Mother's Memories: 52 Ancestors Prompt "Dear Diary"

Ione Norene Macbeth: 1928-2019
52 Ancestors Prompt “Dear Diary”
 

Dear Diary:

I find myself regretting all the questions I failed to ask of relatives while they were still alive. I have so many things I’d love to ask my grandparents, my father, my aunts and uncles, but they died long before my interest in family history was born. But my mother is still alive—in failing health, but she’s still here to answer my questions. I’ve been trying to ask her things, to jog her memories. Here are a few of the charming little glimpses of her family and life she’s recounted recently:

My mother, Ione Norene Macbeth, was born April 8, 1928. She attended the Tivoli Rural School, a one-room schoolhouse about a mile and half or so from her home. She said that years later, the school closed and someone bought the building and turned it into a house. They moved the building slightly, turning it around on the lot so the door no longer faced the road. Mom said the building just looked wrong to her forever after.

                   

                       Nyquist School in LeRay Township. Similar and nearby Tivoli.

I asked her how she got to school—did she always walk, even in winter? She said most of the time she and her brother walked, cutting across a neighbor’s pasture to cut off some of the distance. But in snowy weather, they’d sometimes go to school by sleigh—a one-horse sleigh her dad owned. “Jingle Bells” come to life!

She couldn’t remember the name of the horse that pulled the sleigh, but recalled one of the draft horses, her father’s favorite of the four or so horses he kept, was named Prince. Prince contracted Sleeping Sickness, or equine encephalitis. Horses can recover, but some die since there are no effective treatments even today to battle the disease. The vet was treating Prince, and they’d rigged up a harness system attached to the support beams in the barn to hold the horse up—if he went down, he’d probably die of asphyxiation. Unfortunately, Prince died anyway, and when he went limp, his weight pulled down a section of the barn, which had to be repaired. He must have been a huge horse!

My grandfather raised milk cows, and my mom said they named them. She recalled a couple names—Brown Sugar was a brown and white spotted cow who was sweet-tempered, and Lily White was, like her name, a white cow.

To continue the animal-name theme, my mother had a pet chicken named Dingledortz—my grandmother loved to create German-English mash-up words, and this was a prime example.

                                                          Ione holding Dingledortz circa 1932

My mother said my grandmother Nora Hoffman Macbeth and her sisters had a grey colored pet dove (sounds more like a pigeon to me, but who knows) they called Oddy Coo. There’s something very whimsical about the names my grandmother chose.

Note: My mother died shortly after I wrote the first draft of this post. I miss you, Mom.