Misadventures as Art

A while back Louise and I were down in the shop and I showed her my "collection of shame", parts which had been damaged due to my negligence or stupidity.  A couple of days later, she asked me if she could have some of them for a project.

I had no idea what the project was but I said "yes".  After 48 years of marriage, I know the correct answers to most of her questions.  What she did was to use these as art to decorate our bathroom!

I must say that it is a very unusual choice of items to use as art.  I must describe each of these items.

On the upper left is a 32 penny spike which I accidentally left in the yard south of our house.  Years later, our neighbor, Roy, was doing us a favor by mowing that area.  He ran over the spike, which was at least 75 yards from the house, and threw it through our glass block window in the bathroom.  It traveled across the bathroom into the water closet where it left a deep gash in the sheet rock wall and landed on a small glass table in front of the stool.  Roy felt horrible but I was the one who left it in the yard and he was mowing our grass after all.

The nut in the lower left box was what was left from a trailer hitch which I grossly under designed.  We were returning home from a fishing trip to Lake Taneycomo in Missouri when the hitch failed, letting my boat and trailer come loose and almost roll over.  Ironically, my insurance agent, who was also my fishing buddy was following me at the time and almost had a heart attack!  The nut, which was holding the hitch ball on took the brunt of the incident and was ground almost nearly in two.  It took weeks to get all the asphalt out of the boat!

The large center frame holds a bent connecting rod from our '46 Chevy cabover, known as Butt Ugly.  I drove it to work at Tulsa Winch one day and a rain storm came through.  Well, the engine sits in the open behind the cab but I had no idea that that much water could get through the air cleaner!  When I went out that evening to start the truck, it turned over about twice, fired and then locked up.  The cylinder that that rod was in was full of water and it "hydrauliced", bending the rod.  A week later and some mechanic work and it was good as new.

The item in the right box is the only one not caused by my stupidity but I found it very unusual.  My neighbor, T.J., asked me to replace the PTO seal on his old Ford 600 tractor.  When I got the old seal out, I looked at it and was amazed!  The seal had the original Ford logo on it and the wiper on the seal was made of rawhide.  Early seals used rawhide as the wiper but I had never seen one.

If you get a chance, come by and look at the museum in our bathroom.

How Far Would You Go For A Coney?

Today I was searching around in my blog and I searched for "coney".  Not a single use of this word popped up.  So I've decided to change that!

For the past three or four years, I, along with friends Larry and Hugh, have had coney outings about once a month.  Normally,we would meet at Larry's wife's place of business, BS for a while and then drive to Dean's Coney Island in Sand Springs.

Well, things have changed recently.  Hugh moved farther away, down south of OKC, and Louise and I spent the winter in the Rio Grande Valley.  So coney outings have become less frequent.  The other day, as we were preparing to come home, I decided to set up a new coney lunch but in Hugh's neighborhood, Oklahoma City.

Larry and he both agreed that this sounded like a splendid idea so we planned to do it on Friday after I got home on Thursday.  Hugh found us a place in the City so we left Mannford about 10:00 a.m. and were going to meet Hugh at 11:40.

We arrived at the designated time and discovered that we had found coney nirvana!  This place has been in business since 1924 and, in spite of having the walls covered in OU memorabilia, it had all the charm a downtown coney place should have.

The name of the place is simply "Coney Island" and it's located at 428 W. Main Street.  One of our customs during our coney runs is to take pictures of the food and this trip was no exception.

This is me wolfing down one of my coneys.  Hugh and Larry better take pictures quickly if they want to capture more than just the paper lining in my basket!

So that's the story!  Yes, we did drive about 200 miles round trip and spend about five hours just to eat a coney.  Might oughta do it again next week!

Harry Wood Nash

Harry Wood Nash, 1869-1902

(My great grandfather)

Harry Wood Nash was born in Abington, Massachusetts, a southern suburb of Boston, in 1869. He was the oldest of three children born to Edward Everett Nash and Hannah Williams Nash.

The Nash's were long time Boston area residents – both Edward's father, Nathaniel Nash Jr. and his grandfather, Nathaniel Nash Sr., were from Massachusetts. Nathaniel Nash Sr. was born about 1780 but his birth location is not known nor is his ancestry. However, the Nash surname was most commonly found in Great Britain.

Edward Nash was a carpenter by trade and his wife, Hannah, was a homemaker. In addition to Harry, they had Frederick William Nash, born in 1872, and Neva Nash, born in 1875. Both Fred and Neva were born in the Akron, Ohio area, since Edward and Hannah had moved there shortly after 1870.

Fred was a metallurgist and mining engineer and we know from passport records that he traveled to Mexico at least once to pursue his occupation. Fred married Violet Irene Preston in 1901 in Denver, and together they had two daughters, Virginia and Consuelo. Violet was born in Denver in 1877. Before 1910, Fred and Neva moved to San Diego and stayed there the rest of their lives.

Family lore has it that Fred owned a company, Bullfrog Marble and Mining Quarry, and was killed in a car “accident”. His partner in the company then stole it from Violet and her daughters and left them penniless.

Neva was an “old maid” school teacher and never married. Although she was born in Ohio, she moved back to her father's home area, Massachusetts, and taught school there for many years before retiring to St. Petersburg, Florida. At least once she traveled to Cuba on holiday.

Although Harry was born in Massachusetts, he was taken by his father and mother to Ohio when he was about two years old. Because the 1890 Census was lost, we don't know where the family was in that era. There is no evidence that Edward or Hannah ever traveled to Colorado so Harry may have struck out on his own.

As we know, Harry married Susan Pearl Miller in 1891, in the Trinidad, Colorado area. At the time, he was 22 and she was 14, four months short of her 15^th birthday. It is likely that Fred followed his older brother, Harry, to Colorado since he married Violet there in 1901.

Harry and Susan had three children, Arletta Florence born in 1893, Edward Everett (his grandfather's namesake) born in 1894, and Sedelia born in 1897. All three of these children were born in Las Animas County in the Trinidad area.

In June, 1898, when their youngest child Sedelia was about 8 months old, Susan deserted Harry and moved to Pitkin County in the Aspen area. The whereabouts of the three children during this period are unknown. In July, 1899, Harry was awarded a divorce from Susan on the grounds of desertion. No mention of the three children was made in the divorce papers; it is assumed that they had been abandoned.

In July, 1900, Susan married Richard Leace Young in Grand Junction, Colorado. She and Richard had another ten to fifteen children, the exact number is unknown. In her obituary, it was stated that she was the mother of eighteen children. Some time around 1924, she divorced Richard and married James Adair. They had no children together. Susan died in 1939 in Twin Falls, Idaho at the age of 62.

At the time of Harry's divorce from Susan, he had moved to the Denver area, in Arapahoe County. He died in 1902 at the age of 33 and is buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver. The cause of death was listed as pneumonia. At the time of death, Harry's occupation was listed as “labourer”.

Winter's End

Winter is about to yield to Spring and Louise and I are planning our return to Oklahoma.  For the past several years (we think about eleven) we have spent the winter in the Rio Grande Valley trying to escape bad weather.

As far as weather goes, this winter was not great but tolerable.  We did have a couple of days which saw low temperatures in the high 20's.  And, in the past few days, we've had a couple which exceeded 90 degrees.  The weather was not as good as last winter but much better than in Oklahoma.

I seem to do my best genealogy down here.  In early February, I wrote about a breakthrough in my work, finding the background on my great grandfather, Harry Nash.  While there is still a lot of work to do, I now know what direction to head in.

Louise and the dogs had a good winter as well.  She, like I, is getting somewhat homesick, however, and we are anxious to get back to Mannford.  We will travel to Georgetown, Texas, for a couple of days; Louise wants to go to the IKEA store there.  By the way, a bad joke I've heard is that IKEA is Swedish for particleboard.

When we leave Georgetown, we will go to Sanger, Texas, and spend the evening with our good friends Don and Lynn, then head home.

I don't know how full-time RVer's do it;  I'm ready to get home.