August 8 - Happy Birthday, Mama - And Other Stuff

Mama

August 8, 1901 - October 18, 1986

In addition to my mother being born on this date, I discovered, through Internet research, that a great many historical events occurred on August 8, some of which may be of interest to you, and others not at all:

870 - Kings Charles the Bare & Louis the German divide Lutherans (I wonder where King Charles was bare?)

Post-publication note: I knew somewhere in the back of my brain that the above mentioned kings did not divide the Lutherans, which if I am correct, did not exist at the time. Further research on my own (rather than just picking up a list of historical dates from the internet) reveals that it was King Charles the Bald, and he and his (turns out) half-brother, Louis, divided Lotharingia, not the Lutherans! -- So, I guess, Charles the (not) Bare, was bare on the top of his head.

1502 - Jacobus IV of Scotland marries Margaretha Tudor (so.. that was the beginning of all that flowery embroidery, Jacobean tapestries and other stuff)

1585 - John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage (also see this date in 1794)

1588 - Sea battle at Grevelingen: English fleet battles Spanish armada

1673 - Dutch battle fleet of 23 ships demands surrender of NYC (didn't get it though, did they?)
1709 - 1st known ascent in hot-air balloon, Bartolomeu de Gusmao (indoors)

1786 - Congress adopts silver dollar & decimal system of money

1794 - Joseph Whidbey and George Vancouver lead an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for exile on St Helena

1844 - Brigham Young chosen Mormon Church head following Joseph Smith death

1854 - Smith & Wesson patents metal bullet cartridges

1863 - American Civil War: Tennessee's "military" Governor Andrew Johnson frees his personal slaves. During the early 20th century, the day was celebrated by blacks in Tennessee as a holiday.

1864 - Red Cross forms in Geneva

1864 - Union troops/fleet occupy Fort Gaines, Alabama

1876 - Thomas Edison patents mimeograph

1882 - Snow falls on Lake Michigan

1890 - Daughters of American Revolution organizes

1901 - Pat- Arkansas's mother is born in Temple, TX (I didn't find this on the Internet, I already knew it)

1911 - The millionth patent is filed in the United States Patent Office by Francis Holton for a tubeless vehicle tire.

1929 - German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight

1940 - Battle of Britain began as Germany launches air attacks

1945 - Pres Harry S Truman signs UN Charter

1950 - Babe Didrikson-Zaharias wins LPGA All-American Golf Open

1960 - "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini" hits #1 (I'll bet you know the tune, don't you?)

1963 - Great Train Robbery in England, £2.6 million ($7.3 million)

1968 - Republican convention in Miami Beach nominates Nixon for pres (see next entry)

1974 - Pres Richard M Nixon announces he'll resign his office 12PM Aug 9

1974 - Pat-Arkansas plants a crepe myrtle tree in her mother's front yard in celebration of her birthday (this one didn't come from the Internet, either.)

1988 - Temperature hits high of 88 on 8/8/88 in NYC

2000 - Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor.

2007 - An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York State, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889.

WHO KNOWS WHAT MAY HAPPEN TODAY?

My Mother - Part One - Post 53

Photo - Circa 1921

Today would have been my mother’s 107th birthday. She was born on August 8, 1901, in Temple, Texas, 2nd child and first daughter of her parents. There were nine more children born into this family, but two died in childhood, one in a tragic accident -- a subject for another post, someday. The youngest, and last surviving, of my mother's siblings, my uncle Truett, died only a few months ago at the age of 85.

I don't know how old my mother was when the family moved from Temple to Victoria County, in South Texas – that’s South with a Capital S! Not the farthest south one can go in Texas, but only 20 miles or so from the Gulf of Mexico. Mama's father bought a farm in a place called Crescent Valley. There they raised cotton, chickens, and the children, six boys and five girls.

Mama graduated from high school in Victoria, a nearby town, and then attended Baylor Female College in Belton, Texas (now Mary Hardin-Baylor University) for a year. Mama always called it "Baylor-Belton." It was while she was in college that she learned to play Bridge, a card game she continued to enjoy for years. She also became 'modish' to the point that she, and most of the other young ladies, bound their breasts so as to appear flat-chested -- which was all the rage in 'flapper days.' She said it was quite painful, and absolutely forbid her younger sisters to do it. In all my memory, Mama never had a 'bosom.' Her breasts were droopy and as flat as pancakes, while her younger sisters all had nice figures.

I don't know if it was a matter of funding but, as mentioned above, Mama completed only one year at Baylor-Belton, then taught school in a small town for a term (one could do that in those days; a college degree was not required). I think she discovered that teaching was not what she wanted to do for the long term and went to work in the accounting department of the Woolworth store in San Antonio. Somewhere along the line, she had completed some secretarial courses and I remember well her trying to teach me Gregg Shorthand (I learned to write my first name, Pat, and the word "dray," not a word I ever heard used in anyone's conversation.)

Mama's father died in, I believe, 1924. Mama left San Antonio and went back home to Crescent Valley and to work in nearby Victoria. As the eldest daughter, when not at work she helped her newly-widowed mother with the younger children, and her wages also helped to support the family. The youngest child was only about 1 year old when Grandpa died, and there would have been several more young children still at home. One of Mama’s brothers, my uncle Talley, quit school when his daddy died, and became the “man of the house” -- at age 14.

Mama told me that she bought a small car (she called it a “koo-pay”) with part of her earnings, and drove over the country dirt roads into Victoria to work as a secretary/bookkeeper for the Gross-Parish Company, where she was still working when she met my father. (I wrote about that in Post 20 - My Father.)

Mama was almost 32 years old when she and Daddy married, on July 24, 1933. They moved around quite a bit to wherever employment opportunities for my father arose. The Great Depression was still in full swing, and jobs were hard to come by. I was the first-born of four children, arriving on this earth in Yorktown, Texas; my sister Meg was born in Kingsville (home of the famous and h.u.g.e. King Ranch); and the youngest daughter, my sister Carol, was born in El Paso. Mama's last child, and only son, my brother Eddie, was born in Las Vegas, NM. I wrote about the day of his birth in Post 6, April 10,1941 . Mama told me in much later years that she was horrified to learn that she was pregnant and worried a great deal about how she and Daddy were going to provide for themselves and four children.

Then -- World War II

End of Part One