Papa's Letters . . .

I have been retyping our Grandfather's letters that he wrote in 1901 prior to his marriage to Marie Camille Seghers.  Camille or Cammie, was his second cousin and he had to get permission from the Archbishop in New Orleans to marry.  He got that dispensation.  For some reason our Grandmother, Cammie, kept those letters and a few others written to her by friends.  My mother read them and typed them up.  There were many typos, etc. through out the process.  I have endeavored to correct those slight oversights.  Now it will be digitally recorded on my computer and I will copy it to CD's.

One must remember in those days there were no electric lights, no railroad through New Roads, Steam boats were the primary long distant transportation for the most part.  There were no telephones and no roads either, no cars at all.  None of those had yet been invented.  So the written word, either in newspapers or by letter were the primary mode of communication.  And families depended on each other and their neighbors, so the community in general were much closer than we are today.

I found expressions used then are just as common today.  There are some things a bit different but not by much.   Life was tougher then.

Cammie lived in the Lettsworth area of what is now probably closer to Innis, LA.  She was not far from the river and thus, catching a steam packet was more normal, like getting a bus.  The boats stopped all up and down the Mississippi River and traveled the tributaries like Ouachita and Black Rivers.  New Orleans was a big city and a center of commerce.  That is where one obtained furniture, hardware, fine clothes and even education.  And the Morrison family had already established itself in New Orleans too.

Our Grandfather lived out on Pointe Coupee, and area known in Pointe Coupee Parish as the "Coast of Pointe Coupee."  It was along the river and North and West of the city of New Roads.  Our ancestor Jacob Haight Morrison bought Brunswick Plantation in 1956.    Walter, our Grandfather, was one of the heirs of Jacob Haight and managed to get his share and his half sister's (Sister Matt) share of Brunswick when Jacob died.  He then added additional lands adjacent to his holdings and today that is know as Angeles Plantation (Morrison Farm Inc.).   The Morrison's lost Brunswick in the great depression while Walter successfully held on to Angeles.  We can say we are the only named landholders along the Coast of Pointe Coupee that were there before the Civil War, all the other names have changed or families have moved on.  Rest assured we will be there for at least another 20 years if not a hundred years.

I have not finished the transcription yet.  When I do, I will copyright it and put it on CDs for the family.  Copyrighting will hold title to the intellectual property that belongs to the family.  In time it will the copy write will expire but it will hold up for a number of years.  These letters are heirlooms and of course I will give a copy to the Pointe Coupee Parish Library.  It is also part of the history of Pointe Coupee.

Gearing Up for Christmas . . .

We are gearing up for Christmas, as usual are sending out checks as gifts.  It is too hard for us to shop for gifts anymore.  Besides we are not ever sure what we are giving is the right thing, does it match or will it work with the other stuff the recipient already has.  So it is checks.

The weather has turned unseasonably warmer.  And wetter.  Neither is common to this area in Texas this time of year.  So we expect a warm and wet Christmas Day here.

Son Jake and his brood and dear wife Anne show up on December 27 which means Christmas number two.  We will have celebrated Christmas once already at James" dwelling.  Christmas Number Two will be at our house as that is the final destination of the Wisconsin contingent.

I wonder if they will drag cold dry weather down here with them?  Hummm.  Just a thought.

For those that do not know, we have had a record year of moisture here in Texas.  The lakes are full to the top again.  Some of us Texans have suffered flooding and that is not a good thing.  Any, and I really mean it, any rain just moves the record up another notch.  So much for Global Warming ala Climate Change, we are in the middle of a colossal El Nino'.  Some say this semi arid region could turn into a rain forest.

The price of crude oil is nearing rock bottom.  The Saudi's have effectively killed OPEC and everybody who can is pumping crude oil like mad.  Unfortunately, some like Venezuela is already at the max out and are gonna get left behind.  Others like the Iranian's now coming back on line due to our over zealous but terribly naïve President and administration have turned loose.  Some say that the Iranian equipment is so old and out of date and in need of repair/replacement Iran can not do much anyway.  But we have such lovely contingents like ISIL pumping away that that it may not make much difference.  Russia needs all the cash it can get but reduced oil prices is not helping them at all.  Non OPEC nations like Mexico do not like the lack of regulation either.  Small producers like Columbia and Ecuador will suffer terribly.  And now the US can once again export crude oil, so that will kind make it even worse.  India and China will rejoice, Japan may recover perhaps all due to low prices for Crude.

For some reason the New York Stock Exchange does not like the low crude prices and reacted with a sharp down turn.  It seems some price reduction is good, a lot is bad.  Huh?  I don't really get that.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to you all!

What An Idiot . . .

The President says the Paris deal on climate change is the best opportunity to save the earth.  What an idiot.  Talking about theory, a debated theory based on a flawed model that people skewed the earth temperature numbers to make it look bad.  Too much conjecture, too much malarkey, no solid science, only consensus to back it all up.  It is nothing by Cap and Trade again.

And while this is going on Islamic Radicals are planning to destroy modern civilization.  They are warring, they are shooting, they are actually killing people.  There is no consensus there, it is fact.  There is no hooking science, it is documented facts.  Yet, there is no world convention at Paris to stop the crazies that are trying to kill us.  How many more Redounds or Paris events do we need?  When is this idiot going to wake up?   He is showing signs of doing something about ISIS in Syria and Iraq but is stilled all tied up with his control to not hurt any innocent bystanders.  Well we all do not want to hurt innocent bystanders either, but what about the world's innocent bystanders?  No consideration for them.  What about American citizens?  No comment there at all.  Play dumb and it will pass kind of tactic.

The same idiot wants to resettle hundreds if not thousands of Syrian refugees in the US.  We already know they can not be vetted, there is little or no coherent data base anywhere, let along in Syria to provide vetting.  And what makes anyone think the Syrians give a good damn about it.  And the ISIS folks have openly said they are going to insert their people in and amongst those very refugees.  They seemed to have done it already in Europe and shot up Paris proving it.

This is the President of the US?  This is the world leader.  Give me a break, this person is just going to set up more deaths in the US and elsewhere.  He is essentially arming the Iranians with Nuclear Weapons.  And they are fast developing missiles to attack their enemies.

Ask yourselves why no nearby Arab nation is accepting any refugees for resettlement.  Yes, Jordan has refugees but they are not being integrated into their society.  The refugees are located in camps isolated from the local population.  The Turks are not taking any refugees.  The Iranians are not taking any refugees.  The UAE is not taking any refugees.  The Kuwaitis are not taking any refugees.   The Omanis are not taking any refugees.  The Egyptians are not taking any refuges.  The Libyans are not taking any refugees.  It goes on and on.  So why are we taking any refugees?

Here in Texas we have already had an "Honor killing."  A distraught Islamic father shot both of his daughters to death because they were becoming Americanized.  Unfortunately, he has disappeared and it is thought he has return to his homeland.  Do we want this kind of thing to occur here?  Do we want Sharai Law to occur as it has in parts of Paris and other European cities?

This  President and the Democratic Party needs to get its head screwed on right.  There is nothing in our constitution saying we have to accept these people in our country.  Indeed past Presidents have rounded up illegals and deported them.  It is time we do the same!

Papa's Letters to Camille . . .

My sister, Herrise, sent me selected copies of the letters my grand father wrote to my grand mother just prior to their marriage.  She did not send all of them, just the ones she need for a application to get Angeles House in to the National Historical Registry.  I then transcribed the letters into Microsoft Word, made some minor corrections is spelling and punctuation as well as formatting so that each letter did not run on into the next, a pagination effort.

It was interesting reading.  My grandfather married is second cousin and had to get permission from the Archbishop in New Orleans.  He had to get a dispensation regarding the marriage of his cousin.  He got the dispensation and the rest is history, family history now.

My mother transcribed the letters on her old portable Underwood Type Writer.  A laborious job at best and just plain toil at worst for her to do.  But those letters are a treasure.  There are about 30 of them, written on steam boats, at his "cabin" or house really, a mailed on a steam boat.  She lived in the upper end of Pointe Coupee Parish and he lived about in the middle as the Mississippi River flows.  So they both lived close to the artery of the nation, the mighty Mississippi.

There was no railroad in the upper end of the parish at that time.  Indeed such a thing as highway did not exist yet.  There were no telephones, cars or trucks, no roads only horses or horse drawn vehicles like wagons or buggies.  And those days there were on tracts here and there that connected communities.  Mostly folks followed the river and if the could afford it, rode on steamboats.

So the letters present a picture of life at the turn of the century as this all occurred in the year 1901.  Everything had to be hauled in by boat, or in wagon from the town of New Roads or up the river from New Orleans.  New Roads is about three miles as the crow flies from Angeles Plantation, my grandfathers farm.  Today that is a hop, skip and jump to travel, about 5 or 6 minutes, back then it probably was a 5 or 6 mile horse ride on mostly non existent byways, across other peoples land, etc.  So everybody knew everybody and of course, there were not a lot of everybodies back then either.

And families were a big thing back then, cousins closer and often visited each other.  There was no other way besides writing a letter to communicate.  And there was no TV or even radio in those days, they were not yet invented.  So you went to see people and stayed awhile to learn all the news, who got married, who was sick, etc.  We do not visit as much nowdays, we use the cell phone and talk to them, or we go to the movie or shopping.  How society has changed.

It was a fascinating task to retranscribe the letters again and now they are in the computer's memory and have been shared to relatives in California and Colorado with the push of a button.  Soon they will be on a CD-ROM.  And when I get the rest of the letters, I will transcribe them too and put in a foreword and perhaps have them copyrighted for it is intellectual family property.  They could make a fascinating book, another Gone with the Wind perhaps.

San Bernardino Shootings . . .

Whew, we used to live in both San Bernardino and Redlands, California.  So the shootings are sort of irony to us.  We have lots of friends that still reside there.  We lived in that area for about nine years.

The Lambe's are old friends that just visited us over the Thanksgiving holiday.  They were here to see their daughter that lives in Dallas and came out to see us.  We had a grand visit together.  He works at the golf course across the street from the Inland Center.  Fortunately, he was not there yesterday, he had other things to take care off.

The Smith's, long old friends that lived next to us in the late 70's in San Bernardino, still live in the relative near area (they move on up, so to speak) called North Highlandsm, a suburb of San Bernardion.  She regularly visits a counselor that lives a block from the shooters residence in Redlands.  They are on vacation in Hawaii.  So they are out of the range of any shooters.

There are others that live in Redlands that we have not heard from but are safe and sound.

I know that this is a tragic event and is yet unfolding as to who, what and where is going on or went on.  Right now it sounds like home grown Islamic terrorism but you never know.  California has always been known for its crazies, lunatics gone wild.

But I recall the night of the riots in Los Angeles, I went out to play cards at home in San Bernardino.  Later heard where a local cop on part time employment shot a potential looter in San Bernardino.  That stopped all riot activity in San Bernardino on the spot.  Word was out, the cops in San Bernardino shoot first and ask questions later.  There was no rioting or looting in San Bernardino that night.

San Bernardino has always been a violent city.  Back in the old wild west days, the gold rush times, it was town where there shoot outs in the streets.  Even in the 1070's through the 1990, it was a tough town with over a hundred murders per year.  There are a lot of indigent people living there, Chicanos, blacks and whites all mixed in together.  Some of the high schools were literal war zones.  Street gangs abound, drugs run amok.  Near by Mentone was the home of the Hells Angels, a famous biker gang. Near by Colton was a tough town too, adjacent to San Bernardino.  Colton's history includes Wyatt Earp as one time City Marshal in that town, his last place as he died there of old age.

We are long gone from that town and community.   We often speak of going back to visit but never seem to get around to doing it.  I think we will wait a little longer now before making a return visit.