Ding Dong the Witch is Gone

The boss from Hell has been escorted from the building!!!! I wish I'd been there to see it.

I'm working from home over a s-l-o-w connection that is testing my patience. I've also got a patient testing my patience. Actually, he's been really good for having had his chest split open 10 days or so ago. He's even got me cooking again. Now I'm going to gain weight. NOOOOOO!

Austin is in Germany! That means he is NOT IN IRAQ!!!!! Yeah! He sees the surgeon tomorrow and should know the plan soon (did I say "soon" about something to do with the Army?). He told me via IM today that he feels "weird and out of place" at Landstuhl. It's hard to imagine how that must feel, or any part of this war must feel, to actually be in it. I'm just glad he's out of the Sandbox, however temporarily.

We've been watching a lot of WWII history on TV; probably because of Ken Burns' latest documentary "The War." In my opinion, (and this is, afterall, my blog) what we've seen is NOTHING compared to what that generation went through. WWII seems like the "worst war," but it was probably the first war to be so well recorded, on paper, tape, film and in our parents' and grandparents' memory. It is hard to relate imagines of WWI Chaplineque soldiers running awkwardly from the trenches as being those of real people.

My parents and grandparents all died before I had an appreciation for history, especially family history. Like a lot of other people, they may have wanted to put it behind them and not talk about it. I never asked. My mother left behind love letters from my father (they were married in 1946). There may be some "history" there. I read ONE of the letters years ago and decided that was some stuff I did NOT want to know about (and it had nothing to do with war)!

Since I'm discussing history here, there is some investigating that I've always wanted to do regarding my mother. She never knew her father and we don't know if her mother and father were married when she was conceived or ever, which might have been quite the scandal in LA (Lower Alabama) in 1927. Her father's name was James Gamble (I always wished he owned Proctor & Gamble but apparently he didn't). My grandmother's family lived mostly in Dothan and Headland, Alabama. We used to go visiting "up there" when my grandmother was living. It was such fun to play in fields, feed the pigs and chickens. WOW could those women cook!

But we were never to speak of "him." To me he was more than "him," he was "them." He must have married (or remarried), had more children, and there were possibly relatives out there I'd never met. Once, when I lived in Alabama (for a very short time in another life), I traveled a circuit w/ a legal aid lawyer as her assistant. We'd go to all the little towns and provide legal services for the poor. I was filing some documents at a courthouse in a town I sure wish I could remember the name of, when the clerk said to me, "You're one of the Gamble girls, aren't you?"

I'm going to find some of those Gamble girls and see if I do resemble them. There could be cousins who look just like me! I'd love to meet one of my mother's half-siblings. After my grandmother died, my mother talked about finding her "lost family," but she never did even look, I don't think. So that is my next project. If you can help me, this is what I know:

Tera Smith (the person I want info on would be a Smith), my grandmother's maiden name
Tera Poe, her married name (1st? 2nd?)

My grandmother had at least three sisters, one named Cora who was married to Pleaman, a peanut farmer. When she was married to Mr. Poe (never met him, don't know his first name, most likely James), she had two other children, Barbara and James (who served in the Navy), who are both still living but aren't from the "dark side."

Lilly (or Lillian) Jeanne Poe, my mother's maiden name (did Mr. Poe adopt her?)
Jeanne Sciame, my mother's married name (Schamae; it's Italian--my Dad Joseph P. Sciame)
April 10, 1927, my mother's birthdate
Headland, Alabama, believed to be her birth place

In her quest to obtain a passport years ago my mother learned that the courthouse where her birth records and possibly her mother's marriage records were stored had burned down. . . or had it?