Ornaments: Advent Calendar of Christmas Dec.3, 2011

Last year this was one of my favorite topics for the Advent blog. Although some of this post will be the same as last year, I wanted to add some pictures I have found and some information on the little village houses and the Nativity set.

I had three favorite decorations or ornaments, the Nativity, the small cardboard village houses with the hole in the back and the original colored bubble lights that were both an ornament and a light! (In case you can't tell from my previous blogs I was born in the '50's).


My parents bought the simple Nativity set when they had my oldest brother (15 years older than me). Both of my brothers, Doug and Willard were in charge of it until I came along. I did some research on this Nativity and found out that it was sold both pre and post World War 2, at major department stores.

It was Italian made and was made out of a chalk like material. It had a young looking Joseph and Mary and the Baby Jesus had a manger made from a strange brown piece of organic material with small sticks glued on the side for legs (by the time I came along, rubber bands were added).

My favorite Shepherd was tall and kind looking and carried a lamb over his shoulders.
The camels were very heavy and for some reason, the bull's horns had springs sticking out them. The barn that Joseph, Mary and the baby stayed in was made out of such rough old wood that I believed that it actually came from Bethlehem! All these years later only a few of the pieces remain.


The Christmas before my brother Doug passed away, he found a complete set just like the original at an antique store and purchased it for me since I was so attached to it. It now is lovingly displayed each year with the remaining original pieces AND the organic brown manger.

I still have the cardboard village houses as well. "Back in the Day" I spent hours putting the fat Christmas lights through the hole in the back. The windows all were covered in colored cellophane and when the lights were shining, all the houses looked like families were home, warm and safe in the snow sheets.

I hope that you and your families are all able to sleep tight tonight like the families in the little cottages.

Holiday Foods: Advent Calendar of Christmas Dec. 2, 2011

Our family has always been very traditional with our Christmas dinners. There were plenty of beautiful brown turkeys, with moist stuffing (my favorite was my mother's oyster stuffing), heaps of mashed potatoes and plenty of rich gravy to go around and endless specialty side dishes . Then there were the deserts, pies, cakes, cookies and fudge. Sometimes the varieties changed but everything was always wonderful especially after smelling it cook all day and waiting for company to arrive. But for every perfect dish, there are many stories of the less than successful attempts at creating them. Somehow, those mishaps seem to be the stories that get repeated over and over until they become family traditions in themselves.

I'm sure that almost everyone that reads this story could contribute many of these same types of "recipe's gone wrong". Here goes.

Mashed potatoes, runny or dry, runny or lumpy, too much butter or forgotten all together. Ever cooked too many or too few? Waaaaaay more potatoes than gravy? How about not enough to go around? Burned on the bottom or raw and crunchy?

Gravy, thicker than the potatoes? How about greasy on the top? My favorite....just keep adding water and pepper there will be enough...... Then there is the "oh my goodness, we forgot to make the gravy!"

Turkey, too brown, too dry, not done, over done, bag of giblets baked inside on numerous occasions? Our family favorite was the junior small tom turkey...it fueled a competition between my brothers to see which one could successfully make a small turkey feed a lot of people. Between one adding stuffing and the other "infusing" it with the baster the turkey got very large just before it E X P L O D E D.

There were rock hard rolls and dough balls, too much baking soda or not enough and of course "uh oh...did we forget the rolls"?

Finally pies, broken crusts, burnt edges, all crust hardly any pie, all pie no crust, no sugar, too much sugar, too runny and those that were raw. Store bought crust, first time crusts, perfect crusts with awful pie and sour pies with beautiful crusts.

No matter what kind of disaster occurred before or during dinner, it always seemed like the meal was perfect and the best ever! We always knew that no matter how it turned out it was full of love and we were all together, that was what made it special.

Family Christmas Trees: Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories Dec. 1, 2011

Last year I wrote about our artifical tree's when I was growing up,-particularly the silver aluminum tree with the four color light wheel. This year, I was thinking about some of the memorable trees we had when my children were young. My mom was the type of person that would get an idea in her head and until she was able to make it happen, she was on a mission! (I have to admit I take after her when it comes to that.)

Somewhere in the mid 1970's, Winnie the Pooh and Friends were very popular and of course the little one's were all crazy about Pooh. Mom was tired of trying to come up with a suitible tree each year so she decided to get a large life-like tree at Sears. Since most of our ornaments were passed down from Grandparents and my older brother's Christmas's, they were pretty thin and worn. She thought that if she was going to get a new tree,  she should get new ornaments. Then, she decided that if she got new ornaments, she would want them to be something that could be passed down to the grandchildren. Unfortunately, it was getting very close to Christmas, and the possibility of getting enough ornaments that would be special enough to hand down was proving to be difficult. Not only that, she wanted to make sure that they would all be able to have the same type of ornaments, so no one would be slighted. It was quite a problem until we walked into the Christmas department of our local Sears in Fort Collins Colorado.


In the middle of the floor was a beautiful tall, perfectly formed artificial tree, decorated with lights and what seemed to be a hundred Pooh and friends plush ornaments! In addition, there were little gingerbread men and houses and little colorful felt baby animals. It was perfectly beautiful. Problem solved! Mom proceeded to work her magic and would not be defeated even when she was told there were no ornament sets like those on the tree because most of the Pooh characters were excess small plush toys that had been nestled carefully within the branches.
       


Not to be denied, my mom used her very best barganing skills. She asked the Manager if he had thought about how much trouble it was going  to be to take down that tree and restock all the toys after the holiday. Within 15 minutes she had made a deal to purchase the complete display tree, lights and ornaments (and a few larger stuffed Poohs for good measure). The only stipulation is that we had to wait until the week of Christmas before we picked it up.

Oh did I forget to mention that we had to remove the tree just as it was with out disassembling it?

Here's where charming the Son-In-Law comes in. Since My  husband and I were the only one's with a pick up truck, and we worked the night shift, my husband was elected to take mom to Sears and pick up the tree. What a sight it was, driving down College Ave. with a huge tree covered in plastic with Pooh and the boys just "Hanging Around"! After the tree was unloaded, mom supervised while everything was put in place and the lights were lit.

All I can say is that it was magical when the kids saw the tree they were (almost) speechless. Before any arguments over ornaments could break out, mom sat them down and explained that after Christmas, she would let them take the ornaments down and count them evenly into four groups so each family could have a Pooh tree for their house. And yes, there were more than enough animals for us all to have a full tree. Like I said, Magic.  We still have some of the ornaments that have survived and been passed down and they always remind me of that special one of a kind Christmas tree.

I spent this evening trying to find some pictures of the ornaments in old Sears catalogs and I was only able to find a few. So I will add them here. And if you close your eyes and let your inner child imagine a Magical Tree of Pooh .......you might be able to see it lit up in front of the fire on a snowy Colorado Christmas.

I hope you all find a little Magical wonder in every Christmas season. God Bless.

Flora Rosa Louise (Loy) Dunn Childhood Years

Our mother was born August 14, 1918 in Denver County Hospital in Denver Colorado. At that time and through the time that my brother was born, she was one of the largest babies born in the hospital and the hospital put an engraved plaque over the door of the maternity ward with her name and birth information on it. Mom did not know about that until she saw the plaque when she was in the ward having my brother! It was a real shock to her but she had a lot of fun with it.

Her parents were Andrew Jackson Loy and Clara Jones Loy both from Bartholomew County Indiana. She had an older sister Lila and 3 older brothers, Brock, Brandt and Herman. Her parents were living in Otis Colorado where they had settled after homesteading for a short time in the county. Her father was a businessman in the community and owned a general store, tire store and a tin shop. She had fond memories of her childhood before her father passed away. Her father was in the city band and there were always occasions to get together with the neighbors in the lot next to their home. She also remembered that her family hosted a big fourth of July party for the town every year and it was always very exciting. She thought that was why she always enjoyed seeing the fireworks so much.

She had a very close knit family and was close with her sisters Lila and Clara as well as her brothers. Her favorite study in school was reading and her favorite sport was Basketball. Since she grew to over 6 foot tall, it gave her an advantage. She loved dancing as well and would go with her brothers on the weekend to the county dances. Many times the dances were marathons which she particularly enjoyed. She always said she danced late into the night until she was exhausted.

When she was 18 she met our father Maynard Charles Dunn and they eloped with another couple to Alliance Nebraska on a cold December 30th, 1936.

Eldred B. Tresize Narative Part 7 Settling in

This is a narrative that covers the history of the family of Edward John Tresize and their immigration to America from England. It was originally posted on http://www.usgw.org/co/lake/trezise.htm but is not avail. May have been posted by his children.

We finally worked our way across Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas and ended up in Hutchinson, Kansas. My father found work there and so did the rest of us. My step mother, Helena, made several trips by train to Leadville to visit her old girlfriend, Baby Doe McCourt.

My stepmother finally moved to San Antonio, Texas. My father married Mary Bloom. She died shortly after my father and is buried in East Side Cemetery in Hutchinson, Kansas near the Reformatory Wall. My father died the day after New Year's Day in 1930 in San Antonio, Texas. I had his body brought back to Hutchinson and he is buried in Fairlawn Cemetery. His headstone is just a hundred feet west of the Mausoleum. I bought a headstone for my mother and my baby sister who died in Leadville. Their graves had remained unmarked for almost eighty years.

I joined the Navy in World War I and returned to marry my sweetheart, Grace May Hiestand. We had one daughter, Carol June and twin sons, Harris and Farris. I worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. I have had a good life and have many more stories to tell.

Excerpts from a letter dated 5/13/1906 written from Leadville by my father Eldred to his sister Charlotte:

"Lewis had a birthday party the 12th of May. His birthday was on the 8th but there was school. He had been told that he could have a party on no Saturday. Saturday morning, we had a picnic and not a party. We took our baskets and went up to pa's mine, and no sooner had we got there till it began to snow. We went in the shaft house and sat down on some wooden benches all the morning till the bell rang for the miners to come up out of the mine and when the door opened for the men to come in we looked out and saw that the ground was all covered with snow. In the afternoon the sun came out and some of the snow melted and so it was very wet and muddy but we did not care, we wanted to have some fun anyway, but we could not. Pa let us down the mine so that we would not get wet. So we went over to the cage and got on. A cage is a thing that looks like an elevator. The mine is only 300 feet deep. When we got to the bottom, we all had a candle and marched off in the tunnels, but when we came home, we were all tired out. Was not that a nice picnic? We call it a picnic in the storm. You hoped that we are all well but we are not. All of us are kind of sick. We have 9 birds but they are not all ours. Two birds got 3 little birds. Well, I think you are well. it's time for me to close now. From your loving brother, Eldred Trezise, 514 E. 9th St. Leadville, Colorado."

Eldred B. Tresize Narative Part 6 Moving on

This is a narrative that covers the history of the family of Edward John Tresize and their immigration to America from England. It was originally posted on http://www.usgw.org/co/lake/trezise.htm but is not avail. May have been posted by his children.

We reached Salida, Colorado and a man at a livery stable let us stay there for a week or two in one of the stalls. There was a spring wagon in back of the barn with a lot of frozen yellow squash in it. He gave us all the squash. We lived on squash for weeks; boiled squash for breakfast, fried squash for dinner, baked squash for supper, cooked on an oil stove or over a camp fire. I hate squash to this day!

We moved on to Pueblo, Colorado where the winter set in again and a blizzard came up. We lived in a barn at the state fairgrounds until the storm was over. My folks were very proud and were strictly against begging. But I was the oldest and I knew the situation was desperate so I went to a house several blocks away and told them of the condition we were in. They gave me a dozen potatoes and some bread. My folks did not like it one bit that I did that but we had some food to eat anyway.

We moved on. It was so cold and the breath from the horses heads swirled like a cloud of steam and our breath made puffs of white as we struggled along in the icy wind with our heads bent down low. We could not ride in the wagon. Tom had holes in his shoes and cried a lot. I gave him my coat because I was afraid he would freeze to death. I remember the sky being fiery red at night. My father said it was going to be a cold day tomorrow and it turned out that way. Later that evening, near Swink, Colorado, we came across a little abandoned two room shack that had no windows or doors and holes in the roof. A herd of cattle was around the building but they were all dead. They were frozen and us kids could jump from one frozen carcass to another without touching the ground. One cow was frozen stiff in the doorway of the shack but we climbed in over it and stayed in the shack for the night. We could not move the cow out of the doorway so we led the team of horses over the dead cow and put them in the one room and the seven of us slept on the floor in the other room. We hung blankets over the windows and put the oil stove in the middle of the room on top of the wagon seat. We had only one joint of stove pipe for the stove so we set it on the wagon seat so it would be higher. That made the pipe closer to the hole in the roof. The black smoke from the stove pipe rose straight up in a perfect circle and went out through the hole above it.

We brought in snow to melt to have water for cooking and for the horses. We intended to make it to Florida and needed the horses to take us there. I remember being so cold and miserable that I could not sleep. Everyone squirmed and moved around all night long. We moved on the next day, walking along in the snow. The wagon wheels sounded like violins squeaking. We found some hay in a field and fed the horses. It was Christmas Eve, 1909 and we were looking across a frozen landscape, there were no roads, no fences, and no trees. We were not lost because we knew we were headed east. As it got dark, we could see the lights of a town and headed in that direction. As we went over hill after hill, the lights did not get any closer. We finally saw a farmhouse about 11:00 at night. My father knocked on the door and asked how far the town was. The farmer was surprised to see us and asked what we were doing out on a cold night like this? He said the town was Las Animas and it was 8 miles away. These people were a young married couple named Maynard. They invited us in and we were warm at last! The wife was only 16 and Mr. Maynard laughed as he told us he "robbed the cradle". That was the first time I had ever heard that term. He had bought a box of chocolates for her for Christmas. He gave each one of us a chocolate. We had a wonderful Christmas.

Mr. Maynard got us a job excavating an irrigation ditch from the Purgatory River. He directed us to an old two story stone house on the river and we lived there until spring. Father used the team to work on the ditch. The farm was called the Carmen Ranch. She died not long after that. They were the nicest people I ever met.

Eldred B. Tresize Narative: Part 5 Leadville Fires

This is a narrative that covers the history of the family of Edward John Tresize and their immigration to America from England. It was originally posted on http://www.usgw.org/co/lake/trezise.htm but is not avail. May have been posted by his children.

The second big fire that destroyed Leadville burned not only the hillsides and all the old houses and buildings, it also destroyed the Methodist Church that we attended. The church had a big tall steeple and the men later dynamited it to the ground. Even to this day, there are very few trees to be seen in the area because of the big fires that occurred in Leadville.

The fires were not the final blow, however. With the gold standard change over, the silver miners became tired, sick, and disappointed. They were hungry, ragged and destitute and began leaving the barren snow covered hillsides in droves by any means available. Most went by wagon since the train was too expensive. Four of the six railroads which came into Leadville were abandoned, leaving only two in operation to serve a town of less than 400 people. The Trezise family with nine kids were some of the last families to stay in the area. Our house at 514 East 9th Street in Leadville burned to the ground in 1903. We lost all of our belongings including pictures, picture albums, valuable papers, and money. We were left with only the clothes on our backs. Our close knit family split apart, not to get together again for over 40 years. John moved to California, Charlotte raised a large family in Oregon, Precie (Pricilla) moved to Sterling, Colorado and Polly and Fred moved to Missouri.

We packed up our few belongings in a covered wagon and were going to go to Florida. My father heard it was a land of sunshine and oranges. We got as far as Buena Vista, Colorado. We got there in the dead of winter. We stayed in Buena Vista and raised strawberries and potatoes. We sold the strawberries for 10 cents a quart and the potatoes for 25 cents a hundred pound sack. The five of us younger kids got to go to school there for four years. In the fall of 1908, we left in a covered wagon, determined to get to Florida. An early snow set in and covered the hills. The winter of 1909 - 1909 was one of the coldest ever recorded. We were not prepared for it. Our clothes were mostly rags and we did not have warm clothes to wear. We passed an orchard that had some frozen apples on the ground. I asked a boy at the farm house if we could have the apples and he said yes. We ate apples cooked over a camp fire in the cold. My father had a shot gun to bag a few rabbits along the way. I remember one evening we saw a tree with a bunch of black crows in it. My father shot and got six of them before they all flew away. They were cleaned and roasted for dinner. My little brother Tom was real skinny, like Lewis, and never seemed to get enough to eat. He did not get enough to eat until he joined the Army in World War I.