American Legacies Organization, Inc.

Requests From Our Readers

Smokehouse

I’m looking for information on old smokehouses. How were they built, what type of floor? How was meat smoked?

Guest

_______________________

I too am looking for information on building a smokehouse. Also how to smoke meat.

Guest

_______________________

By Jennifer Thompson

Editor, Good Old Days

Hurrah, its June - summer is here! The days are longer now, and there is so much to do outdoors. In my family, the farm is a busy place in the summer. There is fencing to be fixed, a large yard to be maintained, livestock to take care of, and hay season is steadily approaching. We are grateful for the daylight left at the end of the work day that may lend to an hour or two of fishing, perhaps.

Connie Sychowski

Editor Genealogy Corner

The month of the June brings with it thoughts of… the last day of school, beginning of summer, and swimming pools to stay cool in. Most of all June is time to pay tribute to our father’s, for all they do and have done. For all they will continue to do.

Milton Long on his 1940 Indian Chief

By Milton Long

Wooster, Ohio was no different than any other small city in 1941. People were getting over the depression and were able to buy cars and motorcycles.

Coming from a motorcycle family, it wasn’t unusual that I purchased my first motorcycle in 1937 at the age of 14. It was a 1935 sidecar job that I paid $125.00 for. It was a big improvement over the motor scooter I had owned before.

By Howard A. Ellis

Really, this isn’t a story so much as a brief meeting I experienced today between myself and an Army veteran of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944.

I was in the armed forces from 1942 until retiring in 1965, and was a 19-year-old USAAF staff sergeant assigned to the 877th Signal Service Co., 16th Air Depot Group when D-Day erupted.

Myra C Riley in wheelchair and Polly Mazariegos standing behind her.

Myra Riley’s Last Mothers Day

by Polly Mazariegos

I was trying to think of a favorite Mother’s Day memory, and all the memories I had with my mother, Myra C. Riley, were favorites.

I remember when I was working in DC and could not come up to Gettysburg, PA to see her, I would always sent her flowers. Mom loved flowers.

Mary Catherine Treacy Fak about a year before she died.

By Mike Fak

You know the call is going to come. You put it out of your mind as many times as it pops into your head but you always know it will happen one day. Always when the thought crops into your head you ask God, not today. Not next week. Not next year. The call is as inexorable as life itself. It comes in its own time, not ours.

Flavia Robertson

My Mother Rose of Sharon

By Fern Albin Ubelhor

Tell City, Indiana

Today, I was at my mothers house to cut her grass. This was such a bad summer. The heat was terrible and the rains were few, but as I mowed the grass, I noticed on her Rose-of-Sharon bush, one purple flower. It was so perfect, I had to just stop and study it.

by Lynn Ruth Miller

When 72 year old Clay Thompson was fourteen years old, his family migrated to California. Dad worked in the oil fields in Oklahoma and jobs were so spotty, he decided he had to do something about it, Thompson recalls. He hauled hay down south in the Imperial Valley at first and then, when I was a sophomore in high school, we moved to Pacifica and rented a house in Sharp Park right near the golf course.

Henry Gilman in 1975.

My Uncle Henry

A Deaf Immigrant From Russia

By Dale Brown

When I was young, I was afraid of my deaf great-uncle. He grunted strangely and gestured wildly. Once he bared his teeth and motioned across them with his finger. I knew he was telling me to brush my teeth, but he reminded me of an animal growling. My fear lingered for weeks. I saw Uncle Henry only at infrequent family gatherings.