Find me:
Genealogy and Online Research Claudia C. Breland
  • Home
  • About
  • Lectures
  • Writing
  • Services
  • DNA
  • Sample Documents
  • Blog

My Grandfather's Journals

4/22/2015

2 Comments

 
When I began writing this blog, almost 4 years ago, one of the first posts I wrote was about my Grandpa Reed's journals and the influence they have been in my life. They've been sitting on bookshelves or packed in boxes, and moved from household to household, for the last 30 to 40 years.Recently (actually, at the end of February) I was inspired to begin transcribing them for publication. 
Picture
Picture
Fortunately, back in the 1980's when my dad was discovering new uses for his Osborne computer almost every day, he took the time to transcribe and print out the complete set of journals, from 1927 to 1959. These transcriptions were printed with a dot-matrix printer, each year headed by a list of significant events, and slipped into page protectors. It was from these transcriptions that I wrote and illustrated my newest book, At Home in Lansing: The Journals of Maurice L. Reed, 1927-1931.
As I typed the words Grandpa wrote with a fountain pen on lined paper, almost 90 years ago, I was amazed all over again. At his thirst for self-education, and the record he kept of the books he checked out of the state library, one of the benefits of living in Lansing. At his hunger for hard, physical work, and the details he set down of digging out a basement underneath their bungalow home. At his passion for weaving, which began in the late 1920s, was set aside for a time, and then taken up again to become his retirement work at Reedcraft Weavers. And at his joy in camping, and in taking his family and friends to explore new areas around Michigan and the US.


Here are some excerpts:


April 11, 1928
   Signed a contract to teach next year at $2305. Summer school will add a little to it.

Dec. 18, 1929
    One of the most severe snow storms Lansing has ever seen began about noon today. I got the car out & drove to Evening School but only 2 in first class & 3 in second, one of them Miss Norton’s. One of my students had no way to get home. I took her, got tuck for an hour on Willow, sent her on as soon as I saw I was to be there some time, got a horse to pull me out for a dollar. Had to park on Main St. as couldn’t get in garage. All schools were closed all day Thurs.


March 21, 1930
   Went to the closing exercises of Evening School last night, and ducked out at 8:30 to go to lodge, hoping to get some knowledge of the ritual. Have made no visible headway at it yet, and feel so disgusted. I dislike intensely to spend such oceans of time learning such utterly useless material. Had I known one must learn thousands and thousands of words of ritual in order to become a common 3rd degree Mason, and that it must be done from another Mason, as it doesn't exist lawfully in print, and that it must be accompanied by the inhalation of second-hand tobacco smoke, carbon dioxide and bad lighting; I fear I should never have attempted it.

July 4, 1930 (camping at Yellowstone National Park)
   Dinner was the biggest success yet.  I invented out of sheer imagination a pot roast of Mackinaw trout and it was delicious, with bacon, vinegar, salt, pepper & sugar in it, and steamed.  Another big feature was the successful initiation of my reflector baker.  I baked a batch of biscuits and they were perfect, browned to a turn, done through & through in only 12 min. cooking.  M.H. made shortcake of them with the fruit, and ate his full quota of the trout beside.


Nov. 29, 1930
      Ruby and I and Jane are pretty bored over it all. We have had to sit for hours in stifling, overheated rooms, facing glaring lights, and listening to no end of gossip, unable to read or be comfortable days, and in misery one of the two nights. Nothing against the folks we visited. They did all they could to show us a good time, but hereafter we stay in town all winter unless it be for a long trip South some time. Other people are accustomed to keep their house hotter than we enjoy, they do not have any common interests with us, have religious scruples against a game of bridge, and we are getting older probably, and do not so easily adjust ourselves to their ways. The annual trip, which we have made every year since 1924, I think, has almost become a custom, but it is too severe, and too hazardous, at the time of year, and we feel it had better be dropped.

Picture
2 Comments

    Archives

    July 2022
    October 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    August 2017
    October 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    August 2013
    May 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011

    Categories

    All
    1940 Census
    Ancestry
    Archives
    Ashes
    Association Of Professional Genealogists
    Beem
    Beulah
    Blogs
    Brick Walls
    Camp Elmira
    Catlin
    Census
    Certification
    Chase
    Christmas
    Citations
    Civil War
    Continuing Education
    Court
    Detroit
    Divorce
    Dna
    Education
    Enumeration Districts
    Estate
    Estate Inventories
    Familysearch
    Fold3
    Forensic Genealogy
    Forgery
    Genealogy
    Genealogybank
    Genealogy News
    Google Earth
    Guardianship
    Hickox
    History
    I'm My Own Grandpa
    Indexing
    Indirect Evidence
    Journals
    Kiker
    Lake Erie
    Land Records
    Learning
    Legacy Family Tree
    Libraries
    Library Of Michigan
    Malcolm D. Lane
    Manistee
    Marriage
    Marriage Records
    Marshall Butters
    Michael Hait
    Michigan
    Microfilm
    Military Records
    Muppets
    Murder
    National Archives
    Newspapers
    Ngs
    North Carolina
    Obituaries
    Online
    Oregon
    Police Case
    Portland
    Primary Information
    Probate
    Probate Records
    Prosser
    Randall
    Records
    Records Not Online
    Reed
    Reedcraft Weavers
    Sanilac
    Sarah Addington
    Seattle Public Library
    Shipwrecks
    Small
    Songs
    State Archives
    Steve Morse
    Stoelt
    Strunk
    Thompson
    Traverse City
    Traverse City State Hospital
    Varran
    Washington Territory
    Weber
    Webinars
    Weddings
    Will
    Wills

    RSS Feed

    All content (c) Claudia Breland, 2022