Myrtle’s Childhood

Myrtle Sylvia Phenice circa 1930.

A couple of weeks ago I gave everyone a teaser about this photo.  I was so pleased with the look of this photo that I thought it deserved a bit of expectancy.  Now that the time has come, I hope that the photo has lived up to my hype and your expectation.  Or maybe you didn’t know about it and had no expectation at all. 

This is a photo of my maternal grandmother from about 1930.  My mom had this photo in a small frame on her piano for as long as I can remember.  The frame actually held two photos.  One of my grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice and the other of her husband, my grandfather Fred D. Bucklin.  I always thought the photos were from before they were married.  Like they were engagement photos. 

Photos of my grandparents that were on my mom’s piano when I was growing up.

This is what they looked like.  They were small photos and they were a little blurry.  I always hoped that I would find a larger copy of the photo of my grandmother, because I could tell it was a nice photo.  But then I got access to this photo software that enhances and enlarges the photo scans that I have.  Problem solved.  And I love it.

Since it is a photo from before she was married, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about her childhood.  She was born in Hathaway, Louisiana, to Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys on December 19, 1906.  She was their third child and second daughter.  Nine months before she was born, her parents went to Nebraska to celebrate the marriage of Harry Clifton’s (HC) younger sister Myrtle.  It was a productive celebration and my grandmother was named after her recently married aunt.

My great grandmother Daisy had immigrated to the United States from England when she was 11 years old.  I suppose she must have had somewhat of an English accent.  Her mother had been a seamstress and she learned to sew at a young age.  She was also thrifty and made a lot of clothes from feed sacks and such.  These skills have been passed down through the generations.  Why just this week I heard about one of her granddaughters making outfits for her own grandchildren out of bedsheets.

Besides learning to sew at a young age, my grandmother also learned how to sing and play the piano.  Her father HC played the fiddle and the family liked to entertain themselves by playing and singing songs in the evenings. He would also play for the community dances along with other friends and neighbors on the fiddle and banjo.  There would be square dancing and just good old clean fun.  They would have these events a couple of times a month.

June 23, 1916 clipping from the Rice Belt Journal in Welsh, Louisiana

Daisy was a member of the temperance group of the Methodist Church – The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.)  Daisy would work at their regular meetings and the children got involved, too.  In this 1916 clipping you can see that Myrtle competed in the singing contest and her older sister Grace competed in the recitation.  They were both winners!  Myrtle was 9 years old and sang “My Temperance Dolly.”

Myrtle’s certification of winning the WCTU contest. This had a very big impact on her life. It inspired her to continue singing, which she did for the rest of her life. This is evidenced by her saving this little memento of her victory and it was mentioned on her memorial at her funeral service.

Myrtle would have started school by this point.  She and her friend Emily Brown would ride the horse and buggy to school some mornings and her brothers would accompany them on horseback.  It was a different time.  They went to school in the Hathaway area.  Many days Myrtle would pack a lunch of an egg sandwich.  And of course it was homemade bread with eggs from the chickens they raised.

When she got home from school, her mom would have a treat for her and her siblings.  Sometimes it was roasted peanuts and other times popcorn or cookies.  On special occasions it would be popcorn balls or bread baked with jelly inside of it.

Grandma went to high school in Hathaway her first two years.  At the beginning of her third year, she went to school in Kinder.  But during the second half of the year, she started attending Jennings High School.  That is where she graduated on May 29, 1925.

After high school she went to Southwestern Louisiana Institute (S.L.I.) to study education.  After two years of study she received her teaching certificate which was good for life.  She taught for two years in the Calcasieu Parish school system.  It was during the end of this time that her relationship with Fred Bucklin became serious.  She decided to quit teaching in the public school system and get married.

So she went to a photographer to document that moment in time.  And that’s what we’re looking at today.