The hospital was sending him to either Jewish or Nortons, depending on bed availability. We waited, and waited. The doctor came by and signed off on allowing me to drive him to the Louisville hospital, after Max was adamant about no ambulance. Finally about 5:45, I chatted with the front desk again, mentioning that neither of us had eaten much lunch [I had not eaten any lunch]. I asked if I could take him home to rest and have a meal—-they could call us when the bed became available.

No dice—he had to wait there, but they suggested I go get food. So, I went home and made sandwiches, and called Dee and Rick. By the time I returned, about 6:30, Jewish had called with a bed. We ate our sandwiches in the ER and finally about 7:00, all the arrangements were made and we were allowed to leave.

Max went out, got in his car, and drove it home. No use to argue on that one…. We packed a few things and drove to Louisville. When we got to Jewish, it was dark—and I could not see the parking signs, forcing us to circle the block. The testy one was really irked. On the second try, I saw the faint sign and made the correct turn. We parked up in the garage with no problem and rode the elevator down with an employee in scrubs who told us where to go next. We had to walk through the outpatient building, across a bricked open area [like a town square] and into another building. When we got to Registration, no one was there, so we went to the ER, where
we asked a sheriff deputy where we should go. Turns out, we had arrived at registration, after a trudge of several blocks……good thing Max was not really ill.

The registration person went through a pre-registration process, even though Max had the bed number and nurses’ name. Finally another register person set her straight, she got it all done, and escorted us up to 4-East. We arrived at the room, to find confusion. A very elderly, and very ill, man was being admitted, and his bed made, while SIX members of his family hovered in the room, giving advice—and stinking to high heaven with fragrance. I said to the nurse, “I cannot go in there, too much perfume.” She said, “Too many people!” So, we stood in the hall, talking to the nurse, and waiting for
the confusion to die down. Max was visibly tired. Eventually they got the old man in bed and could draw the curtain. Max then went into the bathroom and changed into a hospital gown, while the nurse took me to the station and went over his papers. By the time we finished, two of the other family had left, leaving only four, plus the patient, plus the aide, on that side of the very small room. Another aide got Max into bed, took his temp and his blood pressure, which to no surprise, had gone up over 10 points. 

Well–really–world class hospital and medical care, indeed. There we were……standing in the hallway, waiting to share a room with another patient and four of his next of kin. And, the room was no bigger than the one at WCMH that Max had to share with a former student the night his hip came apart several summers ago. On the other hand, at Ortho Indy last year, Max had a room bigger than our house.

I had thought I would stay with him, but the nurse informed me that since the other patient was male, only a male family member could stay. Oh…well….I would have had to sit in a straight chair all night and physically move myself and the chair every time Max needed to get up. I was glad to go home. 

When I left, I discovered that the entrance we came in was closed. I had to leave through the ER, walk down a dark alley and across the plaza again, back through outpatient, to the garage, where, fortunately, I had remembered the correct floor. I was really turned around, because I thought I would exit going East and turn North. But, I found myself crossing 2nd Street, going west to 3rd Street. Good grief!!—going west in downtown Louisville at 10:00 p.m.—-my worst nightmare—being alone in the city at night. So, I drove down 3rd Street to Chestnut, circled back, and got on I-65 north. Good thing I grew up in Louisville and know my way around downtown. Once I was across the Kennedy Bridge, the ride home though the dark roads was uneventful.

According to my Grandfather Parsons, my Grandmother Hazel [Dee Dee] was a wonderful cook. Her bean soup was great, but I have no other memories of a wonderful meal at her home—and I spent a lot of time with her as a child. My grandfather was a positive and optimistic person; since my memories clash with his statements, I wonder how many of his statements were just PR. Dee Dee’s two daughters were not cooks, either. My mother was a dreadful cook. She prepared pancakes that were burned on the outside and runny on the inside; I have never figured out how she did that. She was also famous for making “cottage cheese” from spoiled milk; of course, no one in the family would eat it. Somehow, we always had a lot of spoiled milk. She could fry steak into hockey pucks. Her worst concoction was something made with asparagus and cheese? and covered with cracker crumbs. It looked like vomit and tasted worse; she served it in the dining room on Sunday meal occasions. But, she was brave. She persisted in providing dreadful meals and inviting friends over to eat, year after year. Once their children were grown, she and my father “ate out” the last thirty years of their lives, to everyone’s relief.

My grandmother and I cooked together when I was a child, mostly treats—cookies, pies, and cakes. I do not have any memories of our fixing vegetables or meat dishes together. When I married at 18 and went off to study at Purdue, I had to learn to cook. We were poor and I ruined a lot of food, which we ate anyway. I only had one small cookbook and I faithfully read and tried the recipes. In my junior year, we both had classes near the Union late in the afternoon and were happy to eat our evening meal there. Unfortunately, my cooking never improved much. It certainly got no better as I had children and juggled college classes with raising babies and small boys. Later, when I started teaching, we had many restaurant meals; I just did not have the energy to cook. The truth is that cooking is something I remember about 5:00 in the evening, if then. Oh…..the-kids-are-hungry-and-what-am-I-going-to-do-now? My mind is on other things. Over the years, I have gathered four shelves of cookbooks, boxes of recipes I clipped from newspapers, as well as boxes of recipes my mother, grandmother, and former mother-in-law clipped from newspapers. Nothing helps. I will never rise above the level of adequate. 

Strangely, though, in spite of the mediocre meals, the dining room table has always been a gathering place for my family. Sitting around the table laughing and telling stories was a tradition that encompassed the three generations I know, as well as the ancestral family groups my grandparents remembered. My grandparent’s home was the gathering place for many meals. With my parents, we had many meals over the years in our homes or at restaurants in which we sat and talked on and on. My sons and I have continued the tradition, sitting for hours around the table in my home, telling the old stories and laughing until we cry. This week, as son Jim and wife Shinobu blew in on an Alberta clipper, we once more enjoyed the pleasures of mediocre food and wonderful talk and laughter. One of the aspects of our talks is that we mostly argue about politics and religion—the forbidden topics of polite conversation. Between my husband and me, and my two sons, and my daughter-in-law, we pretty much hit the ends of several spectrums in politics and religion. We argue and discuss—and we laugh. We tell the old stories and the new stories—and laugh until we cannot breathe and tears run down our cheeks. It is often four-five hours later before we leave the table–refreshed and restored from the food of family love—true comfort food.. Family meals—one of life’s most precious treasures.

She was also a minister’s wife, and a gracious lady; therefore, she had rules about an orderly house, proper behavior in various rooms, suitable times for meals, proper clothing to be worn, how to behave in church, and such. Being a minister’s family required that the living room always be presentable for callers and guests. In practice, that meant we children could only walk through, not sit there, and walk at a suitable pace, no running. It also meant that the family never used the living room. We lived in large old church manses, so we children had rooms of our own to use; occasionally we had homes with dens or family rooms, which we children could use. The kitchen was the room in which the family most often gathered if the house had no den. When I was a teen, we lived in a smallish house in Knoxville, not as big as the larger manses we were used to. My father used the living room as his place to write and no noisy children were allowed. Later, when we lived in a lovely old house in Salem, he claimed the back parlor as his study and we children, by then two of us rambunctious teens, were relegated to the large, enclosed, side porch. I don’t think my mother thought through the ramifications of this “off limits” living room concept until it was too late. A family that has no place to gather, has no place to be a family. Finally, by the time my parents bought the condo in Columbus where they lived for the last thirty years of their lives, the family was allowed to sit in the living room—a little late, but nice.

I carried on the same silly formal living room concept when I had small children. I say silly, because my husband and I did not entertain formally and had no reason to not use the largest room in our home. But, we were both raised on the formal living room concept—and could not let it go. I did let the boys spread their toys out to play in the living room, but they were not allowed to climb or sit on the furniture. I did not realize how this offended my children until one son retaliated by taking that much-loved [by me] furniture to college, where it was soon trashed. We solved that “no place to be” dilemma by building a large family room where we had room to breathe–and enough recliners and sofas for everyone.

Some rules I broke recently, that I can mention in public, include moving the TV into the living room, putting a recliner in the living room, putting pictures [instead of portraits---who has those now days??] into the living room. Obviously, Mother’s rules about a formal living room were straight out of the Victorian era and British manor houses—and straight out of her mother’s home, where the formal living room concept also prevailed. The formal living room, an unused living room, in our house is gone, replaced by family room casual; now I am just trying to find enough seats for all the big men in the family. The six-footers look extremely uncomfortable in Aunt Francie’s dainty apricot velvet occasional chairs which are basically made for people 5′2”—knees on chin sort of thing. Our living room is rather small, but I am looking for some real men chairs somewhere—what with five six+ footers and two other good-sized men to seat.

Mother-the-rule-maker’s children, an uncooperative lot, resisted all the rules, although all three of us succeeded in rule-dominated occupations–teaching and nursing. Even so, learning to break those rules has been difficult. In countless decisions, some daily, others not, I have to think myself over the hurdle of breaking mother’s rules. It’s sixty years later and I am making some progress.

In the summer of 1928, the family moved to Thayer, Indiana, in Newton County, where Grandfather became the “supply” preacher of the Thayer Presbyterian Church, a small white-frame church, built in the frame & steeple style so familiar to the Midwest. He was also the mail carrier, a job which required him, morning and evening, to put the outgoing mail in a sack and attach it to the “pickoff frame” to be snatched into the Monon train as it sped by. He carried the sacks of mail thrown off the train to the post office, a room in someone’s home. It was early in the Depression and times were harsh.

The little house in Thayer was purchased for about $1500. This is my father’s description:

“I recall one of our trips to Thayer. The road crossed the Kankakee River about three miles north of Thayer. Going into town from the north, our house was the first one on the right. It was a cute little house with five rooms, a front and rear porch, and a white picket fence. There were five maple trees in the front yard lined up behind the picket fence. In the side yard and back yard there were a cherry tree, a gooseberry bush, a peach tree, and a small patch of raspberries. Off to the side and next to a small garage was the outdoor toilet, the first and last we ever had [ he means they had never lived in homes without indoor plumbing]. For water we had a small pump at the sink in the kitchen. It was after I left for college that a neighbor friend of mine put in an electric pump.” [unpublished memoirs of the Reverend Floyd Doud Shafer].

As I read my father’s recollections of the little house, I was saddened again to read of the decline in family fortunes. Both of my grandparents were well-educated for their time. My grandfather was a graduate of Oakland City College and McCormick Seminary in Chicago; my grandmother, a former teacher, graduated from Bloomington Normal School, now the Illinois State University. My grandfather had successful pastorates at several fairly large churches. Oil had been discovered on his family’s land in Pike and Gibson counties; that lead to speculation, land deals, and who knows what. When the dust settled, he had lost everything, telling my father, who was a small boy, “I’m ruined.” My father was born when Grandfather was 48, so this was probably about 1921-22. To support his family, Grandfather took a position as a circuit minister, traveling to preach at numerous small churches. It was during this time in the early 1920’s that his leg was injured. Then he moved his family to northern Indiana, Lake County, where he had the small church near Lowell and then the small church near Thayer. Clearly, they barely eked out a living. The little white house was not nearly as large or grand as pictures of their previous homes, nor of the homes of their parents—all large two-three story gothic design houses common to the Midwest in the late 1800’s.

My memories of the little white house are fragmented, but vivid. We visited when I was a child—a long drive from Louisville, Kentucky to Northern Indiana on the old highways. The visit when I was 8 -10, around 1952-54, is my clearest recollection. The little house sat near the road in the manner common to horse and buggy days. The living room was on the right as one entered. It seemed dark, full of heavy old furniture. An oil stove, the heat system for the entire house, dominated the living room. The wallpaper was a grayish flower design; the room had a definite Victorian feel—bric-a-brack, lace pieces. There must have been some electricity, but I remember oil lamps in use, too.Two pieces from that room, the Edison phonograph and the oak library table now reside in my sunporch, having journeyed to Louisville, Kentucky; Knoxville, Tennessee; Salem, Indiana; Yale, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; and finally back to Salem. Everything was neat and organized efficiently.

The bedroom was behind the living room and included the staircase to the two small bedrooms upstairs under the eves. The upstairs bedrooms had slanted walls, linoleum floors, and white iron bedsteads—simple, clean, and neat. The kitchen I remember as light-filled with a number of windows. I was fascinated by the kitchen pump at the large sink, which Grandmother showed me how to use. There was also a pump in the back yard. As my father noted, the house had no indoor plumbing. Chamber pots were used in the bedrooms at night and in cold weather. Grandmother showed me how to use one and then carefully cover the pot, sliding it back under the bed. These had to be carried to the outhouse to be emptied, a trip which required walking down the path in the garden. That visit was in the summer, because I remember the spiders in the outhouse—quite inhibiting. Corn cobs and the Sears catalog were the “toilet” paper. For a city child like me, this cleaning apparatus was indeed a shock, though any child growing up in the Midwest in the mid-20th Century was familiar with outhouses, which were used in parks and rural areas, even today. When I started teaching in Salem in 1977, the view from my classroom windows was east across the football field to the back of a city street, the one I live on, called Water Street. I could see the old outhouses in the backs of the yards from my classroom.

Grandmother, like Grandfather, was a skillful gardener. She showed me her compost. I was astonished that one gathered coffee grounds, egg shells, food scraps, and buried them in the garden. The yard was lush, full of flowers, bushes, and trees, and the large vegetable garden. I do not remember neighboring houses, just fields at the edge of the yard.

I thought the house and yard absolutely delightful. In my mind, it is the ideal, a house where I would want to end my days—a simple white house, surrounded by trees and flowers—warm, cozy, old-fashioned. Of course, I would prefer indoor plumbing and air conditioning. Grandmother lived in Thayer, on and off, for thirty years. After she moved to the Presbyterian Home, the house was sold. Sadly, it burned a few years later.

Following church, we visited with friends in the church parlor for a while and then had coffee at home before setting out for Backroads, a local steak restaurant. Grandson Rod, Michelle, and baby Emily [8 months] were waiting when we arrived and grandson Ethan, with Erica, and their family, Rhett [5], Riley [3], and Bailey [19 months] soon arrived. The children were seated across from Grandpa Great, where their antics and conversation entertained him and the rest of us. When Rhett was distracted for a moment, younger brother Riley grabbed Rhett’s cheeseburger and ate a few bites. The Greats were really quite well behaved in the cheerful, messy way of small children.

Soon, we piled back into our cars and drove home for ice cream and cake. The cake was decorated with balloons naming each great-grandchild, six in all. Rhett and Riley were excited to point to the balloons with their names. After Grandpa-Great managed to blow out a symbolic seven candles, Dee, Michelle, and Erica cut the cake and dipped up the ice cream. We settled the children at the living room coffee table to eat, though as soon as they could, the boys ran upstairs to play with blocks and matchbox cars. Bailey toddled around while Emily lolled on the floor. Grandpa Great held court from his SHS chair and the room shook with talk and laughter.

I felt someone tugging at my sleeve. I turned and saw that Rhett had brought down the plastic background, about the size of a placemat, that came with the plastic play animals.

“Grandmother, I found a map! We’re going on a treasure hunt.”

At first, I was dumb and said he had the sheet that went with the play animals, but he said, “No, it’s a treasure map!” So, I caught on and got into the game. Right there in the crowd in the living room, we went on the treasure hunt. He pointed to places on the map and we zigged here and zagged there.

“Oh…there’s the treasure,” he pointed. And there it was, Hershey’s candies in the dish.

“Take the red one,” I said.

He sneaked forward and grabbed the treasure—and scampered off. Imaginative children are so delightful. 

All too soon it was time to take the family group picture, gather children, find shoes, pick up the scattered blocks, put on coats and hats, and go home. One minute the house is full of talk and laughter—-and then, it is still and quiet. Rather taken aback at the transformation, we sat down to rest, Max basking in a glow of happiness. So far, he’s only said dozens of times, “What a wonderful day!”

I laid the page aside and walked downstairs to find the Kansas trip pictures. I had taken my mother to Kansas in 1992, where we visited her cousins in Jewell County. We visited Formosa, the town where she was born in 1918 and Randall, the town where she grew up, as well as Burr Oak, where her mother Hazel was born in 1895 and where her grandfather Calvin Lewis had homesteaded in 1871 after the Civil War. We also visited the homesites of her father’s family, the Parsons. We visited several family cemeteries and I had taken pictures of the gravestones. Rummaging through the pictures, I found the one I was seeking: the gravestone of Mary Riner Clayton [1838-1889]—the grandmother of my grandmother Hazel Lewis. I took the picture and ran up the stairs to compare it with the news clippings. I could hardly believe what I saw. Daniel Riner had to be the father of Mary Riner. The room absolutely spun as I realized I had found the obituary of my grandmother’s great-grandfather—six generations from Daniel to me. I began to read the rest of the obits and down in the right hand corner of the page was an obit for Mary Riner Clayton, who died five years after her father. After I searched through my desk, I found the family tree I had written down on the Kansas trip. It did not go back to Daniel, but did identify my grandparents’ brothers and sisters, many of whose graves and former homes we had visited. 

“Father Riner” married Mary “Polly” Starry in Berkeley County, Virginia [now WV] in 1826 and in 1829 they moved with her parents, Daniel and Hannah Smith Starry, and some siblings to Warren County, Indiana, where Daniel Riner received a land patent and they raised a family of nine children. In 1850, the family moved fifty miles northwest to Iroquois County, Illinois where by 1867 Daniel owned 520 acres of land. Tragedy began to strike a few years after the move to Illinois, as TB infected the families crowded in small cabins. The third son, Samuel, died in 1857, age 20. Then Mary Starry Riner died in 1861, followed a few months in later in 1862 by the second son Daniel, age 29. Daughter Elizabeth Riner Kennison Kizer died in 1872, leaving a family of children. The oldest son Jacob, having served as a lieutenant in Company M, 9th Illinois Cavalry and having resigned six months later due to ill health, moved his family to Lebette County, Kansas in 1868, where his wife died in 1870 and he died in 1874, leaving three underage orphans who were cared for by their older brothers. Daniel Riner married his sister-in-law Rhoda Starry in 1862 and she died in 1867. Afterwards, he married Penny Wilcox in 1867 and divorced her several years later. On the 1880 Census, Daniel is living in Onarga with his granddaughter Martha Drake Duncan, next door to John W. Grubb, the grandfather of Mattie Lewis Grubb’s husband Homer Grubbs. Around 1883, the surviving children brought Daniel to Burr Oak, Kansas, where he lived with his youngest daughter Susannah Riner Skeels and her husband Robert. Daniel died in 1885 and the family took his body back to Onarga, Illinois where he is buried next to his first two wives, Mary and Rhoda Starry. The five surviving Riner children all died in Burr Oak: Mary Riner Clayton in 1889; Susannah Riner Skeels in 1892; Roseanna Riner Pangbourn in 1893; Hannah Riner Drake in 1899; and William Riner in 1907. 

My grandmother Hazel had talked often of Onarga and a couple of years later, well into my genealogy research, when I finally looked up Onarga on the map, I had another head-spinning moment. Many times on my way home from visiting son Jim in Madison, Wisconsin, where he was in graduate school from 1993-2001, I had left I-39 and driven across Illinois on Highway 24, coming out north of Lafayette, Indiana and driving on down I-65 to home. Highway 24 goes through Iroquois County, Illinois. About two miles north of Onarga, the road jogs north and then goes through Watseka, the county seat. Every time I took this not-short-cut, I would wonder why, but I was drawn to drive across that stretch of land again and again. Years later, I understood. Unknowingly, I had been driving through the farms my family settled in 1850-1855. Onarga is directly east of Peoria on the eastern border of Illinois. To travel to Burr Oak in Jewell County, Kansas, one would go due west, dropping south a slight angle of less than fifty miles….i.e. point the oxen west and start out. Today the route to Burr Oak takes one on Highway 36 which is 20 miles south of the Nebraska border and runs parallel to the northern border of Kansas. Burr Oak, Kansas is twenty miles from Red Cloud, Nebraska, home of Willa Cather and the setting for some of her novels.

William Riner and his wife Jenny Lewis Riner were the first of Daniel Riner’s children to arrive in Burr Oak, coming in 1872. By 1882, Daniel’s daughters Roseanna Riner Pangbourn and Hannah Riner Drake had arrived with their husbands and children. The youngest daughter Susannah and her husband Robert Richland Skeels came in 1872, left in 1874, and returned in 1881. Mary Riner Hunt Clayton, my great-great grandmother, and her second husband Ben Clayton homesteaded in Franklin and Coffey Counties in Kansas in 1868, and later settled in Yates Center in Woodson County. Ben Clayton’s obit was on that cardboard sheet, as was that of George Fry, first husband of my great-grandmother Belle Hunt Fry Lewis. Ben and George died within a few months of each other in 1883-84. Their widows, Belle and Mary, mother and daughter, along with Belle’s two small daughters, soon moved to Burr Oak to be with Mary’s family. Thus, the five surviving children of Father Riner were living in Burr Oak in late 1884 when a family portrait was taken showing the white-haired patriarch surrounded by his four daughters and one surviving son. 

In the spring of 1871, after his wife and son died, my great-grandfather Calvin Lewis, and his older brother Tom, left their home in Onarga, Iroquois County, Illinois and homesteaded in Burr Oak, Kansas. They were the third homesteaders in Burr Oak. The first winter they lived in a dugout along the creek, afraid to build a fire because the Indians would stuff grass in the stovepipe. In the fall of 1872, Calvin’s brother William Lewis and his wife Phebe Brown Lewis, Calvin’s sister Jenny and her husband William Riner [son of Daniel] and their mother Lydia Patton Lewis, along with their aunt Elizabeth Lewis Miller and her sons Thomas Miller and Washington Miller, came to Burr Oak from Onarga in a wagon train and settled on farms near Calvin and Thomas Lewis. William Riner, Calvin Lewis, Thomas Lewis, and William Lewis, along with other Riner cousins, had all served in Company M, 9th Illinois Calvary in the Civil War, fighting engagements along the Mississippi. Thomas and William Lewis were captured and spent 18 months in Andersonville Prison. After the War, the younger generation was looking for land and many families from Onarga saw their children leave to pioneer in Kansas and the West.

My great-grandmother Belle Lewis’s obit was not on those sheets and I later wrote to the Kansas historical society for a copy. Whoever wrote Belle Lewis’s obit, when she died in 1938, did not know the story of the second Lewis-Riner marriage. Of course, it took me several years to piece it together. In 1878, having homesteaded a few years in Burr Oak, Calvin Lewis married Sue Biggs. After having two sons, James and Earl, Sue died in childbirth with her third child in 1883, widowing Calvin Lewis for the second time. His sister Jenny Lewis Riner raised one son and Tom Lewis and his wife Lydia took the other. Belle’s obit states that she met Calvin while visiting her brothers in Iowa in 1886. Well……not really. On the 1870 Census in Onarga, Illinois, Calvin and his first wife Tillie Denning, and their daughter Hattie, are living next door to Daniel Riner. Belle, Daniel’s granddaughter, was born in 1861 in Onarga, and obviously would have known her grandfather’s next door neighbor when she was a child. Her family moved to Kansas in 1868, but since her uncle William Riner married Calvin’s youngest sister Jenny Lewis in 1867, the families clearly knew each other quite well. There were only several hundred people in Onarga in 1870. Odd how the stories are forgotten or confused by later generations. The U.S. Census is an excellent means of straightening out misconstrued family chronology.

When I took my mother to visit in Kansas, we visited the Burr Oak Cemetery, which is set on a hillside southeast of town. Over the years, evergreens have grown to surround the graves. It is a lovely place, a windswept hillside on the prairie. We visited Great-grandmother Belle’s grave, and that of her mother Mary nearby, and saw the tall monument erected for Belle’s brother Daniel who was electrocuted while serving in the Army in 1907. I still think about the visit to that cemetery where I heard the friendly spirits of the family call to me that day. A few dozen people buried in that cemetery are blood kin and I felt at home there, surrounded by many loved ones. I heard their call and pondered on it for some years, until the day I found Father Riner’s obit. Discovering Father Riner was a life changing moment for me. Within a few days I had bought a genealogy program and begun a serious family genealogy research project. I have traced many family lines, but the Lewis-Riner line that met in Onarga, Illinois about 1853 and pioneered in Burr Oak, Kansas in 1871 is especially dear to my heart. I hope the family spirits who called to me that day approve my bringing forth their stories for yet another generation to read.