Flipside: Language--Olde Tyme

Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join. I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside. AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024. Sometimes I get lazy. 😁 Let's see how well I keep up.

Week # 9 (March 4-March 10) is Language.

Lin, Ken and Grams and Pop Pop
Christmas 1954

I find myself again blogging about my paternal grandmother, Sarah VanGilder Hughes aka Grams. For years I have kept memories about her in a notebook regarding the many times we spent together, least over the years I would forget. Too often when blogging about family members I do not have first hand knowledge to make the story more personal. When it comes to my grand parents and my paternal great grandmother, I do. I admit that this blogging challenge has opened the door to finally put some of the personal memories into Flipside.

I probably spent more time with Grams and Pop Pop than my maternal grandmother, Teek, due to their ages and where they lived. Teek was older having been born in 1880 where Grams and pop Pop were somewhat younger having been born in 1898. Teek lived in a studio apartment and not far away, Grams and Pop Pop were renting a 3-4 bedroom apartment and later a 2 bedroom place.

As a very young child, I often spent weekends with Grams and Pop Pop. When I was in sixth grade and into junior high school, it was not uncommon for me, in the summer, to jump on my bike and travel about four miles to visit Grams. Later in the afternoon my Mom or Dad would drop of my suitcase and I was visiting for a few days. My memories are drawn from these impromptu visits.

Back to the topic of language. In this blog the language is not speaking words from a foreign country instead it is words spoken from another time in the United States. Words that were uncommon to me.

Grams had a huge, hulking dark wooden piece of furniture in the dining room that she referred to as a credenza. I have looked up images of a credenza. The closest I came was the one pictured above, although hers was not as ornate. It had a lower section pictured above; however, there was an upper section that had a door and shelves inside for her dishes. Many afternoons she and I spent some time playing cards. "Lin, get the cards out of the credenza." They were in the drawer on the right hand side. 😊

Indulge me here. The credenza pictured above is from the 1890's. Grams had many pieces of older furniture, Eastlake style was one. These may have come from VanGilder and Poole households in the Morgantown, West Virginia area as pieces from the family estates and moved up to the Pittsburgh area. Or, perhaps some of her antique furniture came from Pop Pop's mother, who was living with them by 1950. She had lived in Monaca, Pennsylvania before moving in with them around 1950 and she had furniture.

Next up was antimacassar. Grams had them on chair arms. Hers were white lace. Again, were they family hand me downs?

https://www.facebook.com/GrandiloquentWords

"Lin, it's raining outside, grab the bumbershoot."

"Tonight you're going to sleep on the davenport, Lin."

https://www.facebook.com/GrandiloquentWords

Oh fiddlefaddle

LOL. I thought I was done with this blog, yet a couple of nights ago, while talking with a friend, another Grams word came out of my mouth--addlepated. I wonder who my Grams was talking about when she used the word 😊

My brother, Ken, was over last night and he added two more expressions he remembered from our Grams. dose of salts and taint funny McGee.

Dose of salts means very quickly and thoroughly. Some used a dose of salts (water and Epsom salts)to clean out their intestinal system, Grams used it as a term for cleaning up a room or the apartment. "I need to give that kitchen a dose of salts.

Taint funny McGee was a put down line from Molly to her husband, Fibber McGee in the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show. Probably said to one of the three of us grandchildren while doing something we thought was funny, but wasn't, "Taint funny McGee!"

This may be a blog I come back to as more words come back into my memory. Stay tuned.

Gadzooks! Better than profanity.....😇

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