a swing as badly as you say I will build you one tomorrow.”  And he did!  He welded a metal bar across the top from our shed to another bar he buried next to our fence.  He hung log chains down from the cross bar to a wooden seat he made for me.  I thought my Dad was wonderful back when I was a little girl, and that he could do anything and continued to think so until he died December 21, 2002, at the age of ninety-one.  Curtis Henry Cline was my first hero.

Another time, I moved to St. Louis, Missouri and rented a small apartment on the third floor of the building.  Needing furniture, I asked Mom and Dad to let me use some of their extra furniture.  They agreed to help me and Dad loaded some furniture in his truck and drove from Sikeston, Missouri to my Aunt Beulah and Uncle Orville’s house where I was staying until I had furniture for the apartment.  He arrived about 10:00 am and we drove from the suburbs to St. Louis where my apartment was located.  I tried to help him move as much as possible, but it seems I was more in his way, with the furniture than a help.  Therefore, he strapped the dresser on his back and walked the three flights of steps to my new place.  He did the same thing with more furniture.  I carried the boxes and bedding.  When he got to the top of the stairs with the last piece of furniture, he stopped and asked me, “how much less are the rooms on the third floor than the ones on the first floor?”  I told him they were $30 a month less.  He said he would pay the difference for me to live on the first floor when I moved again.  He never complained, he only let me know he wished it had been on the first floor.  Whenever I needed anything, he was there for me with his usual smile.  There are many more memories I want to write but I want to concentrate on his ethics and character in the next issue.

Photographing Headstones Can Be a Challenge and a Delight

Like most genealogist, I enjoy visiting cemeteries.  In addition to photographing headstone, cemeteries are calm, serene, and provoke a sense of history.  I produce clear, readable photographs of the headstone I shoot.  I have been asked many times how I get such good shots.  Here are a few tips for visiting cemeteries and producing good pictures of your, and other people’s, ancestors.

1.     Always be aware of your surroundings.  This fact should be obvious, but there are undesirable elements in cemeteries, from snakes, to homeless people, to vagrants.  Take a long look at the area surrounding the section of the cemetery where you will be working before locking your car.  If someone make you feel uncomfortable, leave and come back later.

2.     Take time to enjoy the beauty of the cemetery.  Depending on the covenant or regulations in a given cemetery, many have beautiful artwork or sculpture work as part of headstones.  After you finish your work, take a walk to view the artwork and architecture or layout of the cemetery.

3.     Be respectful of the graves.  Do not step or sit on the stones. Walk, do not run, while visiting or working in cemeteries, and be respectfully quiet.  Do not disturb flowers or other mementos family members left on the grave.

4.     Use the sun. Taking shots at a slight angle can often make an unreadable stone suddenly come to life when the shadow cast in the etched names,  that is unreadable when viewed looking at it directly.  Of course, take photos with the sun at your back.  Cloudy days are better than sunny days at producing good headstone shots, and I avoid taking photos at noon-time because the pictures lack contrast.

5.     Problematic Flowers on Headstones.  Cemeteries or funeral homes often put the flower holder on headstones in a way that they block the view of the name.  When this happens, first take the full headstone shot.  Then, where possible, I temporarily remove the flowers from obstructing the view and take a close up of the name and date.  If it is not feasible to remove the flowers, gently hold the flowers aside long enough to take a photo.  Always return the flowers where you found them

.6.     Focus before you click.  Take a few extra seconds to make sure the picture is in focus before you take your photograph.  If you are using a cell phone to take the picture, two or three extra seconds can make a big difference in the readability of a headstone.  If a photo is out-of-focus, you have wasted your time in photographing a given headstone.

7.     Get out of the shot before you click.  Look critically at your proposed photo before you click.  Is it in focus, and is there anything showing in the picture that should not be there? Is there a shadow on the headstone making it difficult to read?  If anything is disruptive in the shot, move and try different angles. 

8.     Photograph the entrance to the cemetery. Other relatives may want to visit the cemetery, based on your photographs.  By take a picture of the entrance of the cemetery you do two things.  First, you have identified the name, in case you forget it, and second, you have given others a landmark to look for when they visit.

9.     Who is buried nearby?  Chances are that if one of your relatives is buried in a cemetery, then others are too. Take a walk down the row you were photographing, then go over two or three in each direction to see if you see a name with whom you are familiar.  If you do, take a picture while you are there.  Even if it is not an exact match to your family, it can be delete later and you took pro-active steps, just in case it was a match in the future. 

Other Items of Consideration

Set Your Quality of Photo High.   I use Adobe Elements, or like software, to enhance and organize most of my photographs. I adjust the quality on “high” and my Format to “Baseline Optimized,” and adjust the quality of the picture to 600 DPI resolution.

Don’t put off taking photos – I read somewhere that a photo today is worth more than a photo tomorrow.  This statement is true for three reasons.

  ·       Headstones age and with every year they are harder to read. I have a soft whisk broom I use to sweep away debris before photographing the headstone.  It is also better to shoot at a slight angle for readability and aesthetics.

  ·     Everything from vandalism, sink holes, storms than down trees, and more occur and your headstone may not be there a year from now.

  ·    Encroachment of new construction into areas where cemeteries exist. Often cemeteries are buried, without contacting anyone, to make way for new residential or commercial “progress.”

I strongly recommend that you photograph any and every headstone related to your family as soon as possible when good lighting circumstance is available.  Tomorrow may be too late.

        Margaret Cline Harmon lives in Zachary, Louisiana and can be contacted atmcharmon1@gmail.com.

Curtis H Cline – A Great Father and Role Model

This collage covers the early life of my father.  Curtis Cline enjoyed his parents, siblings and grandma Kline while growing up in a beautiful two-story home on the outskirts of Morehouse, Missouri.  He excelled in in his school work, especially mathematics, and wanted to go to college but the Great Depression stopped that dream.  He made All-State in Football and men who knew him from Morehouse High School, and Southeast Missouri said he could have played in the pros. 

Curtis loved his wife, Marie, and their three children and was very faithful to God and the First Church of the Nazarene.  He enjoyed teaching boys Sunday School class and stayed in touch with several of the boys after they graduated and left Sikeston.  Curtis Cline was the Sunday School Superintendent for a few years too.  Most of all, he loved working his mind and body.  He also loved food.  When he went somewhere with the family, often he took his bookkeeping with him because there was not enough time, he said, to get it done if we took time off to do leisurely things.  I remember him leaving the house at dawn and returning after the sun went down.  He was happiest when he was working or eating.  He was also happy when he was with family.  Often, he took his family with him when he drove one of the trucks to spread limestone, and to make collections.  Our family enjoyed eating out at restaurants too and some weekends, several families from church took the Tiptonville (TN) Ferry from below Charleston, MO over to Tennessee to eat catfish.  I enjoyed the ferry ride but I have never enjoyed fish or any food that comes out of the water.  I enjoyed the hush puppies.  I remember the restaurant in Tiptonville was on Kentucky Lake and most of the dining area was screened-in.  Of course, back then there was no air-conditioning.

My father was an excellent role model.  Every Wednesday, he came home at noon, went into the master bedroom, shut the door and prayed for one house.  He also fasted lunch every Wednesday.  Late in life, when he went to the nursing home in Sikeston, I received a call from the Director of the home complaining that he refused to each lunch on Wednesdays.  They tried everything but he would not eat.  They had to document it and could receive bad reviews from the State of Missouri if he did not eat.  I laughed and told her that was part of his religious belief and practice.  I had to send her a note in writing asking that he be excused from eating lunch on Wednesdays.  

He had one speed, fast.  He was funny, without trying to be, he was compassionate and had a temper now and then.  Once the temper exploded, he forgot about what made him mad within minutes.  He held no grudges and was honest as the day is long.  I feel privileged to have been the daughter of Curtis H. Cline.

Next week, I will talk about his middle to late life.

Make It Easy For People to Do Good

One of my many goals is to see all fifty state capitols in my lifetime.  I have seen thirty-four.  On a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota, I visit the state house.  I was impressed with what the people elected to write around the rotunda of that beautiful building.  They quoted one of Daniel Webster's coined phrases - “The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil."                                                                                                           

We cannot have "government of the people, by the people, for the people", without the active participation of those people.   The very essence of democracy is participation.  Back in the 1800s when Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were in the Senate, people with differing opinions debated the issues.  However, they did not try to destroy the other person as they do today.  Many of us are disappointed with the elected officials in Washington, but we need to proactive, in a respectful way, by communicating our wishes and expectations. 

It is time for the far right and the far left to re-learn how to debate and disagree without trying to destroy others, show contempt, and disrespect. We may not agree with everything President Obama does, but he is our elected leader, and we need to respect his position and not degrade, demean, debase, cheapen and devalue him as a person, but especially as our president.  If things continue in the direction they are now, I fear that the disrespectful tone will deteriorate, degenerate and destroy our form of government, as we now know it.  We must reverse the negative and destructive manner of communication.  We must remember that both sides of the political spectrum are Americans first, then they are Republican, Democratic or Tea Party affiliated.

If we are unhappy with Washington bureaucrats, then vote them out!  A swiping change in elected officials would do wonders for our country.  We need citizens representing us, not career politicians and lawyers.  The problem I have seen is that everyone agrees with the statement, EXCEPT, it does not apply to "their" federal Senator or Representative.  Continued re-election is why we have the mess we have today.  We keep re-electing OUR officials and they are embedded in their jobs and worry more about re-election than those they were elected to serve.  

Let us once again elect citizen representatives, make it easy for them to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.  Lastly, let us encourage more diplomacy, and less grandstanding in Washington.  This idea of showing respect applies to the news media too.  Please participate in our governmental process and above all VOTE for the person you feel is best qualified.  Do not side with one side of the political pendulum before examining BOTH candidates running for office.  Daniel Webster was a wise man.  We must protect politicians from themselves, as well as us.  History has proven that too often more than eight years in Washington turns good men into negative, divisive, and too often corrupt.  Let America’s political system return to being diplomatic, not destructive, selfish, and tactless.  Our form of democracy is worth it. 

Margaret Cline Harmon

I Garden Every Memorial Day

   

Every Memorial Day I think of going to a Veteran's Day service, but for whatever reason, I stay home.  It is a tradition that I work in my garden on Memorial Day. I put my hands in the earth and plant beautiful young flowers that grow to bless me and others. I always think of the brave soldiers who gave up their lives for their belief in freedom and their love for America.  Some years it rains on Memorial Day, and I am unable to work in the garden, but my memories and thoughts of the heroes who died for our country is with me all day.

My brother C. F. Cline died from an Agent Orange-related disease. He served in the U.S. Air Force for ten years and was Honorably Discharged in 1967. He died in 2009 and I miss him. He made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. I am proud of him and his sacrifice. He suffered great physical pain from the results to his exposure to Agent Orange. 

 I grow red geraniums at the front of my house and have pots of them at the entry way. On Memorial Day, and on other solemn days, the red flower of the plant symbolizes, to me, the blood that our war heroes shed for our freedom.  I believe that the Lord greets those heroes and says "well-done soldier."  God bless the family of recently fallen soldiers, and God bless America.

Grandma Price-Austill was a loving Grandmother

Carrie Rettig-Price-Austill was my maternal grandmother. Grandma Rettig married Henry Price in 1914.  In April 1915, they had one daughter, my mother Marie, and were expecting a second child in the month of July 1916.  On June 5, 1916, a deadly tornado dipped down on the Price farm in New Madrid County, Missouri.  It killed Carrie Rettig Price's mother-in-law and sister-in-law instantly and severely injuring her husband, Henry Price.  My Aunt Beulah was born eighteen days later, and my grandfather died twenty days later on June 25, 1916.  My grandmother was a widow at age twenty-two with two young daughters to raise. She had a hard life with much work and little security.  Most impressive, she never complained and had a warm, caring, and positive attitude about life.

She briefly married Clyde Austill and, along with her daughters, raised his two sons.  She loved Mr. Austill but he drank too much, and she left him after a couple of years and was again without real means of support.  Upon her death, her two step-sons attended her funeral.  She took in cleanings and did what she could but was often forced to live with one relative or another during her daughters' formative years. About the time they were teenagers, she was employed by the International Shoe Company in Sikeston.  That allowed her to rent her a place, and she was much happier.

 She was a quiet lady who wore a hearing aid most of the time.  When she had her hearing aid in she was soft spoken.  Once Sunday after church, I went home with her for a few hours.  I played near her with childhood toys she kept in her closet for me.  All of a sudden, she said something to me so loudly it frightens me.  My parents said I got up and ran the three blocks home.  She did not have a telephone at the time, so she walked to my house behind me to learn what caused me to run off.  I told her she had never yelled at me before, and it scared me.  My mother laughed because she knew how Grandma talked without the hearing aid.   I think Grandma was embarrassed.  From that point on she never took her hearing aid out around me and I always looked to see if it was in her ear.  Back in the 1940 and 1950s they were worn outside the ear and were about the size of a nickel.

Grandma Price-Austill lived in small dwellings in the time I can remember visiting her.  One place was a small duplex with persimmon trees in her back yard.  She told me not to eat them unless they were dark orange.  One day I was in the back yard, and I just had to try one.  I had waited a long time for those persimmons to ripen.  I got a bucket to stand on, and I picked one that was mostly orange, but it had a bit of green on it too.  Oh my goodness!  That was the worst thing I ever tasted.  It puckered my mouth for hours.  Grandma did not scold me; she just told me I should listen to her the next time she gave me instructions about something. From that day forward I listened to her every word.

In the late-1950s, she moved to an apartment in downtown Sikeston, above the Collins Music Store.  I remember taking a set of very steep stairs to reach her apartment.  Once she opened the door to her two-room, one-bath apartment one was always impressed at how fastidious the two rooms were.  She was a second-generation German-American, and they believed that cleanness was next to Godliness.  You could not find a speck of dust on her floors.  The apartment had a tiny kitchen, with a divider between the small stove, refrigerator, and dining area.  The divider was where she kept her dishes.  The dining area was small, a standard table and chairs would not fit into the designated eating area provided, because space was only about four feet by five feet in size.  Instead of a standard table, she had a fold-down table, and two thin benches, one on each side of the table, where she ate her meals.  The table and benches worked like a Murphy bed.  Not once did I ever hear her complain about a lack of space.  She loved the little place she made her home.

On another of my visits, I remember Grandma taught me to like spinach.  When I was about five or six years old, I was spending another Sunday afternoon with her.  Grandma started cooking supper for us.  The vegetable was spinach.  After she had cooked it, she ate some of it and went on about how good it tasted.  She said there might not be enough for me.   After it had finished cooking, she put a big helping on her plate and a small serving on my plate.  That was not her normal way of feeding us.  I watched her eat it and heard her make noises of delight.  She had me wait until after everything else on my plate was eaten before eating my spinach.  When I finally tasted it, I thought it was the best vegetable in the world.  I still like it today.

She taught me many things in her unique style.  It is odd what we remember about the ones we loved after they are gone.  My paternal grandfather died when I was five, and Grandma Price-Austill was the only grandparent I had the privilege of knowing.  She was not well educated, but had good common sense; she had little in material wealth, but she was happy and a good Christian lady who I loved very much. 

Remembering 1977 TV Commercials

Do you remember TV commercials by what was going on in your life at the time?  This is a second in a series of memories of an unnamed person in various homes.  I did not put this together but received it as a YouTube shared item.  One thing that has not changed is that FOOD is still important to us all and is highly advertised.  There are many of these on You"Tube.  1977 was the year Tom, Tina and I moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Click on the following link to see how different the TV commercials were in 1977, compared to those of today.  You will need to copy the link and paste it in your browser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zzRp-jxx0E