A Short Trip

I guess I wasn't really in the mood for travelling.  I had a good day Friday, as noted.  I stopped at a garage sale - just before the produce stand - and found this.

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I've been looking for a nice wooden Chinese Checker board for a long time.  The metal ones are too shallow and the board is often bumped, scattering the marbles and ruining plenty of games.  This one is Masonite with a wooden frame.  It's a double layer so the holes are all the way through and should hold the marbles well.  If you can read the text, it says:

I've never heard the game called Chinker Chek before.

It was a tiring day Saturday.  I walked the cemetery and found that I had the wrong one for the Cooley family I was hunting.  They were buried a few miles "down the road".  So I headed to my nephew's church to see his latest project.

My nephew and his wife and daughter spent a year and a half in Bolivia working for Hospitals of Hope, based in Wichita, Kansas.  Now Nephew is working for them again, in Wichita this time.  Here's what he's up to.

Nephew has been hired to convert metal shipping containers into sturdy clinics.  As I understand it, these are going to Haiti.

The container has three rooms: an office and two exam rooms.  To see YouTube videos from Hospitals of Hope, click here

After that I decided to head for home, coming south on Hwy 81 again.  I stopped this time to take photos of this unusual bridge in the southwest part of Wichita.

Looking south:

Looking north  

From 81, I ended up driving east to wander through Ponca City and Blackwell.  I circled the main street in Blackwell and couldn't even make myself stop and go into their wonderful antique shop.  I certainly was tired!  I picked up Interstate 35 and headed south, but decided I needed one more night - of no itinerary. I ended up in Edmond, 30 minutes from home, and rested very well.  I was glad to get home on Sunday.

Sunday evening our family went into downtown Oklahoma City.  Devon Energy is building a tower said to be the tallest west of the Mississippi, when finished.  We thought we ought to check on their progress.  We parked as close as we could then walked a round-about way to the construction site.  My 11-year-old grandson took the photo on the left (in which you can see we wanderers) and my nearly-13-year-old grandson took this photo on the right.

We were able to walk right up to where crews were working that evening.  

Later we climbed 10 floors to the top of a parking garage to watch the work below and to behold the glorious sunset.

My 11- and 12-year-old grandsons took the sunset photos.

One of the workers said that they expected to pour a lot of concrete that evening and we wanted to see it happen.  We waited for the cement trucks to come.  After a very long and tiresome wait, we gave up.  Their trucks were delayed due to thunderstorms in the west.  We went home.

It was an interesting weekend and very little of it was in my original plan - - I never even took the camping gear out of the trunk.

Travelling again

Last night I dumped - literally - camping gear in the back of my car.  My son took out the passenger seat and I removed the back seat we had loosened earlier in the week.  A few milk crates in the floor and a pair of Therm-a-rests on top and I had an emergency sleeping room - in case the tents were no longer good.  I figure that when I get to the campground I'll set them all up and see if they're still weather-worthy.

The tents haven't been used in more than 4 years and I'm not sure they have survived being stuffed in their bags in the same creases for all this time.  I know I wouldn't fare well if it had been me in those sacks.  

In the meantime, I'm camped out in air-conditioned comfort (it was 88 here today!) (in October!!) at a motel in Park City, Kansas.  My newest great-niece lives here with her family.  I came to see her and find out if she's crawling yet - not really, although she does get around quickly.  She has the most beautiful red-gold hair; it's just difficult to see since there's not much of it.  She has a lovely face and a slim figure and a wonderful smile and laugh.  She was a bit puny and I was a bit dirty and sweaty so we didn't hold each other, but I'll do that next time. I brought her two photos of her grandmother, one who was gone long before her birth.  My sister-in-law died at age 49 of cancer and I've missed her often since then.  Never more than now, since I get to see her grand-daughter and she doesn't. 

Monday is the third anniversary of the death of my husband.  Last year I turned off the phone and locked the door for a few days but that's difficult this year since I now live with the kids.  I think in about 7 more years I won't need to do that when October rolls around.

So, that's why I left Oklahoma City this morning at 7 a.m.  The drive up I-35 was nice but nothing spectacular or even very interesting.  Just before crossing over into Kansas, I got off the interstate and took Highway 81 north.  Highway 81 roughly follows the old Chisholm Trail and one of these days I'm going to Texas - Wichita Falls - and follow it north, all the way to the Kansas border.  I'll pretend I'm a-drivin' a herd uh cattle . . .

In Kansas I began to notice things - maybe because there were things to be noticed.  I need a camera on the top of my car, like the storm trackers use, so that I can just push the button and photograph what I see through my windshield.  Such as an old silo with a Big Tree growing out of the top; a field of longhorn cattle; a hawk perched atop a speed limit sign, watching the traffic come his way.

You can sure spot the Bois d' arc trees this time of year.  Those huge yellow-green "horse apples", as we called them as kids, seem to glow in the daylight.  

Our acreage in the city has a line of them across the back of the lot.  I think they're wonderful trees; my son grumbles at them because of the mess those  fruit leave.  Wikipedia has a good article about them here.  If you type in "Osage Orange" on Google Images, you get a lot of wonderful photos of the tree and the wood and things made from it.

Between Wellington (which, by the way, is a nice little town) and Hayesville, where Hwy 81 curves back north, I spotted a produce stand and made a quick slide right off the road in my little car.  Fresh produce from the farm where it was grown - just my kind of groceries!  I bought apples and peppers for supper.  I would have liked more, but while traveling don't have many opportunities to cook, so settled for what I could eat fresh.  Here's the stand.  He says they'll probably have good eats until the end of the month:

And here's what I bought:

Supper sure was good.  I cut up one pepper and added it to half a block of crumbled Feta cheese and half a can of drained black beans.  I'm saving my apple and a glass of milk for later which, I guess, is now.

Tomorrow I plan to drive through the Kechi cemetery.  My niece says it's well-laid out and can be driven through.  Besides, there's someone in our family history buried in that cemetery.  I have to take a look!

Speaking of . . .

the Gimblett family.

My family went to Wales in the summer of 1956.  That is, my mother, two brothers, and I did.  Dad stayed home to work and pay for the trip.  Here we are in May of 1956, just before we left for the summer.  (The boys took their cowboy outfits with them.)

We stayed in my grandmother's house most of the summer, visiting an aunt for a week or so somewhere along the way.

My grandmother's house is the same one in the article about the recent trip to Wales.  It's changed over the years.  The front door has been enclosed, an extension added to the back, and many changes made inside the house.  

This photo is of my Welsh Mamgu (mam - gee [hard g]), Lilian Afanwy Richards Gimblett, taken in 1950.

I've been working on Gimblett genealogy for a while, but it was difficult to work on it long-distance.  In 1997, my husband and I, with our son and daughter-in-law, made a trip to Wales.  We stayed in Malpas, at the same house from my childhood.  Mom and I have made several trips since then and my husband and I made one more a few years ago.

The internet also made research easier - especially the Free BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death) indexes.  Yay, free records!  The General Record Office began computerizing their records and I have ordered marriage, death, and birth records online.  It takes a while to get them, but they sure are nice when they come.

I love Wales.  The air is different there.  I feel good all the time I'm in the country.  It's a beautiful place.

With a name like Gimblett, you'd think it would be easy to trace.  That's sorta so.  Every time I run across the name in records, I know it's going to be linked to my family - although, I don't always know just yet how.  So, I'm collecting records and hope one day to get them properly linked.  In the meantime I have a file on World Connect - Gimblett in Wales.  If you have a Gimblett/Gimblet/Gimlett, etc in your family somewhere, let me hear from you - my e-mail address is at the bottom of the page.

My Welsh Gimblett family:  grandparents Bill (William Henry Gimblett) and Lilian, in 1939

At Christmas, in 1942, my grandfather Bill was in a hospital being treated for tuberculosis.  He sent this postcard to his children at home.

When my grandfather was a child, he came to the United States with his parents, Jane and Thomas Gimblett, and sisters Lilly Jane and Beatrice.  While here his brother Josh was born.  On the trips to Wales, I looked and looked for Uncle Josh's birth record and never found it.  While visiting Cousin Jean in Canada a few years ago, she remarked, "of course not, he was born in Pennsylvania"!  What a surprise that was.  I finally found the right documents giving the information that he had been born in Edwardsville, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in December of 1889.  Mom and I were there this past spring to see where they had lived - - but that's a whole 'nother story.

A Childhood Place

My oldest brother and my mother returned recently from a trip to my mother's birthplace of Wales.  Brother hadn't been since we were small children - in 1956.  He was excited to go and I was excited for him.  He and Mom stayed with our Uncle (Mom's brother) and Aunt in Malpas, now a "suburb" of Newport, Gwent, Wales.  Brother visited castles and ruins and beaches and towns and relatives.  He walked and walked and rode the bus and had a grand time.  Here are some of my favorite photos that he took.

This is a view of the back of my uncle's house.  They live in the left half.  Most of the houses in this area are what we call duplexes.  They call them semi-attached, I think.  The houses were built in the 1920's and my uncle has lived his whole life in the same house!

This is the view from over the top of the roofs.  In the far distance is a "mountain" (hill) and national park.

The streets in and around Newport go UP and DOWN.  I warned Brother, but I'm not sure he took me seriously until he saw them for himself.  He was impressed enough to take photos to show the steepness of the grade.  Here's another photo of the inclined road in our family's neighborhood.

Once out of the neighborhood, Brother visited Carleon - the Roman ruins that include an amphitheater, excavated foundations for barracks, a bath, and a fine museum in a fine town to wander for the day.  He walked downhill from Malpas to Caerleon and his little toesies hurt by the time he got there. 

He visited Tintern Abbey; 

went to Barry Island;

and - somewhere - found someone who speaks his language:

Brother visited relatives he hadn't seen since he was 5 years old and met new ones, too.  One cousin had just celebrated her 90th birthday.  He attended a wedding and a reunion with plenty of Gimblett relatives.  It was a Very Good Trip.