Kaleidoscopes and Postcards

A week or so ago, my cousin Rhonda introduced me to an app for the phone that acts like a kaleidoscope.  I should have known better than to get it!  I’ve taken hundreds of photos with it.  It’s amazing how such random and sometimes ugly items can make such interesting patterns.  I figured it would only be a matter of time before I would tie it into my genealogy.

A kaleidoscope combo

I’ve been thinking of sharing an old postcard that my mom had for a while.  It’s a note written to my mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) from her paternal grandmother (Addie Mae Hine Bucklin). I was thinking I should maybe incorporate a photo of Addie in the post along with the card.

So I decided to do a mix-up of the two.  This kaleidoscopic image is composed of the postcard and a photo of Addie from an old family photo that I posted previously.  I thought it had an interesting look to it, so I’m sharing it along with the postcard.

The image from the postcard is a lookout tower from Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1947.  From time to time in reading about the Bucklin and Hine family, I see mentions about the family living in Arkansas for a while.  For some reason I thought it was something therapeutic about the hot springs that drew them there.  I always thought it was for Addie’s husband Lou, who seemed to have health issues.  I suppose most people have health issues if they live long enough, but he died when he was 54.  Since he was born in 1873, that puts his death as 1927.  So he wouldn’t have been alive for a while when this postcard was sent.

There are a few old photos from 1941 that show the Bucklin family with the Clement family from Arkansas.  I thought they were a family that the Bucklins met when they lived in Arkansas.  If that was the case, why did Mama get a postcard from her Grandma Bucklin dated June 16, 1947?

If you read the card, you can see that she had been there for three weeks.  She wasn’t alone and states that they “are both doing O. K.”  She mentions a Mary in it.  I assume she is talking about her daughter Mary Bucklin Phenice.  She also says that she can’t walk very far “yet.”  That makes it sound like she’s planning on staying for a while.

When I search further, I find more information that leads to even more unanswered questions.  In May of 1906 the Jennings newspaper reported: “Lew Bucklin and family left Tuesday for Siloam Springs, Arkansas, to spend the summer for Mr. Bucklin’s health.”  That must be the health issues I remember hearing about.  Then in October of 1906 the paper reported: “L. C. Bucklin has returned with his family from Siloam Springs and is occupying his residence in Roanoke.”  What?  I thought he was a farmer?  How can he afford to be away for a large part of the growing season?

Postcard from Addie in Arkansas to Louie in Louisiana in 1913

Then there is a letter I found from September of 1912 that was written from Addie in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, to Louie in Jennings, Louisiana.  She writes, “I wish you were here now.”  Why wasn’t he there?  I thought he was the one that needed the recuperative powers of the hot springs?  Is Prairie Grove even near the hot springs?  There is also another letter from her to him in August of 1913.  That must be the time period that they lived in Arkansas.  In the letter I shared from Addie’s mother Sue in 1916, she says that Addie and the folks had just moved back to Louisiana.

As you can see, little bits of information here and there, but nothing that really explains it all.  It does give me information about them that I never would have thought of.  I always pictured them living in their primitive homes on the southern Louisiana prairie year after year.  I actually thought that they never went anywhere!  Ever.  They were poor farmers and homesteaders who were developing the land with no electricity.

Now, come to find out, they were summering at the spas in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  And it wasn’t just Lou and Addie.  It was the whole family.  And according to another newspaper article,  Addie’s parents George and Sue spent a month there as well.  That was in 1906 and it may not have been the first time.  And it sounds like it continued off and on at least until 1947.

Can you believe it?  That would mean that this would have been happening in 1938, when my mom’s family was “too poor” for little Betty Lou to have a “real doll.”  So when my mom got all excited about getting her photo taken with a “real doll,” some family members were having sauna holidays.  And all my mom got was a measly postcard!