Penny Postcards

Photo left to right: My Grandma Holloway with the bonnet, My Aunt Suzie (apron). She is holding my cousin Peanut. The horse is Old Dan. I am the brunette on the horse and my sister is the blonde in front. My Grandma Swift is on the right. (click on photo for larger size)

Well, here is a couple of cute stories about my Aunt Suzie. Actually she was one of my favorites. She had snow white hair and she wore it curled up on top of her head in a little topknot. She used to come to visit us and sometimes she would stay a week or so. I loved having her come to visit. She always spoiled me. Whe she was there I got to sleep with her. She said it was because she was afraid to sleep alone.

She always wore a big white apron and was an excellent cook. She liked to bake and help my Grandmother with the canning etc. She made wonderful blackberry jelly.

She dipped snuff and she would often send me to find a birch tree and break the limbs off it and bring them back so she would have a toothbrush to dip her snuff with. She kept her snuff in a little tin box in her apron pocket. She would break the birch limbs into small pieces about 2 or 3 inches long and then she would chew one end making a fine brush out of it. She would then dip it into the tin and then in her mouth.

When postcards were a penny she would would write to my granddad twice a week. When the post office changed the price to 2 cent post cards I remember she raised cain with the post office and she told my Grandpa he could expect a card only once a week.

My grandmother died when I was 10 so became my job every Sunday night to answer her post cards. I remember one time somewhere I had gotten an old fountain pen and a bottle of ink. The kind of pen you stick in the bottle of ink to fill it up and the ink runs out when you write. If you're not careful you have ink all over you and all over the paper. Well it takes a lot of practice to write with one of those type pens without smudging the ink. One day I talked my Grandpa into letting me write her letter with the fountain pen. The next week here came a postcard back telling him to make me write with a pencil because she was unable to decipher my writing with ink.

She was also honest as the day was long and very frugal. In her later years she drew a small pension but not enough to live on so she went to live with one of her grandchildren. Her social worker explained if they charged her rent she would be able to draw more. The relatives told her they would charge her rent and she could pay them and they in turn would give it back to her. She refused to take it instead managing to live on her meager funds.

Her husband was quite a character. He always walked with a limp. I never knew why but recently I discovered it was because he shot himself in the leg. That story deserves a blog of its own.


A day trip today was taken to Idaho so here is my Photo Two of Three Sixty Five.



As in the words of my Father, "That's it For Today".