Genealogy: The stories of our lives

As the final plans are falling into place for my MHS 50th Class Reunion, I find my mind wandering back to those days, not to relive them necessarily, just to remember all the details that wrap around the wonderful people who were in my life then and have left this world.

It is perhaps, nostalgia, that drew me to genealogy. When I started on this journey, it was to honor those people who had helped shape my world and in following their lives, I began to understand what shaped their world. It was and remains a journey that I have not regretted starting but one that I question who will follow in my footsteps.

It was in the 1960’s that my parents moved from Indianola to McCook and in that move, I left behind all the classmates that I had spent every school day with since I had started kindergarten at 4 years old. In today’s world it would seem strange to say this, but back then I might as well have moved across the country.

Living in Indianola, we got our milk from the Brooks down the road. In McCook it was delivered and set in an Ernst Dairy wooden box on our porch. Gathering eggs had been a way of life that then became buying eggs at the store. Picking fruit from our orchard became buying fruit at Hinky Dinky, Safeway or Moore’s IGA.

The way we shopped changed also because it was no longer a trip up to McCook once or twice a month but rather every week, check the coupons in the paper plan, which no longer included the whole family shopping together but rather mom cruising the aisles on her own.

I was painfully aware that I made most of my clothing but sewing did land me a job with Fashion Fabric’s and under Katherine Vap’s guidance I learned about customer service extraordinaire. Another job with J.M. McDonalds placed me in the same store with Vivian Pasquan and Betty Leitner, two women I will never forget.

The same goes for Teckla Allen at A & M Rexall when I went to work for she and “Al” at the soda fountain in the back of their store. We weren’t the only soda fountain in town, both Walt’s Drug and Hested’s had one too, but we served a hot home-made lunch every noon out of the tiniest kitchen around and it seemed that coffee breaks and lunch breaks brought most of the merchants & barbers from the lower Norris Avenue area to our counter.

The Claar Hotel sat on West B street with Sarge’s actually across the street rather than on West 1st and next door to the Claar was Loose and Smith’s, listed as a restaurant in the City Directory belying my father’s strict belief that it was a pool hall and therefore absolutely not where my mother and I would enter even if it was to get the best hamburgers and hot ham sandwiches in town.

But, as you see, I wander these days from the subject at hand, nostalgia and genealogy. Nostalgia got me started, genealogy taught me to trace lives and in the long story brought me back to a subject I’ve always loved, history. History gets a bad rap most of the time as being dry and unrelated to the real world when just the opposite is true. You can’t really understand the world you live in, the people who touched your life or the path that lies ahead until you understand the events that shaped today. When people say to me that they aren’t interested in genealogy because no one in their family was important, I must reply that everyone who came before us is important, you just haven’t found the story of their life yet.

For help uncovering the story of your predecessors’ lives, join us at the SWNGS library at 110 West C, Suite M-3 from 1-4PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

We are considering extending library hours into the evening one day a week and would like to know if there is interest in having that done. My column next week will include a survey we hope everyone will participate in.