Month: January 2017

The Last Week of Bob and Betty

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Two months ago I wrote a post titled “The Week of Bob and Betty” because they had had a rough week with medical problems and hospital stays.  At the end of that week there was a happy ending because they were able to be together for their 64th wedding anniversary.  I did not know then that in two months they would pass away within 5 days of each other.  This past week was the last week of Bob and Betty.

Bob Landry married Betty Lou Bucklin on November 1, 1952, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

This post is about when their lives ended, but also about their lives together.  The photo I’m using is a photo of their wedding, which is when their lives together officially began.  The date was November 1, 1952, and the place was the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  As you can tell from the photo, they were kinda happy.

I don’t know why I had never scanned this photo before.  I thought that their wedding photos were blurry or eyes were closed.  My siblings suggested I add this to the photo memorial, so I found the photo and scanned it.  It’s a great photo of both of them!  So why wasn’t there a large copy of it framed and hanging in their house?

Because their life was about their family.  There were family photos on the walls at different times in their life.  They also had photos of their children on top of their piano and TV.  Then when the grandkids came along, the refrigerator was plastered with all of the events of their lives.  Their house was so festive when the family all came together at the holidays.  We were watching old videos the other night and the festivity is what struck me the most.  Of course the Christmas after the death of my sister Jodie was a bit subdued, but the family recovered their joy.  (As she wanted and knew we would.)

There was always a lot of love in their house.  They made sure we knew that they loved each other by always calling each other “Honey” and always greeting each other with a loving kiss.  They were not perfect and no one is.  They were loving parents and always wanted the best for us.  In different ways they let us know that they were confident in our abilities to succeed.  They believed in us.

So this is about the last week of Bob and Betty.  But not really.  Every day is a day of Bob and Betty for me.  I carry their genes in my cells everywhere I go.  But more importantly I carry their love for me wherever I go.  That will continue.

A Phenice Frankenphoto

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Sylvan, Myrtle, and Grace Phenice in 1907.

Sylvan, Myrtle and Grace Phenice circa 1907.

This is an unusual looking photo, isn’t it? It’s been pieced together a bit like that famous monster. That wasn’t the plan when I first decided to post this photo, but it came about from the story I wanted to tell. I also want to refer back to a couple of previous posts. I had once said that I didn’t have a photo of my grandmother when she was a youngster. I even suggested that she might have not liked the way she looked when she was younger and got rid of the photos. (I was thinking that I mentioned that in the Pool Post, but actually it came from the Graduate Post.) I also mentioned that I had discovered some old photos back in November. (That one was from a comment to the Camelot Post.)

So this is one of the photos that I discovered in a box of old negatives that I have had since the 1980s. At least the main portion of the photo is from that photo. Around 1982 Grandma (my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin) asked me to take some photos of some of her old photos. So I borrowed some of her old photos and took some black and white photos of them with my old Canon SLR camera. She paid for the film, of course. I was a poor college student at the time after all. When I got the prints in, I gave her a set of prints, some of the negatives, and returned her old original photos. My set of prints and negatives went in a box. They were just old pictures. I didn’t want them in my photo albums.

Fast forward to November 2016. I went looking for some other negatives that I wanted and came across these old black and white photos that I had completely forgotten about. They made a liar out of me. I said that there were no early photos of her. And I had one all along. Fortunately the names were written on the back of the photo. The boy in the photo is Sylvan Austin Phenice who was born Nov. 23, 1901. He was the first child born to Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Keys Phenice. In the middle of the photo is my grandmother. She was born Myrtle Daisy Phenice on Dec. 19, 1906. The other girl in the photo is Grace Leona Phenice, who was born Dec. 14, 1903. They were all born in Louisiana. The family lived in Colorado for a short time after the birth of Grace and before the birth of Myrtle. (See Gold Mine Post)

But in finding the “lost” photo, I realized something else. I had a piece of the original photo in a group of photos that I had gotten from my mom. I didn’t know who was in the photo or what the rest of the photo was, but I knew that part of the photo was missing. The original piece that I had is what makes up the head of Sylvan in the upper left portion of the photo. So now I know that the missing part of the original photo is my grandmother as a toddler. Where, oh where, is the rest of the photo? Don’t I wish I knew! As you can see, the detail in the original is much better than the photo I took in 1982. And I thought I was being so clever!

Well, at least I found this old photo of my grandmother. And I identified part of the original photo. And remembered something else. Remember when I said that I wondered if my grandmother got rid of her old photos because she didn’t like the way she looked in them? That was so far from reality! My mom has a baby photo of herself that was from a contest she won. Something like “Gerber’s Cutest Baby” or some such thing. Well I can remember my mom saying that Grandma used to say, “Well I was a cute baby, too.” and probably showed my mom this old photo to prove it. And from what I could tell, it seemed like there was a bit of contention about who had been the cutest baby. Some people’s children!

A Doctor and His Patient

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Grampa Max makes a house call.

What can you say about a photo of a man and a cow?  I guess I’ll try to give you something!  I came across this photo last year when we cleared out our Lucy Street home in Jennings.  My dad must have collected some old photos and had them stashed away in the big closet in the “running” or “dance” room of the house.  I don’t ever remember seeing the photos.  He didn’t take them out and show anybody that I recall.  I guess he was just saving them until I could get my grabby little paws on them!

But it seems to run in the family.  Maybe it’s genetic?  Because my cousin Tricia found some old photos in her mom’s (my aunt Wana’s, my dad’s sister Wana’s) attic.  And from what I can make out about the way the photos are displayed, an old photo album of Mee Maw’s must have been dismantled and divided.  Take this photo of Vincent Maximilian Patureau (my great grandfather,  “Grampa Max” to my dad) which was pasted onto a white page with several other small photos as an example.  There were a few pages like this that were part of my dad’s collection.

Then Tricia found her mom’s collection just before the family reunion last June.  She showed me a few of them and sure enough, some of them were on the same type of white paper.  I’m hoping some of the other cousins might find more in the future.  Or maybe Daddy and Wana were hiding them because they took all of them and didn’t want their siblings to know about it!  That doesn’t really sound like them, so I’m still hoping for more to show up.  I need to replenish my supply for these Throwback Thursday posts!

As I said earlier, this is Grampa Max, the family veterinarian in Lafayette sometime around the mid 1920s.  The cow is obviously his patient.  Jacko wants to know where the baritone is to call the cow.  I told him that the cow was sick, so the vet had to travel to the cow.  (We saw his nice car in a Veterinarian at Your Service.)  He seems satisfied with that explanation.  Actually, the cow in the photo seems satisfied as well.  I’m not exactly sure what the nature of the call was, but I’m thinking that this is a happy customer.  And as the old saying goes, a happy cow makes for a happy family!  I’m glad that some of Grampa Max’s visits had happy endings.  I hope that most of them did.  I know that some of them did not, but that story is for another time.

A Keys Keepsake

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I thought I’d do something a little different for the start of the year.  I’m not stopping the vintage photos with stories, but I thought I’d do something different from time to time.  I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while and now is a good time to start.  So this the the first of the Keepsake Throwback Thursdays.  The more I talk to people about family history and such, the more I find out about different treasures that have been passed down through the generations.  I am hoping to take photos of some keepsakes that other people have so they can be shared with the family.  Just like the old photos, you can share them and keep your treasure at the same time.

This week I’m going back to the 1880s in England.  It was a time before all of our modern conveniences.  It was a time before this branch of the family had left Europe.  It was a time of myths and legends, kings and castles.  Yes, you heard that right, castles.  (You also heard the myth part, too, right!?)

In 1883 my great great grandmother Martha Ann Cook Keys had a problem on her hands.  Her second son Leonard, who was 10 at the time, had come down with diphtheria.  It is a very dangerous disease and in fact a few years earlier in England, two members of the royal family had died from it.  So it was a scary situation.

She called a doctor to see to her ailing son, but the doctor just wanted to know if her husband was home.  When she inquired as to why he was asking this, the doctor said that Leonard would probably die that night.  The doctor left without offering any hope, but Martha did not give up.  She decided to take the situation into her own hands, literally.  She put a finger down Leonard’s throat to break the membrane that can form and kill a person.  It was a risk, because this could also lead to hemorrhaging.  She was fortunate that it did not and Leonard began to recover.

Cross stitch

Cross stitch by Leonard Keys from 1883 in England

His recovery took a while, so Martha sent him to stay with her Aunt Jane for a while.  She must have been a very important person because she lived in a castle.  Or so goes the family legend.  I have not been able to find any resources that proved that the family owned a castle at one time.  But I haven’t found any that proved that we didn’t either.  My mom always seemed to believe that there was a family castle, so it must be true. It was while he was recovering in the lavish luxuries (minus modern conveniences, of course) of the family castle that he did this cross-stitch sampler.

For those of you a little older than me, you may remember this item hanging in the house of Daisy Keys Phenice.  Mama said that is was hanging in her house for YEARS before it was given to her by her grandmother Daisy.  And that is why it is still in my family.  It was given to my great grandmother by her brother because he undoubtedly wanted her to have it.  For those younger than me, one day I will pass it on to someone deserving.  Or at least desiring!