Mother's Day Written May 4, 2007   When I was a young man, my grandmother Lydia Thomas lived far away in Livermore, Kentucky, the town where my father grew up.  My parents and I drove down to see her at least twice a year. The picture below was taken during my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary celebration in 1957.  Standing behind them are their children:  Phil, Helen, Hubert S., Chester, Vernon, and Fred. After my grandfather Hubert F. Thomas died in 1965, my grandmother lived alone in this house. The spring visit in 1972 was to be on the weekend of Mother's Day.  But I was working at Marion CATV, so we had to plan our itinerary around my schedule.  Shortly after I got off work at 6:00 pm Friday, May 12, we began driving southwest. Grandma was expecting us around midnight Central Time, seven hours later. We made slightly better time than that, although in the final hour along the Western Kentucky Parkway, we encountered rain. We visited briefly after arriving, then all day Saturday.  On Sunday, we went to church and to dinner at a local restaurant.  Then, early Sunday afternoon, we set out for home so that I would be ready for work on Monday morning. For this trip, I brought my Sony battery-powered audio cassette recorder from work.  I slung it over my shoulder and switched it on during many of the conversations that weekend.  Thirty-five years later, all of the participants are gone except for my Uncle Phil's family and myself, so this tape provides a reminder of my Kentucky relatives. You can hear excerpts from that recording here on the Internet.  I've posted nearly 76 minutes of it in the form of 29 segments, each consisting of an MP3 file under 5 megabytes. You are not required to listen to all 29 segments!  As a matter of fact, because of hourly bandwidth transfer limits, you may not be able to access all of them in one session.  If you start getting Error 999 messages, try again later. To start each one, I suggest that you right-click on an "Audio Link" button below and choose Open Link in New Tab.  Then you can continue reading this page while the audio plays.
2:39		The first audio excerpt begins near the end of our 400-mile trip with the sounds of the car, the windshield wipers, and my yawn.  As we approach Grandma's place, my father Vernon notes that she's left the light on for us.  My mother Ann decides what we'll need to carry from the car into the house.  But after we park, we still have to figure out how to work the car's electric door locks.
2:46		Howdy, howdy!  Bearing luggage and gifts, we enter the house through the side door that leads to the guest bedroom that my parents will use.  Ann hangs clothes on a rod in the "wardrobe," or closet.
3:10		We discuss Grandma's next-door neighbors, who sometimes park up to four cars in the driveway. We give her a potted pocketbook plant (like the one pictured here), inquire about her health, and turn off the TV.
2:26		Vernon eats a banana (lest it go to waste), and Ann gives Grandma a vase in the form of a watering can.
2:23		Grandma talks about living alone at age 83 and "not stumbling over any of the dirt."
3:16		We discuss Edith, the widow of my father's brother Fred.  We also discuss Freda, the widow of my grandfather's brother E.O. in Glasgow, Kentucky. To keep the characters straight, here's a family tree.

		Before the generations shown above, on the Morton side of the family, Emma Jane Scholl Morton's father was my great-great-grandfather George Frederick Scholl.  His name was pronounced shull, so it probably was spelled with an umlaut in the old country. George was born on August 3, 1828, at Heidelberg in the Grand Duchy of Baden, now part of Germany.  In 1847, his parents Adam and Magdalene Scholl brought the family to this country, settling in Chillicothe, Ohio.  They had at least three other children.  At some point George continued on to Kentucky.  About 1856, he married Helen Martin (1835-1909), and on October 21, 1880, their 20-year-old daughter Emma was married in Livermore.  One of her daughters became my grandmother. The sad story is told that, after America joined World War I by declaring war on Germany in 1917, government authorities confiscated any documents written in the language of the enemy.  George Scholl was 89 years old and had lost his wife eight years before.  But his family Bible was taken away from him, because it was in German.  He died in 1924. 2014 UPDATE Smithsonian magazine writes about another immigrant:  “His nationality — like that of millions of German-speaking immigrants in the United States during World War I — attracted suspicion and anger from nationalistic Americans.  In the course of the war, the federal government registered around half a million ‘enemy alien’ civilians, spied on many of them, and sent approximately 6,000 men and a few women to internment camps.  Perhaps more strikingly, it seized huge troves of private property with dubious relevance to the war effort, ultimately amassing assets worth more than half a billion dollars — close to the entire federal budget of pre-war America.” On the Thomas side of the family, I've heard that my grandfather Hubert Foster Thomas was born in Springfield, Tennessee, where his grandfather Dr. Archibald Thomas had settled after serving in the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.
3:12		The next morning, the four of us get in the car.  Because the door is open and the keys are in the ignition, a constant warning tone sounds until we're all aboard.  My parents and I want to see the town, as does my grandmother, who doesn't drive.
3:11		After visiting the Oak Hill Cemetery and other places, we stop at my Aunt Edith's house.  She greets us wearing a housecoat. The first topic of conversation is me.  Specifically, we talk about my efforts to keep my weight down by walking as I had in college.  (My speed works out to about a 17-minute mile.  Nowadays, at age 60, I'm down to 22-minute miles, unless someone's chasing me.)
2:43		Edith's husband Fred had died of cancer less than five months before.  We talk about her medical problems and those of her sister-in-law Ione.
2:02		Despite the troubles, Edith always seems upbeat, ready to smile and laugh.
2:44		Of course, she was taken aback when the cemetery told her that her late husband had been buried in the wrong grave! Fred was in grave #3, but the cemetery man thought the Thomases should be buried this way: Wm. Warren, Hubert's infant son Martha, wife of: Hubert Edith, wife of: Fred, who should be here 1 2 3 4 5 The actual arrangement: William Warren* Edith, wife of: Fred* Martha, wife of: Hubert S.* 1 2 3 4 5 *sons of Hubert F. Thomas
2:32		The only real problem:  Fred's tombstone is not yet in place.
3:11		Back at Grandma's house, after some yard work by my parents, we're visited after supper by my father's brother Hubert and his wife Martha, who live only a few blocks away. The first topic:  a notation of "Through the Garden" on a restaurant menu.  I've since learned that this means "with all the toppings," as in lettuce, tomato, and onion.  The next topic:  the yard work.
1:23		That's followed by a discussion of spring gardening in general.
2:41		What grows in our Ohio and Kentucky gardens?  There are regional differences in climate, but mostly it's a matter of taste. Ann tells why she didn't want to plant a southern favorite, okra, for Vernon.  She thought she had an excuse, but it fell through.
3:02		Other vegetables are discussed:  eggplant, spaghetti, squash, asparagus, all "the crazy stuff."
2:03		We mustn't forget the legumes.
2:35		At Aunt Freda's funeral a few days before, Grandma's family's flowers had been paid for by Helen Boyken (Vernon and Hubert's sister).  Vernon figures that he owes Helen $5 for his share.
2:23		Martha and Hubert inquire, "How's Edith?"  We report on our visit earlier in the day. This old photo appears to show Edith (left) and Martha at a picnic, probably in the early 1940s.
2:30		The next morning, another brother arrives:  Phil, with his wife and three sons. We're all dressed up for church, so we go outside to take these photos. First Phil and Vernon pose with their mother.   Then Phil and Sue and their boys gather around Mamaw.
1:23		On this rainy day, maybe I should have used a functioning flashcube on the Kodak Instamatic. Anyway, Phil takes this last shot of my grandmother, my parents, and me.
2:37		Then we take two cars to the local Methodist church, shown here in a 2001 photo. When we get inside, there's no usher, so we  seat ourselves near the back.  In the front pews, students in an adult Sunday School class are listening to their teacher.
2:12		Soon it's time for the church service, which begins with a hymn appropriate to Mother's Day.  It's my mother, standing next to me and my tape recorder, who can be heard singing most clearly.
2:16		Next there's the Responsive Reading from Psalm 103, followed by the Gloria Patri, followed by being seated.
3:29		Then we proceed to the annual sacrament of the Hugging of the Moms.
3:13		The minister presents flowers to the youngest mother, the one with the youngest baby, the one with the largest family, the one with the largest family present, and the oldest.  My grandmother qualifies for the last.
3:04		The offertory is "Bless This House," played on the Hammond organ.
3:05		The service ends, and we go forth in peace.
1:33		In our car on our way to Anderson's Restaurant out on Route 431, where we will join up again with Phil's family, Ann remarks on the beauty of Grandma's flowers. Also, we speculate about how much longer the current pastor will be able to stay in Livermore, because Methodist ministers typically are rotated to a new town about every five years. Soon it would be time for us to end our stay in Livermore on this Mother's Day 1972.   more audio selections