Miscellaneous notes from piles of paper and a little family history

Dear Hearts,

I am at a stage of life when I am trying to divest myself and my house from all the crap I have accumulated the last 45 years or so. The trouble is - and I know many of you have the same experience - as I go through the old piles, I have to stop and read the writings, and look at the photos, before tossing anything. This blog entry is miscellaneous notes from a little notebook I came across, and then veers into Litchfield family history. 
It starts off useful, with a recipe for making yogurt

Making yogurt

1/3 cup yogurt

Heat quart of milk to 180 degrees

Cool to 115 degrees

Mix in yogurt

Wait.

I haven't tried this yet. 

 

Notebook pages

1.

1.        3/12/15

People who are better than I am

People who don’t watch television every night,

Because, you know television makes your brain liquefy and drip out of your open mouth.

People who are better than I am

Don’t play solitaire for hours,

Trying to make impossible plays or win once, at least.

And their homes are neat and tidy

And their diets are healthy

And they don’t feel guilty when they sit back to relax

Because they aren’t doing the vacuuming, or putting away the dishes, or folding the laundry,

Or any of the other chores I mean to get around to

Because people who are better than I am

Have balance, and structure

And equilibrium in their lives.

But they are not perfect,

For all their tranquility and order

They’ve been known to

Split infinitives

Sometimes they go out and spend money that was meant to pay the bills

Sometimes they lean over a garbage can and yell,

“The world can go to hell!”

So even though I know

They are better than I am

I kind of like them

Just fine.

 

2.

07/22/22

So I cooked

This evening

An artichoke, and some leftover chicken from the freezer.

In all too typical fashion I let them cook dry and burn

And the aluminum cladding on the bottom of the stainless steel pot

The artichoke was in

De-laminated and left part of itself on the element

And a few more drops of itself on the counter

When I lifted the pan off.

I was not expecting that.

That old pot – one of our wedding presents from 1979 –

Is headed for the landfill now.

And the knife I used to cut off the top of the artichoke

Is quite dull after all these years.

I know Rick was with me when I got that knife at the late, lamented, 

Bed Bath and Beyond, around 2007.

It was $30, more or less.

I can’t say we didn’t get our money’s worth out of it.

So

I need

A new knife (15 years)

A new pot (43 years)

A new stove (free discard, age unknown) *

And maybe

A winning lottery ticket.

Time to go shopping.

*This stove miraculously manifested itself and is working just fine.

 

3. 

09/11/23

I don't really have a story to tell. I'm just old, and a lot has happened and I thought should write some of it down. My cousin Charlotte is always telling me to write a book about our family. I haven't done it yet, though there is a story or two there.

When I was in the fourth grade, we were learning about Manifest Destiny (yes, I know now that that was about the eradication of the civilization that already lived here, and stealing their land, but that's another essay) and the brave settlers who came out west in wagon trains. I asked my father one day if our family came west in a wagon train.   He laughed. No, he said, our family waited until the railroad was built and then came out west.

Okay, so the Litchfields were soft, right? They waited until they could buy a ticket and travel in the relative comfort of the train. Well, that's what I thought until I came across the historical family record. Some Litchfields had come out West individually, by horse I imagine, or maybe even around the Horn, and settled in the Central Valley of California, in what is now Manteca. There they farmed, and married, and multiplied, and wrote home to the relatives in the Midwest about what a great place California was. The climate and the rich Delta soil made the living comparatively easy compared to the Midwest's harsh winters and hot summers.

So when the railroad was connected between the West and the East of the United States, a Litchfield family did take the train out west to Manteca. But the train was not made of passenger cars with padded velvet seats. Nope. This was the second train to convey people to the West, and the people rode in boxcars. By the time the Litchfield family arrived in Manteca, one of their children had died. So it wasn't the easy train trip my father made it sound like. It was uncomfortable, and dangerous, and fatal to one of their children. It was common to lose children in the 19th century, but I do not believe that people mourned any less for their children then than people do now.

So that's how the Litchfields from which I descend came to California. 

In the 1880s, my great grandparents, Chauncey and Belle Litchfield, moved from the Central Valley over to a valley in the foothills of the Coast Range. Belle and their eldest son, Percy, my grandfather, could not tolerate the tule fog in Manteca, so they moved to the Coast in hopes of it being a healthier climate.

They settled near Watsonville, in what was and is Green Valley, and planted 100 acres of apple trees, and they prospered and multiplied.

To be continued.

My great grandfather, Chauncey Litchfield. He was named for his grandfather Chauncey.