The Cline Home in Morehouse, MO - 1890-1926 - Part 2 of 3

After asking my Dad to relate his memories of his childhood home, he stood up, excused himself, and went outside to "stretch his legs."  When he returned, his memories moved to his current home.  Dad told me, "The main reason for building the edition to our family home on Lake Street was because of my memories of my childhood home.  The addition provided a lot more space than the original house your Uncle Orville, and I built in 1937.  I had wanted a larger home for several years but didn't want to spend the money or live with the mess of expanding our house.  I also wanted a fireplace."  He laughed and said, "Your mother complained that we needed more space when you kids returned with grandchildren. She also wanted a second bath room with a shower.  So we both had our reasons to build the addition to our house.  The new part of the house was added in 1973, and is slightly larger than the original home."   

Curtis & Marie Cline Family
Walnut Mantle and fireplace
is in the background.  1975

He explained with pride that he had saved a large walnut log up in the attic for many years.  He knew that someday it would be a fireplace mantel in their home, and it was included in the addition.  Dad was a man who believed in setting goals, and I am like him in that approach to life.  My parents lived in the house he built in the spring of 1937 through November 1995, when they went into a nursing home together.  Few people live in the same house for nearly sixty years anymore. 

I once again pulled up a screen of fine china and ask Dad if any of the patterns looked like the ones he ate on as a child, but he was not ready to stop talking about the house in Morehouse.  He recalled they had lace curtains over the windows and that the girls would pick flowers from the front flower garden and bring them into the house in the summer.  "The boys picked fruit trees to the south of the house, and the girls and my grandma put up jam and jellies for the winter," Curtis said with a smile.  He continued with his memories of their farm with, "We had a dairy farm that supplied many area families with milk, cream, and butter.  Our family also made cheese for their own use but never sold it with the business products. Curtis continued with, "We always had some of my Dad's family visiting us, so we had to feed more than a dozen people at meal time.  Dairy farm life was a rewarding life, except for the long hours required."

Finally, I got Dad to look at china patterns to see if he saw one that looked like the mark on the back of his folk's china.  I went to the website,
 http://www.replacements.com/services.htm that has one the world's largest collection of full sets and replacement pieces of china, flatware, and crystal.   After looking for seven or eight minutes, he found two "maybes" but said he would know the mark on the back better.  I asked him why?  He said, "It was my duty at home to dry the dishes, and I saw the back of those dishes many times."  

I then went to the website, https://www.kovels.com/marks/pottery-porcelain-marks/crown.html?eid=20775.  After he looked at several dozen identification marks, he told me to stop.  He remembered the mark on the china as that shown below.

  

  

Meissen China Mark

  
This mark was on the back of the Cline Meissen China.  Research shows that china with this mark would have been made between 1773 and 1814.  Dad’s grandmother, Anna Eliza Blount Kline, told him she inherited the china from her husband’s family.  Most of the china was destroyed in the 1926 Cline house fire in Morehouse.

Next week, we will finalize my Dad's memories of his childhood home and learn about the fire that destroyed the Cline home in 1926.

  

The Cline Home in Morehouse, MO - 1890-1926 - Part 1 of 3

My father, Curtis Henry Cline, was born in this house on May 14, 1911, in Morehouse, Missouri, to William Henry and Nancy Lena (Kline) Cline.  He was the next to the youngest child in this family. Curtis had three brothers and three sisters.  Howard was born in 1891 and died 1967, a sister, Eula Cline Goolsby born in 1895 and died 1982, William "Ed" was born 1899 and died 1957, Gazwell born 1903 and died 1983, Vera Cline Johnson born 1905 and died 1995, Grace Cline Dye born 1907 and died 1989.  My dad had one younger brother, Clarence Dennis "Cotton" born November 19, 1913, in Morehouse, Missouri, when Curtis Henry was 2 years old.  Less than a year later, my Dad's mother Nancy Lena passed away on August 31, 1914, in a hospital at Cairo, Illinois, at the age of 44.  Cairo had the nearest hospital to Morehouse.

My brothers and I heard about the beautiful house our Dad grew up in many times.  Late in his life, he visited me and my husband, Tom, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  We took my dad and mother for a day in sugar cane country.  There was a large plantation home nearby, and we took my parents inside for a tour.  My dad's eyes lit up when we went into the dining room.  Then tears came to his eyes when he said, "The house I grew up in had a beautiful dining room something like this.  The table was long like this one, with twelve chairs to seat twelve people."  I knew the Cline family had a large set of fine china which dad and my aunts and uncles used to talk about.  They all said their home was one of the largest and most beautiful in Morehouse.  Their Uncle Madison Tickell and his family had one identical to their home, except the Cline home had more gingerbread accents.  It was an enjoyable day spent with my parents on that visit.

When we returned home to Baton Rouge, I took my dad into

our office and had him describe their home and the dishes he remembered so well.  Dad recalled the house had two floors, and it was made of cypress wood from a local sawmill.  Curtis remembered it was an early colonial style home which was popular at that time.  The house was painted white, and the boys had to repaint the house every other year.  The broad front had porches up and down stairs extending the width of the house.  Two large rooms and a hall opened on this porch. He laughed saying that his sisters call it a gallery,

The back of the house showing the "L".

not a porch.  The doors were paneled, and the hall door had a transom of small panes.

There were nine rooms in the main part of the house, four large rooms downstairs and five bedrooms upstairs.  The kitchen and pantries were back in the "L" part of the house.  There were two bedrooms above the kitchen and pantries.  

Curtis with brother
Dennis and pet dog
as teenagers.

Curtis talked about the family pets and the family's fine buggy.  They had several horses that all the family members use to ride, but they had a special horse that was utilized with the buggy.  He remembered his Grandmother and sister Eula took the horse and buggy to New Madrid once a month to take care of business.  They left after breakfast and did not get back to the house until it was time to eat supper.  He laughed and said, "Today, you could drive there, take care of business, and be back home within two or three hours."  Then he recalled they had a dog and a cat too and everyone had their favorite pet, but he enjoyed them all.

Next week, learn more about my father's memories related to this fine house.

Henry Cline Almost Reached His Goal

     

Henry Cline - 1918

       William Henry Cline

 1859-1949

Photos from

1918 and 1947
He was my grandpa!

Henry Cline
1947

The photo above is how my father remembers his father.  The picture on the left is the last known photo of Henry Cline, taken in 1947.  He was eight-seven-years-old in the photograph on the left.  I only have a faint memory of my grandpa Cline.  I was five-years-old when he died, and he was in a nursing home the last six months of his life.  I do remember climbing a very steep hill to reach the nursing home where he lived at the time of his death.  My brothers remember him more.  I also remember family members use to ask him what time it was and he would pull his watch out and tell them.  It was an elegant gold pocket watch with a gold chain.  I also remember he had bandages on his face and arm when I saw him.  He had skin cancer, and then he had to have one arm taken off above his elbow due to cancer.  In the 1940s they did not have the medical procedures they do now.  They just removed the body part that was cancerous.  

Henry Cline was born in 1859 in the town of Moscow, Kentucky.  The mode of transportation then was a horse, horse and buggies, steamboats, or trains.  In his early years, he saw both Union and Confederate soldiers traversing through or by his family farm in Hickman County, Kentucky. His Tickell grandparents lived only five or six miles away in Fulton County, and his Cline grandpa lived on the adjoining farm to his family.  The town of Moscow was thriving in the 1860s until the turn of the century.  Moscow had a train depot, hotel, bank and more than one store that carried groceries, excellent dress materials and quality China, as well as other things that families needed.  Henry's father, William, took over his father's (Aaron) business in town when he died.  I counted over 60 families living in Moscow on the 1870 census records.  Today, there is less than a dozen families in Moscow. 

Henry was educated in the public schools in Moscow.  After graduation, he helped his father on the farm and dating a few young ladies in the community.  When his father died in 1885, Henry and his siblings moved across the Mississippi River to New Madrid, Missouri where his mother's (Tickell) family lived.  It was there that he met his second cousin, Lena Kline.  They fell in love, and in 1888, they married in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in New Madrid.  That church still stands today.

Henry and Lena had three daughters and five sons.  My father, Curtis H. Cline, was one of their sons.  Henry and his family were a prominent family in New Madrid County, Missouri.  Henry had a good life where his generation saw travel change from horse and buggies to airplanes.  

One of my grandpa Cline's goals was to reach ninety-years-of-age.  He died on the 17th of August 1949, and he would have been ninety on the 29th of December, 1949.  He missed his goal by a little over four months.  Had he not set that goal, he could have died much sooner based on the cancerous issue he suffered.  The fact that Henry lived so long is a lesson on the importance of setting goals.  I wish he could have lived a healthy life well into his nineties so I could have gotten to know him well.  God's blessings Henry Cline, I know you are enjoying heaven cancer free.

Evening Walks on the Beach are Relaxing

The older I get, the less I enjoy the sun.  When walking on the beach during the day, the glare from the sun on the sand is uncomfortable.  I found that a quite walk on the beach in the evening is relaxing.  There are only a few people on the beach and the roar of the ocean is exhilarating to my mind and soul.

I took a photograph of the setting sun in Gulf Shores, Alabama several years ago.  I love orange in the sky at sunset.  A few weeks after returning home, I printed out the photograph and started painting it.  I tried to capture the intensity of the approaching darkness, while showing the beautiful sky with the reflection from the sky on the water.

Painting is a very personal thing.  I tried to put my feelings about my subject into the painting in a way the viewer can feel the emotion.  My goal is to inspire, not just reproduce a subject on a canvas.  In the case of this painting, I want the viewer to be inspired by my chosen colors, by the coolness of the approaching night, and to feel their spirit be lifted by the sky touching the sea.

Southern Porches and Warm Friendships in the 1950s

The above "Southern Porches" is 

one of my paintings from 2015.

When I think back to my hometown of Sikeston, Missouri, I remember homes with grand porches and some porches that were humble in style.  What they had in common was the gracious hospitality extended from those porches.  In the 1950's, people moved at a much slower pace.  They took the time to stop and visit with their neighbors and to have a glass of brewed tea over ice.  The homeowner would never think of giving a guest a plastic cup of ice tea.  Back then, they served drinks of hand-squeezed lemonade or brewed ice tea on attractive trays, brought from the kitchen to the porch.

Children were expected to play outside in the 1950s.  Their games relied on imagination, with few props, and they exerted a lot of energy.  If the weather was bad, or it was raining, many children played on their front porches.  Girls played jacks or dressed their dolls.  Boys only played on the porch when it was necessary.

Most people in their 70s now, well remember their mothers saying, "you kids go outside and play."  When the weather was clear, most kids rode bikes from early in the day until it started getting dark.  They knew to go home when the sun began to go down, or some had a designated time to be inside the house at the end of the day.

Some of the games I remember playing were Hide and Seek - where one or more kids hide, and one person stays on base.  The child waiting behind (the hunter), would cover their eyes and count to an agreed number, before going on the hunt for the others.  Those hiding tried to run back to base before the hunter could find them.  If they made it back without being tagged, they were safe from becoming the hunter.

My brothers and their friends used to play Kick the Can.  It only required a used can that one of the Mom's provided from the kitchen.  The game was usually played in the driveway or street and could involve any number of kids. It was like neighborhood soccer before American's knew anything about soccer.

Children also played Hop Scotch.  It involved a driveway or sidewalk and the use of chalk.  Players started off using two feet, then one foot, and alternated between the two until they reached the end.  One needed both balance and rhythm to be good at this game.  Girls were better at it than boys, and usually sang songs or chatted while playing.

Then, my favorite was Red Rover. It was a group activity. You needed at least six kids to play it, and eight or ten worked even better. Each side lined up facing the other, clasping hands with their teammates. One team would send a runner to the other team to crash in between two of the other team’s players, where their hands met. The runner tried to break the hands apart, while the defending team sought to stop the attack and catch the runner. If the runner broke through, they grabbed a player from the other team and took them back to join their team. If the runner didn’t break through, then the runner was captured by the team that stopped them.  At times, this could go on for an hour.

I don't understand why, when one turns sixty-five or seventy, their minds drift back to their childhood.  Surely, we felt safe and loved back then, and more importantly, we had few responsibilities or worries.  It could be an escape from the trials, tribulations, and health issues of one's current situation.  Today, I remember the good times I had on my front porch with neighborhood girls.  Have a wonderful week, and think happy thoughts.

Spring Fed Water From A Colorado Indian in 1949

Curtis Cline and his children,
 Margaret, Gene, and C. F.

The picture to the left is not very clear, and a bit out of focus.  However, the memory is clear in my mind.  My family had been traveling about a week when this picture was taken.  As I remember it, we had stopped to get something to drink at an interesting looking western-style store. Inside the store, Gene was attracted to some native made musical instruments.  You know, the ones that native American's played.  I remember looking at some small and medium-sized drums that were decorated nicely.  It was a store with all the tourist type items for sale.  I remember buying a Pepsi, and a snack and the others got much the same, but I don't know if we bought anything else or not.  I think my Mom bought a cedar-lined keepsake box.  I remember the store had the large Hunter ceiling fans that made it cool inside the store, so we looked a little longer than usual. 

We did not see the Indian fountain until we came out of the store.  The native American Indian seemed huge to a five-year-old girl.  He was bending on his knees with a large bowl just above the large water basin.  Out of the middle of the container, a fast-moving body of water was gushing out.  First, C. F. was interested in going over to take a good look, then I wanted to see it too.  A local man was standing there and told us the water was from a fresh mountain-fed spring.  When my Dad hear that, he had to try the water.  Then Gene and C. F. tasted the water.  As I was the youngest, I had to wait until they had all tasted the water before I got a drink.  None of them said very much until I started to drink the water.  Then they all started laughing, saying it tasted terrible.  My Dad said it felt like Alka-Seltzer.  I liked the water, so I asked them what they meant because it tasted good to me.  They all three laughed at me and said I was crazy.  Later, I learned it was an artesian well, which is often under pressure between two rock beds.  The pressure makes the water "sparkle" like seltzer water.  I liked it then, and I still drink it today, and from time to time remember the first time I drank sparkling water was in Colorado with my family.

We all crawled back into the station wagon and headed off for the Royal Gorge Bridge.  Between 1929 and 2003, it was the world's highest suspension bridge.  My Dad was always intrigued by the "biggest and the best" of things.  Once we got to the massive bridge, most of us were intimidated by its size and thousand-foot drop from the bridge to get out of the station wagon.  In 1931, a 3 ft narrow gauge incline railway was built to the bottom of the gorge through a narrow cleft just west of the north end of the bridge.  We all thought it was a bit too risky for us to take that railway to the bottom.  My Dad insisted that we drive over the Royal Gorge Bridge.  We then returned over it to the lovely park area to eat our supper.  It was a fantastic sight to see.  I will always remember how it swayed when we drove over it, and I was thrilled to get back to the starting side.  

At one time, my parents had a brown scrapbook full of photographs from the trip.  The photos were inserted into the little black triangular tabs that held them in place.  There were several dozen photos in the album and now all I can find are seven, with this being one of those seven.  This is just another memory of my family trip to Colorado in 1949.   

 

Dreaming Under A Wisteria Covered Arbor in the 1950s

This is one of my paintings.
It is named
"Under the Wisteria Covered Arbor."

The year was 1949 and I was five years old.  My family and I returned from Colorado that July to Sikeston, Missouri.  My Father found Missouri to be very hot after being in Colorado for several weeks.  One summer evening after our return, we all sat outside and talked about our wonderful vacation.  The next day, he built an arbor next to the double windows outside the master bedroom.  He thought it would make the home’s master bedroom cooler in summer.

I watched my father build the arbor.  He planted small wisteria plants at the foot of each post.  He was a man six feet tall with an average build and powerful hands.  My Father’s bald head showed signs of sweat from the summer heat.  His sky blue eyes sparkled with delight as he told me that next year the wisteria plants would bloom with purple flowers.  I enjoyed spending time with my father.  He was usually happy and always in a hurry to get things done.  He enjoyed working and, whenever possible, he took me with him.

After two summers, the wisteria vine grew until it spread to cover the top of the arbor.  The wisteria made a screen from the hot sun above.  The long purple clusters of flowers cascaded down from the top of the arbor.   I loved the sweet smell and pretty sight of the wisteria in bloom each spring.  With time, the soft blooms dropped to the ground to form a beautiful blanket of purple.

Each summer I took delight in sitting under the wisteria-covered arbor.  My parents subscribed to the National Geographic magazine that told in words and pictures of places unfamiliar to me.  I would fantasize about being in far away places and experiencing the glory of learning new things, eating unusual foods and hearing foreign languages.  The wisteria-covered arbor became a haven to escape from hot boring summers.

       I felt stifled in Sikeston.  My mother wanted to take me with her fishing but I found sitting looking at the dirty water anything but interesting.  The weather was hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  I never understood what enjoyment my mother obtained in fishing unless it was her way of escaping from a life in which she appeared to find limited pleasure.  
   Most of the National Geographic magazines showed beautiful photographs of Africa, China, Europe, South America and other foreign countries.  There was one article that wrote about Medieval German states, and it had stunning photographs of men and women dressed in period costumes, standing in front of Medieval structures.  I dreamed of going there someday.  They also published an article on New York City and its many attractions.  Oh my!  I promised myself that someday I would go to New York City and see those sites displayed in the magazine. 

       Einstein said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”  I imagined myself in some of those places viewed and read about when under my arbor.  I traveled to New York City twelve or more times on business.  Due to my work schedule, I didn't have a chance to visit all the sites to see, but I did get to see a few.  To me, it is the energy I felt when walking on the streets, or riding in an elevator, or talking with my business associates that stimulated me on my visits there.  I considered writing about the many places I have visited, but thought the focus of this Blog should be on "Imagination."  I am a goal setter.  If you don't plan for the future, you will accomplish much less than you are capable of achieving.  In the fall of my life, I have learned that relationships matter and you should imagine positive things for yourself because it could be the "preview of  life's  coming attractions.”