July 24, 2022 Something passed down or been around for generations

 

The Trunk

By: Carrie Keiser

The old trunk had been in the corner of her grandmother’s front room for as long as she could remember. Last week, she watched as her parents loaded it up after Gramms had passed away. It now resided in the upstairs bedroom of their house.  Janie sat there staring at the big old thing, she had often looked at it and dreamed of the places it might have gone.  She asked Gramms about if a few times and she hadn’t been very forthcoming. Gramms said that it had been her great-grandmother’s and that it had made the trip across the ocean when her their family had left the old country.  She never opened it but had always wanted to know what was in it and if it could talk what stories would it tell her?  Her mom said it would make a great end table for the guest room and she could store blankets in it. That sounded like a boring story for such a cool trunk to tell.  

Janie leaned back and closed her eyes, she pretended she was her 4th great-grandma, Aveline, and she was about to board a ship to a new world.  Janie wasn’t sure how old Gramma Aveline was when they immigrated to America, but in her daydream, she was the ripe ole age of 13, same age as Janie was right now.  She imagined Aveline packing the trunk full of all her favorite things: a beloved book, the stuffed toy she kept hidden under her pillow, all her comfy clothes (did they have comfy clothes back then? Janie wasn’t sure.) Maybe the whole family had to pack in just one trunk.  That would sure change what she got to include.  Janie couldn’t recall how many siblings her Gramms’s great grandmother had.  She made a family tree last year at school, but the details have now escaped her.  Janie thought about what she would put in the trunk if she had to share the space with her parents and two younger brothers.  The smile fell from her face as she realized it would be very little that she could bring. If everything you could bring was in the trunk, did that mean the trunk was right there with you in the room? Yes probably. She wondered did the whole family share a room or were they separated by girls and boys?  If that were the case then there would have been two trunks.  There was so much to consider. She wondered if Aveline was sad to leave her home or excited to see new things. 

She came to with a start as she heard her mothers voice calling for her telling her to set the table for dinner. Janie must have nodded off while dreaming about the old trunk and it’s unknown adventures.

Janie’s head was still a little fuzzy from the unplanned nap, but as she stood up something about the room didn’t seem quite right, and there was a briny smell she had never noticed before….

The Writing Desk of Cornelia Jones Vance

Flynn Family Story Slingers

24 July 2022

by Cary Holmquist

Back in the late 1920s or early 1930s, my great-grandmother Cornelia Jones Vance bought an upright writing desk at a farm auction in central Montana.  It was likely a “selling out” auction, which is what they called it when a family was giving up farming and moving to someplace less  desperate than the downward-spiraling of drought combined with the Great Depression.  

I have seen in furniture magazines that this type of desk is called a secretary.  On the right side the desk has a small fold down table which can be used as the writing surface about 18 inches or so square.  In the case on the right side, above the writing table, is a set of narrow pidgeonholes and a center, small drawer.  Below the desk is an open-shelf cubby under a wide drawer that might old a sheaf of paper and such.

On the left side is a narrow lockable, glass-front case of four shelves.

Above the desk and glass case is a shelf area that runs the entire width of the secretary, which came with one long shelf board.  A long brass rod across the top supported small brass wrings from which to hang a short curtain or set of curtains.

All of the shelves were adjustable, with a series of peg holes deprived into the narrow walls and small round oak pegs that fit in the the holes to hold up the shelves.  

When folded up, the desk has a carved diamond-shaped motif and ahandle lock on the reverse side.

The original oak wood that composed the desk had been stained oxblood (a very dark red color), which was a popular decor device of that time, said to imitate the much preferred or more stylish mahogany, or so I have been told.  

Back in the mid-1970s, my Aunt Alta was visiting my grandparents for a few weeks and that was where the desk was temporarily residing and she decided to refinish the desk.  So Alta stripped the oxblood finish off of the larger surface areas, but she did not complete the job.  Since then I have not known how to restore the antique staining and so the writing desk remains an awkward two-toned oxblood and muddy dark oak.  It also has a foot that needs to be restored as it began splitting apart.  Other than that, it is in good shape and the antique locks for the desk top and glass-door case still work.

My possession of this antique comes through a hand-me-down history like this:

My mother Coreen Vance lived with her Grandmother Cornelia for the first six years of her life and was called by most of the extended family as “Grandma Vance’s pet.”  She had this family-joke nickname only because Coreen went wherever her grandmother went, and also  because Grandma Vance was a sturdy pioneer kind of woman who had borne children on actual wagon-train migrations.   At her house, Grandma Vance  had no patience for animal pets—all animals had to work hard for their keep—like herd dogs or horses or mules—or they were raised as food—like chickens or goats or pigs and sheep.  No pets as such.  But a little girl who tagged around like a little dog, she was the closest Grandma came to having a pet.

Anyway, when Granda Vance died in 1950, her modest belongings were given away to family members and then-teenage Coreen claimed the writing desk as her inheritance.  So it moved from Bynum, Montana, to rural northwest Cascade County and was stored on an old house at her parents’ farm home while Coreen finished high school and college.  

When Coreen moved with her own family of five circus-monkey kids moved back to a neighboring farm, she moved the writing desk to her home and it was installed in my bedroom, which was the largest bedroom in the house and I shared with my two younger brothers.  

I pretty much adopted the desk as my own and promptly stuffed the shelves with all kids of books I had acquired and various knickknacks that I accumulated, such as a souvenir harmonica to a bat fossil I found on a Boy Scout hike, to blown-glass animals from the State Fair in Great Falls.  

Later, after finishing college, I took over custody of the writing desk.  Because the desk is unsteady from the splitting foot and its rather unsightly uneven finish, we have kept the desk in our bedroom where it serves as a book shelf and room divider.  Our children have rarely seen it, since the back of the desk, at about five-feet-six high, just looks like a wall inside the door of our bedroom.  

Nonetheless, Grandma Vance’s writing desk is a treasure to me, full of childhood memories and as my only inheritance from a great-grandparent.   

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 By: Colleen Holmquist

In the beginning—nigh onto forty years ago—it was a countertop—or part of one—in the new house. But, the counter just took up space, so my dad deconstructed it and transformed it into a simple desk complete with a small drawer perfect for keeping writing supplies. He painted it yellow; I don’t know why. 

It was a fixture in bedrooms while my kids were kids. Then “the little girls” aka Tabor Tots— used when they came to visit as a coloring table. It was a bit tall for that so my dad shortened it. We took it out to the patio and used it for a table at family barbecues. During winter it rested in the shed. 

I dug it out this summer and now it’s a desk again residing on our recently excavated front porch. I painted it “universal khaki” to match the trim on the house. The drawer holds pens, pencils, an eraser, a clay mosquito repellent coil burner, a broken mini lantern, a lighter, Wanderings by Chaim Potok and some sheets for recording thoughts about scripture references to the Savior. It’s a little short but suits me just fine. I watch the colors of the sky change as the sun slips behind the mountains and listen to the neighbor’s sprinklers and the train whistles and screechy brakes.

Story Slingers prompt

"Write about an object that has been around for centuries or passed down generations"

Daren Flynn

BILLY'S FIND

Billy found it in the upper right hand cubby-hole of the roll top desk in his father's den. He thought it would be the perfect addition to the costume for his history assignment at school.

Miss Pierson, his teacher, told the class that each student was to choose one event or story they had studied this year in American History class and prepare a fifteen minutepreseztation to be given in three weeks. The demonstration before the class, she said, would be rated by the class members and by her, as well. She urged them to do their very best, as the project would count for 50% of their final grade.

Billy's favorite story of the entire year was the amount of Chief Joseph, the leader of the Wallowa Band of the New Perce Indian Tribe. In fact, Chief Joseph had become Billy's hero. He could imagine himself as a member of Joseph's band; one of the approximately 800, who lived-in the Wallowa Valley, their ancestral home.

When it was Billy's turn to tell his story in front of the class he felt like he was actually one of the little kids in Chief Joseph's band and was telling it as it happened. He started out by saying, "Chief Joseph's father was Chief before and his name was Joseph too." He said, "We all knew that Old Chief Joseph had come to an agreement with Washington's governor in 1855, which guaranteed that the Wallowa would remain New Perce land and we could continue to live in the valley where our father's were buried; the place we had always lived." "But," Billy said, "white settlers began to move into the Wallowa and then in the early 1860's someone found gold on our land and the government wanted to renegotiate and move us Wallowas to a reservation in Idaho. Old Chief Joseph said the government had lied to him in 1855 and he would not leave his homeland. Before Old Chief Joseph died in 1871, Found Chief Joseph promised to never sell the New Perce land of the Wallowa Valley.

"More and more settlers kept moving into the Wallowa and Chief Joseph did his best to live peacefully with them, we all did, but some of the other Nez Perce got into a fight with the white men and killed a few of them. That started the U.S. Army's war against the New Perce. All the time since they tried to move us to the reservation in Idaho, the government put more and more pressure on the Chief to move his people and give up our home in the Wallowa. Chief Joseph and all of us refused, so the government decided to force us to do what they wanted us to do."

"Chief Joseph's band was small," Billy said, "There were only about 800 od us and just 200 warriors, so Joseph knew that he had no chance of defeating the United States Army. Well non of us wanted to live on a reservation away from our homeland; we wanted to live free, like we always had. Since we couldn't stay and we couldn't beat the army, Chief Joseph decided to go north and meet up with Sitting Bull, of the Sioux Tribe, in Canada.

Billy really liked this part of the story, because his hero, Chief Joseph, outwitted the army numerous times as he led his small band on the 1400 tortuous mile trek while escaping the clutches of the U.S. Army after many battles. In fact, he has gone down in history as a military genius for the way he conducted the retreat with his small band. Chief Joseph faced the Army which was much larger and better equipped, but he was never defeated.

The Chief and his courageous band very nearly made it to the Canadian border before running out of food and blankets. It was there that the man who has become know as "The Red Napoleon" surrendered and gave his speech, which Billy recited. "I and tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are--- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have some time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where I stand I will fight no more forever."

Billy told the story of Chief Joseph with enthusiasm, proudly dressed in an Indian costume which he had made himself, using his moccasin slippers and an "Indian blanket." Best of all, Billy thought, was the headband of leather with it's single feather; the one he had found in his dad's desk.

When Billy Mason got home and showed his homemade costume to his parents, they were impressed, but also aghast. The feather in Billy's headband was actually a quill pen that had been handed down from father to son for many generations and was the actual quill with which Acting Governor, H. Mason had signed the 1855 treaty with Old Chief Joseph.