Week 8: #52Ancestors – I Can Identify By Eilene Lyon With the weather sort-of thinking along the lines of spring, I’m anticipating some camping trips around the state. It seems I’ve been a camper my entire life. My parents took us camping throughout the eastern states and in Oregon while I was growing up. For... Continue Reading →
From the Vault: Fishing
By Eilene Lyon The “From the Vault” series features an artifact or family photo from my collection to illustrate a tale from my distant past. Bluegill The photo I posted recently of Ward Cutting with his trout catch made me think of other fishing tales. My father isn’t much the outdoorsy kind of guy. My... Continue Reading →
Parsing Their Politics
Week 44: #52 Ancestors – Voting By Eilene Lyon Because neither Ancestry nor Family Search have Oregon voter registrations online for my ancestors, I do not really know how they voted. I can’t recall having political discussions with my grandparents. I do, however, have a clue about one grandparent’s leanings. My Halse grandparents grew up... Continue Reading →
The Slide Years: Visiting the Folks
By Eilene Lyon The Slide Years is a series in which I select an image my dad took from 1957-1982 with Kodachrome slide film, then I write a stream-of-consciousness essay – a sort of mini-memoir. We didn’t have many opportunities to visit grandparents when my brothers and I were growing up. I don’t know what... Continue Reading →
The Engineer
Week 36: #52 Ancestors – Labor By Eilene Lyon My grandfather, Laurence M. Smith, has made many appearances on this blog. I’ve shared a couple stories he wrote about his work in A Short Load and A Secret Mission. Laurence was a 1931 graduate of the University of Idaho with a degree in electrical engineering.... Continue Reading →
The Slide Years: Cowboy Christmas
By Eilene Lyon The Slide Years is a series in which I select an image my dad took from 1957-1982 with Kodachrome slide film, then I write a stream-of-consciousness essay – a sort of mini-memoir. The year is 1967 and we’re celebrating Christmas at my Smith grandparents’ home in Little Rock, Arkansas, the city I’d... Continue Reading →
Smitty
By Eilene Lyon I’d like to introduce you to my maternal grandfather, Laurence Martin Smith, aka Smitty. In his retirement years, he took to writing down some stories about his life (don’t we wish all our ancestors would do that?!). I’ll be sharing some of them with you over the coming months. The Fastest Dog... Continue Reading →