I had shown a picture of my mother at her business and a picture of my grandmother at her business to a friend. She told me that I must make a collage photo. That is because the photos show my grandmother at a switchboard about 1910 and my mother at a switchboard about 1969.
In the case of my grandmother, she was the operator at the phone company that was housed in the parlor of her father's house. The switchboard supported 24 lines. The picture of my mother was at her business.
My mother had been a rural school teacher before she married my father. She gave up teaching after she married my father. However, after I was born, I became her pupil. I remember before I started kindergarten sitting on our front steps and my mother teaching me to read.
I don't remember my mother working with my younger siblings as she did with me because she did other things to bring money into her household. She sold cosmetics at home parties and took in ironing. I remember the mangle iron that she had to iron sheets and tablecloths. Everytime I iron a sheet, I think of that mangle of so many years ago.
The mangle was so much better than my European ironing board and iron. The only thing that my European ironing board does better than the Walmart ironing board is that is so heavy that pulling the sheet across it doesn't tip it over.
But I digress ... At sometime while I was in grade school, my mother worked for an answering service in Minnesota. At that time. I had no idea that my grandmother had been a telephone operator. She was simply my grandmother who lived in California. She was old.
I can remember most of the various occupations that my mother while I was growing up. So when we moved to California, I wasn't surprised when my mother secured a job as an operator at an answering service. She shortly became the night supervisor and acting manager when the manager was away. My mother complained enough about the manager and her ineffectiveness to the point that my father told her to start her own service.
My mother took up my dad's challenge and did start her own business that she successfully ran until her death. I found a photo of her taken in the early days of her business. I was away at college at the time my mother was building her business. She worked seven days a week.
After my father and a sister died, I was lucky to find the photo of my grandmother at a switchboard. It was this photo and the one of my mother at her business that I showed to the woman who owns my gym. As I was making the collage of the two photos, I recalled seeing a photo of my sister as a toddler with a play phone and a photo I took of my daughter as a toddler on the phone.
I had an "aha" moment. I had pictures of 4 generations of women all using the telephone over a period of 70 years. My grandma worked on a 24-line switchboard. My mom had three 100-line switchboards with rotary dial. My sister played with a toy rotary dial phone. My daughter played with a real touch-tone phone. Much has changed since these pictures.
I wrote about the spinning wheel that Aunt Eleanor mentioned in her journal. I also mentioned that my mother told me that the spinning wheel was given to a museum and not to one of the greeat-great granddaughters.
My cousin Terry read my post and wrote to tell me that her grandmother had not donated the spinning wheel to a museum. If that were the case, I then imagined that it was given to Aunt Eleanor's eldest granddaughter, Terry's sister, or to her beloved Patti. But Terry said that my mother's sister told Aunt Eleanor to give the spinning wheel to her (Terry). I have to say that I was quite surprised.
It was my mother's belief that her sister was hoping that the spinning wheel would go to my cousin Joy, my aunt's only daughter. I saw my aunt frequently. She rarely mentioned Terry or her siblings so I have not a clue as to why Joyce would name Terry as the recipient over her own daughter.
Terry also wrote to tell me that she thought that the spinning wheel should go to Patti and that Patti would probably send me a picture of it if I asked. Terry was so gracious in suggesting to her grandmother that Patti should have the spinning wheel. However, I am a bit saddened that the story my mother told about the spinning wheel being donated to a museum wasn't actually true.
My great-great grandmother, Guri, had 35 great-great granddaughters, most of whom I expect would have liked to have her spinning wheel. If it were in a museum, the daughters of all of her descendants would have an opportunity to be connected to it.
I remember how excited I was to see the portraits of my great (6) grandparents hanging in the Museum of the City of New York. These portraits were painted in mid 1700s. For years, they hung in the living room of a descendant, Caroline Wells. Fortunately for the thousands of Jacobus and Margrietje's descendants, she never married, was an only child and on her death in 1939 she willed the portraits and some other items belonging to Margrietje to the Museum of the City of New York.
My mother started a business in the late 1960s and acquired three cordboards. By the late 1990s, these cordboards were obsolete. Finding parts and people who could repair them was increasingly more difficult. In 2008, I donated one cordboard to the museum in Tustin, California.
It is hard to imagine that items that are a part of one's life will become obsolete and an object of history. That cordboard was over 60 years old and built when my parents were young adults. My mother ran her business til she died. To me that cordboard represents my mother and an important part of her life. I am glad that it will be preserved as a part of the history of Orange County. I hope her future descendants that visit the museum will derive as much pleasure at seeing the cordboard as I did when I viewed portraits.
