Category Archives: Nostalgia

A pleasant surprise!

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photo of Mrs. DeWitt C. Owen
My great grandmother, author of cookbooks “Nellie.”

I had a welcome surprise the other day. I received an email from a stranger who was cataloguing a huge collection of antique cookbooks. He read my blog posts about my great grandmother’s cook booklets and said he ran into copies. We exchanged a few emails. He said he was impressed and they were a good representation from that era. We’re talking late 1890s to early 1900s.

I mentioned there was one booklet that I didn’t have. “16 Studies in White and Gold,” which are egg recipes. He scanned and emailed it to me. A week later he said he found an extra copy, asked for my address and mailed it to me! I was thrilled. Since he doesn’t have “Sick Room Necessities,” I scanned it for him. Also, I found several letters and photos of Nellie’s as well as her husband’s obituary, scanned those and sent them to him. (FYI, Nellie went by her married name as a cook booklet publisher extraordinaire, Mrs. De Witt C. Owen. Her real name was Ella Upton Leighton Owen.)

Nellie’s husband De Witt was first a printer and then a newspaper publisher. Eventually they left Dixon, Illinois for the “far west” moving to Anacortes, Washington where he was publisher of another newspaper. They settled in Marysville, Wash. when he took over that town’s newspaper. My namesake grandmother Elizabeth Owen was their only child. When my mom Mary Ella (named after her grandmother) grew up in Marysville, Nellie lived next door. She was in my mother’s memory a loving and kind grandmother, the most nurturing person in my mom’s life. Nellie died in 1948, so I unfortunately never met her.

Nellie was a strong woman and set the type herself for her cook booklets that she sold across the nation for 10 cents each. Her market was ladies’ church auxiliaries. The booklets were used as fundraisers, much as our kids sold gift wrap to raise money for their school. My aunt told me that at times, Nellie supported her husband and daughter with her cook book sales.

If you want to read more about Nellie and her cook booklets, I wrote about her HERE.

Here’s an except from “Sick Room Necessities:”

Have a wonderful Easter weekend! Any plans to celebrate Easter, Passover or Spring?

I found a few photos of Ella Leighton Hunter (Hunter was her maiden name, Nellie was her nickname) in an old family photo album. It includes photos of Rose Hunter and A.J. Blethen. Blethen founded The Seattle Times and the family still owns the paper generations later.

I found postcards from Rose Hunter Blethen writing that she was looking forward to seeing Ella at Christmas. Ella was adopted into the Hunter family after her parents died. Dr. Hunter, Rose’s dad, thought Ella was so cute and always thought well of her. She was adopted as a young child. I’m enjoying researching our family heritage and am impressed that as a journalism major, I’ve got lots of newspaper history in my blood!

The Sweet Escape

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Flagstaff walk through the woods

We’re not much for spur of the moment trips these days. When my husband and I were first married, we’d throw a tent and sleeping bags in the car and head to the beach with an hour’s notice. Or head for the ski slopes in Big Bear.

Friday, my husband suggested we escape the heat of the Phoenix area for a quick trip to Flagstaff which is two hours north at an elevation of 7,000 feet. I looked at the temperatures. Low of 44, high of 69. That’s after a week of blistering high 90s and 100 degrees at home.

My favorite hotel chain has a Little America in Flagstaff. Nice rooms. Delicious food. Hiking trails. Pool, jacuzzi, gym. I was sold!

We drove up to the ski resort called Arizona Snowbowl to check it out. People were skiing and snow boarding!

The Little America was my home away from home in Salt Lake City when my daughter was a student athlete at the University of Utah. We visited lots, because we liked to go to swim meets and watch her swim. I also love Salt Lake City, plus the aforementioned Little America. In Salt Lake City they have the fancier Grand America, but I prefer the lowkey atmosphere of the Little America and the lower prices.

Did I mention that the Covey family founded Little America? Britain Covey played football while my daughter swam at the U. Now Britain plays for the Philidelphia Eagles. Besides being a great athlete at only 5’8″ tall as a football player, he is a kind and authentic person. His grandfather, Stephen Covey, is famous for writing “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and owning Franklin Daytimer, which we used in the olden days to keep track of our appointments and schedules.

I wrote about driving to Flagstaff for our anniversary in 2021 and running into a hail storm that damaged our car from bumper to bumper HERE.

Pool at the Little America

This trip was was quiet. Peaceful. We had fabulous meals and took walks in the 500 acres of forest that are part of the hotel property. It was a well needed break from the heat and a great escape for the weekend. The beautiful pool was closed for the season, until it gets warmer, but the jacuzzi was going strong.

Here’s to a spur of the moment trip for an escape from the heat!

Here’s a video of Gwen Stefani. She pops up from time to time on my Hallow App where she has been sharing personal stories of her faith. When my kids were in high school the word “Sweet” was used all the time like “Cool” from my earlier days.

Do you take spur of the moment trips? Where do you like to take quick getaways?

A cabin in the woods

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cabin in the woods
The cabin.

Two blog posts I read this week had me reminiscing about our cabin in the woods. I’m referring to Wynne Leon and Brian Hannon who have their own blogs as well as writing for The Heart of the Matter. Here’s Brian’s post about a cabin on Writing From the Heart with Brian. Wynne’s blog is called Surprised By Joy and that is a link to her post about a recent vacation in a cabin.

Both of their cabin stories hit a soft spot in my heart. The photo above is the cabin my mom and dad built before I was born. My dad designed it and mom and dad used their own two hands to bring the idea to life. The large-paned windows came from my grandmother’s shops in Marysville, Wash. The cabin was located in Robe Valley on the Stilliguamish River.

I say “was located,” because years ago my brother and I decided to tear it down. It had been repeatedly broken into, trashed and even lit on fire. It was a hazard. All that remains is the beautiful property and the fireplace.

Property in WA
Our property on the Stilaguamish River. That’s Mount Pilchuck in the background.
The road to Robe
The road to our cabin through the woods.

I have many memories from my cabin when I was very young. There used to be a sandy beach that I loved on the edge of the river. As you can see the river has changed — it’s all rocky.

We fished, rode the rapids on air mattresses with friends and jumped off the giant rock into the river. We used our cabin in the summer. There was no running water, no electricity, but it did have an outhouse. I remember fishing early in the morning and late in the afternoons. Mom would fry trout on the wood burning stove. Outside the cabin was a pump for water.

We spent my early days with grandma and other relatives. It was a gathering place. Then as we got a little older, my brother and I got to bring friends to the cabin for weekends.

There was a certain smell of evergreens at Robe along with a musty tinge inside the cabin. It had one room with steep stairs to a loft and the balcony overlooking the river.

My grandma was an artist and painted a picture of the cabin as well as one of me playing in the sand.

You can see the giant rock we’d jump off of across the river.

Here’s the sandy beach plus the large glass windows in this painting.

The story I heard from Mom was that her father bought a mile of riverfront property during the Great Depression. He envisioned it as a place where family would gather for generations. He gave parcels of land to his three children, plus to other relatives. When they first started using Robe, the family stayed in “The Lodge” which was formerly a post office for the town of Robe. Robe was once a silver mining town with a railroad. When my grandfather bought property there in the Great Depression nothing of the town was left, except the abandoned post office building.The road into Robe is straight and was the railroad line. I’d like to research history of Robe. I see a project in my future to find out more.

My extended family on my Mom’s side holds an annual family reunion at Robe each summer. I’ve gone a few times, but mostly I don’t go. I honestly don’t know the ever growing family except for my aunt and first cousins.

On my mom’s birthday two years ago, my aunt and I drove up to Robe to spread her ashes in a place my mom loved. I wrote about that HERE.

What special memory do you have from childhood of a family place you’d visit or spend vacation?

Memories from the Seattle Led Zeppelin Concert of 7/17/77

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Driving to the grocery store, I was listening to Stairway to Heaven on Sirius ’70s. A memory came back to me from high school. If somebody saw me, they’d probably wonder why I was sitting alone in my car laughing and singing along to “And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”

I went to the Led Zeppelin concert in the Seattle Kingdome on 7/17/1977. I was seventeen. Oh my!

What was I laughing about alone in my car? Not the weird numerology. There was a rumor running throughout our state that the Kingdome’s roof was going to collapse due to Led Zeppelin’s decibels. Looking back decades later, doesn’t that seem ridiculous?

Construction on the the Kingdome, which would become home to the Seahawks, Sounders and Mariners began in 1972. The huge concrete dome opened in 1976. Led Zeppelin was the fourth or fifth concert held there since the opening. It was the loudest at the time.

I remember feeling fear about going to the concert. I might die at the concert. Or see others die.

I didn’t know much about Led Zeppelin until my brother, who is two years older than me, went to the University of Washington. I’d visit him at the dorms. They were blasting Led Zeppelin out the windows. Led Zeppelin was all the rage at that time.

When a friend asked me to go to the concert with him, I couldn’t wait. Then the rumors started that construction on the mega dome was faulty. Contractors had been fired during construction. One crew didn’t know what the other had done before them. There were rumors that construction workers refused to go into the Kingdome because they knew it would collapse.

The Kingdome in Seattle.

Yes, the concert was LOUD. The Kingdome wasn’t a great concert venue because it had a lot of echo. 65,000 people risked their lives to attend the concert. I think we all came out alive.

The Kingdome had issues when ceiling tiles fell onto a seating area:

During the 1990s, the Seahawks’ and Mariners’ respective ownership groups began to question the suitability of the Kingdome as a venue for each team, threatening to relocate unless new, publicly funded stadiums were built. An issue was that neither team saw their shared tenancy as profitable; both teams also questioned the integrity of the stadium’s roof as highlighted by the collapse of ceiling tiles onto the seating area before a scheduled Mariners game in 1994. As a result, public funding packages for new, purpose-built stadiums for the Mariners and Seahawks were respectively approved in 1995 and 1997. — Wikipedia

After remembering the concert and the anticipation of the roof collapsing, I did some research. Here is more that I found on Wikipedia:

The stadium’s construction encountered numerous issues; in January 1973, six support beams for the roof were toppled as one or two of them buckled, bringing down the others in a domino effect. By January 1974, the stadium reached 50 percent completion; only reaching 60 percent completion in July, it was clear that Drake (the first construction company hired — with the lowest bid) would not reach the December deadline at that point. It was also apparent that Drake was ill-prepared to work on a project with such scale, with numerous errors, delays, and short-staffing slowing down construction. Efforts to renegotiate the contract failed, and on November 22, Drake stopped work on the Kingdome. The county fired Drake on December 10, bringing in Kiewit to finish construction on the stadium

Wow. There were construction issues after all. On March 26, 2000, the Kingdome was imploded. (Another weird numerology coinkidink…My son’s birthday is March 26.)

What memories do you have from concerts in your younger days?

What was your favorite concert and venue?

Here’s a Youtube link to my favorite Led Zeppelin song::

Happy Anniversary!

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My husband has been fighting this bunny because it eats our plants. But every afternoon bunny crawls under the chicken wire into the pot and munches away.

Yesterday was our 39th wedding anniversary. Really! I must have gotten married as a 10 year old.

For our outings together, we’ve been hanging out at doctors offices. I guess that’s to be expected after decades of marriage. It’s no longer spur-of-the-moment camping trips at the beach, or heading up to the mountains for a day of skiing.

Nope. My husband had cataract surgeries and the last few weeks I’ve been driving him to appointments and sitting in waiting rooms with a book. He did the same for me a few years ago when it was my turn for cataract surgery.

We had eight years of marriage before kids. Some of my earliest memories of life together were searching the sofa and our pockets for spare change. When we’d find a dollar, we’d buy three-for-one tacos at Jack in the Box. I ate Top Ramen every day for lunch. But those were fun days.

Then there were the busy days of raising kids. My husband was a super involved dad because he grew up without one. I’m not sure if our kids appreciated that or not. Then the kids grew up and started their adult lives. I’m grateful for how close we are with them. I love getting calls for no reason, but to chat while they’re out for walks.

These past years, our main activity together is our early morning hour-long walk (He’s been going alone because of my broken toes.) I can’t wait to get back to walking with him every day. It’s a quieter time in our marriage, but I love my husband as much or more than day one.

wedding photo
Thirty-nine years ago.

Here’s to 39 more years and happy memories!

What changes do you see in your marriage or relationship through the years?

I Am Woman Hear Me Roar …

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NOTE: I wrote this blog post 10 years ago this week. It’s a look back to my school days — wedged into a visit with my son and his girlfriend (now wife) while I was visiting them at UC Santa Barbara. Also, there’s a link to my daughter-in-law’s poetry.

During my weekend visit with my son at UCSB, we discovered how far women have come from my generation to his. (Yes, I’m talking about the same son that tried to give away the cat on Facebook — read about that HERE. And, he’s the one that wrote about his crazy mom for his senior project — read about that HERE)

We were out to dinner at The Palms in Carpinteria, where you grill your own steaks or halibut, with one of my best friends, my son Robert, and his girlfriend (She’s a poet and an CCS English Lit major. You can read some of her poetry HERE).

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My friend and I talked about home ec, and we wondered if it was offered as a major in this day and age? My mom was a home ec major in the 1950s, by the way.

My son said, “They really DID have an MRS degree!”

“Not only was it a college major,” I said, “but we were required to take home ec in high school.”

“Only the girls, that is,” my friend said.

“WHAT?!” both Robert and his girlfriend were horrified. How alien to their lives is a gender-based school requirement. We explained that the boys took wood-working or shop.

My son thought for minute and asked, “What did you learn in home ec?”

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“Scrambled eggs, sewing an apron, sex ed, how to clip coupons and general household budgeting,” I answered.

“All of those things should be taught to men and women,” the kids said.  

I think they are right.

Thinking of those days, made me remember Helen Reddy, and her song, “I Am Woman” 

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Do colleges or high schools still offer home ec?

Do you think home ec should be required for both men and women?

What other life skills do you think need to be taught in school?

Six things I miss about swim meets

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My kids at the pool
My kids at the pool posing for a club team pic.

Once upon a time, we were crazy swim parents. Yes, those kind of parents.

I read an article in the WSJ yesterday that brought fond memories of those days.

It was called “A Tribute to the Inane Dramas of Sideline Parents: Who would have thought I’d miss all that groaning, whining and anguish?” by Joe Queenan.

Here’s an excerpt:

One of the worst things about watching your kids grow up is that you no longer get to witness the uniquely idiotic, yet oddly entertaining, behavior of parents at kids’ ballgames. 

When my daughter started playing league soccer at age 6, parents would go out of their way to film every minute of every game. That first year, her team went winless and scoreless until the final game of the season. Decades later, the kids’ aging parents can pull those old videos down off the shelf and regale their progeny with untold hours of lovingly documented footage of utterly unproductive prepubescent athletic activity. Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!

I actually miss this inanity. As a connoisseur of boorishness, I miss the anguished complaints about muffed offsides calls, the moaning and groaning about alleged handballs in front of the goal, the conspiratorial suggestions that the referee is blind. 

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/a-tribute-to-the-inane-dramas-of-sideline-parents-126b54ee

Although I don’t miss riding the roller coaster of being a crazy swim parent — or watching parents who were downright abusive — I do miss six things about going to swim meets.

ONE

Spending time together.  When you’re away for a few days with your swimmer, you have a captive audience. There’s no distraction of eight hours at school, followed by three hours of swim practice, or them hanging out with their non-swim friends. Spending lots of time together, unfettered with household, work, and daily school responsibilities is refreshing. I enjoyed our little bubble of time and treated it like a mini-vacation. We played cards, sang songs, hung out at the beach, and had fun!

TWO

Nap time. When our swimmers were older and had meets with prelims and finals, we found ourselves in the hotel — with our kids — for three to four hours in the middle of the day. They needed to be off their feet and resting. So I’d bring in lunch, relax, and enjoyed the best naps!

THREE

Walking. Being at a meet for days on end, without cooking, cleaning, working, etc. allowed plenty of time to walk. I walked during warm-ups and warm-downs. I walked with my husband, with friends, and by myself. I looked forward to checking out the areas by the pools on foot. Walking got rid of my nervous energy and walking for hours and miles had to be good for me!

FOUR

Friendships. I spent lots of hours with team parents under the pop-up tent. Mostly, swim parents are generous, encouraging and have the common interest of their team and kids’ successes at heart. I made great friends with parents from other teams — as well as swim officials. I looked forward to seeing them at meets. I remember conversations with parents when our kids were leaving for college. We shared our excitement plus our anxieties of being empty nesters. We lived in separate towns with kids on separate teams, yet had so much in common.

FIVE

Watching your swimmer race. What is it about watching your child race that is so rewarding and exciting? I’m not sure, but if you have the answer, please let me know. It was so exciting when they did well. I loved that feeling when I watched their hard work pay off and observed their growth as a person and athlete. It crushed me when goals were missed by mere tenths of seconds and our kids were disappointed.

SIX

Sushi. We ate lots of sushi at swim meets. I scouted for the best sushi restaurants near pools throughout Southern California. My daughter liked to eat sushi at meets, too. It’s healthy, light, provides her with the right fuel to race. We didn’t have a sushi restaurant at home that I liked, so sushi was a treat.

Looking back at your kids’ childhood, what do you miss?