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A New Baby

28 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

As told to DiVoran Lites by Her Mother, Dora Bowers

In May 1939, my father, Roger Bedell, died in our home town of Canon City, Colorado. Since Ivan, and I; and our baby DiVoran were living in Lovelock, Nevada, we headed home in our 1921 coup for the funeral. Because our trip took place on Decoration Day, every cemetery we passed had bouquets of flowers on the graves. I saw them through tears, knowing I would not see my Dad again this side of heaven.

Description: Flower, Peony, Blossom, Bloom, Plant, Nature, Flora

Photo credit Pixabay

Once home in Canon I dug in and didn’t want to leave, so Ivan drove back to Lovelock and packed up. Back in Canon City, he got a job with the gas company, where my Dad had worked.

In time with a loan of $100.00 from my grandmother Dora Bell Hunter, we were able to buy a house on River Street. The house cost $900.00 and our payments were $20.00 a month.

Description: Chicken, Hens, Pullet

Photo credit Pixabay

In those days, part of our income came from Ivan’s job and part of the old cars he fixed up and sold for $35.00 or so. We had a boarder and that helped. Also we raised chickens. We had many fusses about the chickens. I thought I knew more about taking care of poultry because I was raised on the farm. He thought he knew more because he’d helped his parents with the chickens in a pen out back of their apartment house on Greenwood Avenue.

Of course, our fusses were nothing compared with the big fight the whole world had fallen into in Europe. Before he died, my Dad said there would be another war. In December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States declared war. 

About that time, I kind of figured I was pregnant so I went to the doctor and he took a sample of my water then had the lab inject it into a young female mouse or rabbit. If her ovaries were enlarged that meant you were expecting. 

Those were turbulent times for all of us: but I was pleased to be adding to the small family I loved. Since we already had a girl, we prayed for the baby to be a boy.

In June it was hot and I was big. Everyone told me I was carrying a boy because my stomach stuck way out rather than filling in around me as stomachs were believed to do with girls.

I must have looked pretty pitiful, because when the man came to collect the last installment on the pots and pans he’d sold us, I told him I couldn’t pay him. I needed the last $3.00 for a magazine subscription I’d ordered. He took one look at my condition and then, to my surprise and delight, gave me a “paid” receipt and left. 

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Marie’s Notes 5

21 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Marie’s youngest brother, Paul, had a hickory rocking chair made by their great grandfather, William Henry Dulgar who came from England with his parents in the early 1800s. I imagine someone in the family has the rocker yet. It has held many mothers rocking their babies and perhaps a few indulgent papas too.

Paul’s son, Dean, had a portrait of William Henry Dulgar in his judge’s robes. For a long time, it hung above the stairwell but eventually, Dean hid it away in the attic because he didn’t want anyone in the family to take it. The tension broke when Cousin Mary persuaded Dean to let her have it copied so that every family could have their own picture. Dean agreed and peace was restored to the family.

“How blessed you are when you make peace! For then you will be recognized as a true child of God.” Matthew 5:9

I had met Dean when my grandparents took me to Illinois to meet my relatives. He and his small sister were beautiful children, and I enjoyed spending time with them. Many years later I was sad to learn that as a young man, Dean took a short-cut over a frozen lake and the ice broke under him. Nobody was there to keep him from drowning. 

Annie, Paul, and Dean

Another ancestor I met was Great Aunt Mae, Marie’s aunt. I met her many years later when she had moved to her daughter’s house in California. We were in Inglewood where Bill attended Northrup University. After I worked for three years to help pay his tuition, we decided to start a family. He got a daytime job and I got a baby which pleased me no end.

I’m glad I got to know so many generations of my family. Aunt Mae had been born in the late 1800s. She moved to California when she was 57 and lived with her daughter Aldyth and died at 88. Aunt Mae’s other daughter, Irene Hunt wrote the children’s book, Across Five Aprils, (1964) which won four awards including the prestigious Newberry Award. It was made into a movie and is still used in schools to fill in the history of the Civil War. Even though many in the family suggested I meet her, it just didn’t happen. I’m about brave enough to meet her now, but alas, it is too late.

Aunt Mae had lots of time for me. She admired the green and black cotton maternity dress with the black velvet bow I had made for myself. She suggested I keep my kitchen clean by wiping down all the cupboards every day. But I didn’t do it. She taught me how to make a crazy quilt from elegant fabrics such as satin and velvet (her materials.) That included teaching me how to make a feather stitch. We talked about things such as shaving legs and underarms and she said she never had to do either because the heavy homespun of her dresses was so rough they wore off all the hair. When our daughter was born, Aunt Mae was her great, great, great, great Aunt. That tickled me too. 

Also when our daughter was born, Aunt Mae’s brother, Marie’s dad, gave the baby a rubber doggy that squeaked. I held onto to that for a lot of years knowing it was from little Renie’s great-great grandfather. 

Remember, Jasper Dulgar knowing all the property owners in Jasper County Illinois? Well, apparently his daughter who turned out to be Aunt Mae wouldn’t let people ask him about who owned what property after he was 96 because it was making him too nervous. 

I think this is all of Marie’s notes, but I still have a big box of letters and notes to go through, so I’ll see what I find. Thank you for your “Likes.” 

Grandpa Dulgar and DiVoran c 1940 at Marie’s house on Main Street in Canon City, Colorado.

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Hawk Shower

14 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

One of the hawk family 
In our neighborhood
Lights on the edge of a roof
And sits listening while
I talk this and that to him
He reminds me about his family.
His parents courted 
on the campus of our church
They danced in the air.
They landed on the grass.
Two hawks attending church.
Preacher with a sense of humor
Says, “Get a room,” 
But still, they dance in air
And swoop screeching.
Two mocking-birds
Can’t chase them away.
Eggs hatch, birds grow
Booming thunderstorm
Young hawk comes to our
Backyard fence, 
Clings to chain-link
With fierce talons,
Flaps wings. 
Happy in wind and weather
Happy in air.
Good hawk.
Clean hawk. 
 

By DiVoran Lites

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Marie’s Note 4

7 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Marie in White (1883)

Jasper Newton Dulgar (1847-1944) was Marie’s paternal grandfather. He had two wives. Nancy Emeline was his second wife. She had lost her husband and between them, she and Jasper had a family of six children.

When they married they outfitted their kitchen with utensils…mostly made of iron. They bought an iron stove that came with a set of ironstone dishes, an iron stew pot, an iron tea kettle, and a big iron skillet.

They had a pair of black bread-pans that were made of a lighter metal. They were two feet square each. Emeline made two double batches of bread two times a week. If the bread dried out, she tore it up, put it in bowls and poured milk over it for breakfast. If there was a bit of extra bread at the end of the week, she could make bread pudding with milk, eggs, and sugar.

The stove used wood for fuel. Ovens in those days were temperamental but a good cook knew how to make her oven work right. She could have spent up to six hours in the kitchen every day, except Sunday. Most likely she made enough food on Saturday to take to church the next day. It seems that most of the hard-working farmers believed in the Lord Jesus and wanted to be together on that day to learn more about Him plus they needed the rest and the company.

One winter Jasper discovered there were Indians living in dirt caves somehow worn into the bank of a stream. Being so close to “wild” Indians, was a bit scary at first, but they left each other alone. 

Speaking of Indians, my friend, Patricia Franklin in Colorado is of pioneer stock, too. She tells a story that goes like this:

“In the 1800s when my grandfather was a small boy he pulled a kettle of boiling water off the stove and down the front of his body. Since a doctor had never lived in the Wet Mountain or anywhere close, his mother hitched up the horses, put him in the wagon and drove twenty-five miles over rough terrain to an Indian camp where her Indian friends lived. She left him there with them, and several months later, they returned him to his home totally healed except for the scarring of his torso and legs. He would have those throughout his long life. 

Photocredit Pixabay

Now back to Jasper. As Jasper grew old and frail, sons and daughters took over the hard work of the farm while Jasper spent some of his days as an unpaid county clerk. Because he had been there when the area was first settled he was the only person who could remember who lived where and when they lived there. In good weather, he sat out front with his squirrel gun on his lap. In the picture, he has something else on his lap—a birthday cake. I wish I could count the candles, but by this time he was 97 and that was the year in which he died.  

Jasper Newton Dulgar 1844

I was born in ’38 and Jasper was still alive back east, but I never got to meet him. When I was twelve years old, however, my grandmother Marie and grandad Ira took me by car to Illinois and I met many fine relatives, most of them still farmers. When we got there, I slept in a feather bed for the first time in my life. 

Marie 1942 

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Marie’s Notes 3

30 Sep

My Take

DiVoran Lites

My grandmother, Marie Dulgar, remembered the clay pipe her grandmother, Nancy Emmeline Dulgar smoked. It was short and small, the size of a large sewing thimble. The face of an Indian had been engraved on it. She sat in her rocking-chair on the wooden porch smoking and watching the world go by.

She wore four petticoats. Her second one was green and had a long pocket where she carried her tobacco. The boys in the family had enjoyed stealing it when she wasn’t looking, but now they could not get to it. They were flummoxed for a while but easily found other worlds of mischief to get into.

This grandma was the storyteller in the family so the children didn’t want to bother her enough that she wouldn’t tell the stories. 

Marie said that her family had bad tempers. That was the Dulgars. Her husband’s family had bad tempers, too. That was the Bowers family. The Coopers who were ancestors of the Bowers family lived in a sad and gloomy house because Solomon Cooper worked as a coffin maker. In his shed, he made mummy-shaped wooden coffins measured to fit the deceased.

This is a tintype photograph of the Coopers. There was no tin used in these pictures but a lacquered piece of thin metal, usually iron was used. This type of picture was most common between the years of 1860-1890. It’s amazing and thrilling that we have our very own tintype passed down for four generations. The more I see even the oldest pictures taken in America, the more I am convinced that the most primitive takes turned out sharp and clear, even though early on the film was known to burst into flame and burn down theaters.

Coincidently Bill’s and Judy’s grandfather was a coffin-maker/undertaker too. This man once made a beautiful coffee table from a large and valuable piece of wood that fell off a train. He gave it to his daughter, Jessie, and she still had it when I knew her. By then it had become a priceless antique.

William King

Addie King, Agnes Lites, William King, and Billy Lites 

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Hear, Here

16 Sep

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Let me sit on my porch

In the morning 

In a town where true friends live

Let me hear the call of the freight train.

And a neighbor rooster who crows.

And thinks he is always king. 

I hear an airplane

Droning West. 

I see the birds 

In our backyard

Flying, flittering landing,

Taking off.

Taking baths

Chirping from a 

A telephone wire

The mocking bird and the blue jay

Steal one another’s calls 

And Sand Hill Cranes fly south.

Photo credit for all pictures in the above post- Pixabay

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Marie’s Notes

9 Sep

My Take

DiVoran Lites

A Story From the Mid-1800s

My grandmother Marie told my Mother Dora everything she could remember about the history of her family. Here is one of the very-short stories. In the mid-1800-s, three generations before my grandmother, Marie Bowers was born, William McElwee came to America from Ireland on a ship. He had red hair. Out of ten children Marie’s family had five redheads and Marie was one of them. I wanted to be a redhead, so I went to beauty school and then I became one.

Paul, the next to the youngest of Marie’s brothers and sisters was one of the redheads. Because William McElwee, (Bill) bore the label of bound-boy, he was probably kidnapped from a big city and placed aboard a ship coming to America. He may have been no older than seven. When he got here he was taken to Illinois to work as a slave. An indentured servant expected to be paid for his work, but bound-boys and bound-girls expected nothing, not even love. He worked off his passage and then worked off his room and board and it took his entire childhood. The man who had bought him had owned a slave and the man who took the money for the voyage grew rich stealing and selling children.

Somehow, Bill overcame it all and became a homesteader and a wealthy horse breeder. One day he and his partner, Harry, who was a known gambler loaded their best stallion, Ace, onto the train and took him to Texas for a sale. The family had heard Bill say he expected to get at least $2,000 for the prize stud, ($60,000 today).

The family waited a long time, but Bill never came home. One day, however, in a nearby town, a relative saw Harry and heard that he had come up with a lot of money. Perhaps no one in the family was able to go after Harry or ask questions. We will never know what happened, but we do know that after Bill was gone, the family still fared well.

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Mother’s Family-Marie Part 1

2 Sep

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Noah, Marie, and Amy Dulgar

My grandmother, Marie (Dulgar) Bowers was born and raised in Jasper County Illinois. When she was twenty-one she married Ira John Bowers, a farmer’s son. They had two boys and continued to live in Illinois until the eldest was five and the youngest two years old. Marie knew a great deal about rearing children because her mother and father had produced ten of them, and Marie was the eldest of them all. 

The family move, “Heading West,” is described here.

After the death of her mother, Marie and Ira reared Marie’s youngest sister, Helen, and the youngest brother, Paul along with Ivan and Lowell, their own boys. That gave Marie two five-year-olds and two, two year-olds. Eventually Noah took his two and headed back for Illinois. I think it was to spare Marie and because the other grown-up brothers and sisters would be able to help with the children. I wish I could talk to them all now and get the details. Thank heaven Dora and Marie both told me family stories for all the years we were together. 

I’ve always loved one story Marie told about getting herself and the four children ready for church. Of course, they would have had their tin washtub baths in the kitchen the night before. All that was left in the morning was to dress them, brush their hair, and keep all four clean until they could get in the car and go to church. Marie was a good thinker and planner so she came up with the idea of setting the children on the floor with a bedpost holding them down by their clothes.

After going to school in Pueblo, Ira and Marie opened a beauty and barbershop in this house on Main Street. Later they bought a Victorian house to live in. They divided the upstairs into apartments and arranged a back room as a beauty shop with its own entrance.

Once the women’s block, now the prison museum. 

Ira went to work as a guard in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Marie once told me that the families of the prisoners were always polite to the guards they met in the town because they wanted to make sure theirfamily members were well treated. The penitentiary had the first electric chair in Colorado and also had a horizontal whipping post the men were forced to bend over for punishment. If you ever go through Canon City on vacation. You can stop in and see these items of death and torture. 

Marie and Ira Bowers married 63 years

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Available

26 Aug

My Take

DiVoran Lites

By DiVoran and Thea

DiVoran

When I put down my pen to scratch Thea’s ears.

I’m available.

When I wake up and pet her down at the end of the bed,

I’m available.

When I carry her in my arms on a tour of the house,

I’m available.

When I get out her play mouse on a long, soft line 

I’m available.

When I hide treats in the folds of her soft red blanket,

I’m available. 

Thea

When the back porch needs to be protected

I’m available. 

When I offer her my ears to stroke,

I’m available. 

When she needs to be awakened from a big bad dream,

I’m available. 

When she needs purring to remember that that life is good,

I’m available.

When she needs the light of my bright yellow eyes,

I’m available. 

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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Dora Jane’s First Years

19 Aug

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Dora Jane Bedell  1936

Granddaughter of Dora Bell

Mother of DiVoran Lites

Smithy and Dora with Photographer’s Goat

When Dora Jane Bedell’s family first moved to Canon City they discovered that the only available housing was a big tent on a wide space just outside of town. The whole family moved in until they could find small houses of their own.

 Julia May, Roger, and Dora Bedell

Dora says: 

“When we moved to 523 Harrison Street the cave we dug in the back yard, the chase, race, and hide and seek games we played and plays we presented to the neighborhood were a lot of fun. When I was eleven my prayers for a baby sister were answered. Her name was Julia May. She and I and the friends we made kept in touch for a lifetime.  I eventually married one of the boys we all played with. His name was Ivan 

I made it to second grade at the two-story stone Washington schoolhouse before I got scarlet fever. Mabel had already had one child who had died from a similar illness. His name was Ralph and he had a rheumatic fever which advanced to St. Vitus Dance. He was still only a baby when he died. *I imagine that made my mother even more worried about me.  Quarantine held me in my bedroom for six weeks with a high fever. Once a neighbor brought me a lovely tray of food. It had bits of cheese, some crackers, lunchmeat, and candies. I have always remembered her kindness in making it so pretty for me. I had to take second grade again at the big, two-story Washington school. It took me 13 years instead of 12 to get all the way through that and high school. DiVoran went to Washington School too. She also had the same Sunday school teacher Elvira Brown, a single lady. Auntie Elvira loved her children dearly and when she met her husband in later years, she loved him too. 

DiVoran:

I’ll never forget fours and fives Sunday School with Miss Brown. That was where I learned to sing, “Jesus Loves Me” and found out it was the truth through Miss Brown’s stories and tenderness toward us. I met her again when I was an adult and thanked her profusely for showing me the way. 

* Sydenham’s chorea, also known as chorea minor and historically referred to as St Vitus‘ dance, is a disorder characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements primarily affecting the face, hands and feet.

Sydenham chorea (SC) is a neurological disorder of childhood resulting from infection via Group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus (GABHS), the bacterium thatcauses rheumatic fever. SC is characterized by rapid, irregular, and aimless involuntary movements of the arms and legs, trunk, and facial muscles.

Author, Poet and Artist

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

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