Reminiscing about "The Olden Days"

“LOST MUSKET DIARY” Tuesday September 16, 2014

Partly cloudy with scattered thundershowers

92F/33C/ in Rancho Las Musket

Buongiorno!

Tucked away in my large mixed bag of childhood memories are fond recollections of family dinners and those moments when I, or my brother would turn to our dad and ask him to, “Tell us about the olden days.” Charlie Botula could always come up with a story, and our mother, “Skip,” was always able to enhance any reminiscence dad would share with us.

My mom, whose given name was Mary Elizabeth always insisted that the family eat at least one meal - usually dinner, together in our formal dining room.  Dad, as the patriarch, sat at the head of the table. I took a seat at the opposite end. My younger brother, “Packy,” sat at the middle of the table to my left, and my mother, sat  to my  right, to be the closest to the kitchen, in case one of us requested a second helping, or another glass of milk. The scene was closer to “Father Knows Best” rather “Ozzie and Harriet,” primarily because it was before we acquired our first television set. That would make the time period in the mid to late 1940s, since we didn’t get our 21 inch Emerson until 1951.

Dad had been home from the Navy and World War Two about two years when this era dawned. My mom had given up her nursing career to devote her time fully to being wife, mother and housekeeper. Dad had returned from the Pacific and stepped back into his prewar occupation as manager of the local Personal Finance Company. We belonged to the Riverhead Methodist Church, where I attended Sunday school and church with the family and also sang in the junior choir. As my cousin, Robert, used to kid me, I lived in “Mayberry.”

On Sunday, mom would put a roast in the oven; then we would head off to church. By the time we got home, Sunday dinner was ready and we would sit down around the dining table and commence our weekly ritual. This included the above-mentioned, “Tales of the Olden days.”

The “olden days,” for my brother and I meant the 1920s or the Depression Years of the 1930s. I was born in 1941 and was considered a “Pearl Harbor Baby.” My brother was born in October, 1945, two months after WW2 ended in that mushroom shaped cloud. He was the “baby boomer.”

So, the “Olden Days” covered a lot of ground. From Ellis Island in 1903 and my grandfather’s days toiling in Ellsworth #4, the coalmine where he lost two fingers in a mining accident. There was the first Nickelodeon in Cokeburg, PA and family stories about the great influenza epidemic of 1918. My dad and his siblings played on the slag heaps near the coke ovens, which distilled the anthracite coal that my grandfather and oldest uncle dug from deep in the earth to fuel the steel mills of nearby Pittsburgh, steelmaking capital world, at that time.

My mom and dad both grew up in families with nine children in each. Their childhoods unfolded in the coal rich hills of western Pennsylvania, far from the ocean. Both sets of grandparents had migrated to the U.S. from Europe. Michael Percy and his Margaret came from England. Karel and Johanna Botula came from what is now the Czech Republic. My grandmother entered the country at Ellis Island with the first two of their nine children, Maximillian and Karola in 1903. Later, I discovered that my grandfather arrived in Philadelphia ahead of his family’s arrival in New York. They all worked hard, went to school, learned English and became U.S. citizens, living through the “Roaring ’20s, the Depression, Prohibition, the FDR Years and World War Two.

In case you’re wondering, all of this leads up to the reason, I am  now going to spin my  own  version of “stories of the olden days.”  It’s because, that now, I’m 70-something and closer to the end of the trail than the beginning. And my own children and grandchildren are asking me about “the olden days.” “Grandpa, what did you do before television?” “What’s a payphone?” “You were in San Francisco during the ‘summer of love?’” “The Vietnam war must have been terrible.” “I can’t believe you had to watch BLACK AND WHITE TV.” And so on.

I’ve finally convinced them that I did not live in a log cabin, and that we did have electricity and indoor plumbing. And I admitted that I voted Republican once, for John McCain because my brother was in Hanoi in 1973 when McCain and the other POWs were released by the North Vietnamese. Packy was, by then, an Air Force pilot and part of the advance team that flew into Hanoi to set up the logistics for the airlift that took the POWs home.

So, all of this is for my kids Mike, Jr. and Dana and  the grandkids-Joshua, Jacob Jesse and the twins Jordan and Jaydan. Now that I’m retired and have a lot of time that used to be spent making money for somebody else, I feel that it’s time to begin the “Botula Chronicles.” Now, let’s look at some of the other events on this day in history.

1630 - Massachusetts village of Shawmut changes its name to Boston.

1782 - Great Seal of the United States is used for the first time.

1810 - Mexico issues Grito de Dolores, which called for the end of Spanish rule. Mexican Independence Day celebrates this event. Take note if you think “Cinco de Mayo” is Mexican Independence Day.

1858 – Pony Express service brings first overland mail for California.

1908 - Carriage-maker, William C. Durant, founds General Motors in Flint, Michigan.

1957 - LA City Council approves 300-acre site in Chavez Ravine for Dodgers.

Famous birthdays include:

1822 - Charles S Crocker, President of Central & Southern Pacific Railroad. Instrumental in building first Transcontinental Railroad.

1891 - Karl Dönitz, German naval leader. Father of Nazi U-boat service.

1924 - Lauren Bacall, Staten Island, actress (Dark Passage, Key Largo).

And so, from the “Olden Days,” we say…

Ciao!

Mike Botula