Riverbend Journal

  I had another one of my great grandfather's letters home from World War I transcribed and ready to go but I had forgotten to look through his war photo album to illustrate the post, so I put it on hold and will try to get it done for next Friday. I had a pretty busy week so it is no wonder that the final editing job slipped my mind. So without a scheduled post, I looked through my phone for a photo to put in its place and came across the one above. This was a creation created by my eldest daughter that we called a warm sushi bowl. Underneath all the cucumbers and avocados, her most favorite food in the world, is sushi rice topped with come cooked salmon, unagi and spicy mayo sauces. It is warmed in the oven and then topped with the avocado and cucumber before serving which we dish up into bowls and eat with spoons. Heathen! We can all use chopsticks and have many pairs in our drawer but with a bowl, it just makes for easier eating with spoons. It was delicious and the four of us ...

  I've posted this picture of my 3rd great grandfather on this blog before. It is a favorite of mine due to the mischievous grin on his face. As I was compiling my research notes on him, I ran across two newspaper articles that further insinuated his mischievous nature. It certainly begs the question, what was the foot race really about? A few days later after discovering the above article, I pondered if it had actually happened and if perhaps they elaborated on why it was being run. Since my search of my 3rd great grandfather's name hadn't turned up an article, I manually browsed to the following week's edition and on page 5, learned that the race had indeed been raced. My 3rd great grandfather lost. He was 41 years old at the time. Unbeknownst to him, he only had another 20 years to live at that point. Unfortunately for me, although their are some digitized newspapers in this area from which I pulled the above two articles, there is no digitized newspaper on the year ...

  The Tombstone of my 3rd great grandparents in Boone, Iowa Leander and Mary Sheldon Wells have always intrigued me for many reasons. Thus I can't explain why they were the last tombstone of my 3rd great grandparents I have located personally in my attempt to visit all 32 of their final resting places. I haven't kept records but I'm guessing I've located and visited close to two dozen of them over the years and the ones I have that remain are in far flung parts of the state that I don't often visit. Such was the case of Leander and Mary which I only visited a couple years back when I found out that it was on the way to a cross country meet my oldest daughter was running. So I left a couple hours early and spent half the extra time searching a large cemetery for the tombstone above which I finally found. However, doing so didn't address a lot of the questions I have about this couple. Leander C. Wells was born in Lawrence County, New York, spitting distance from ...

Train to Nova Scotia perhaps?  March 18, '18. In France. Mr. Frank Trigg, Dear Sir: It has been some time since I have written you, so will try and make up for lost time. The last letter I wrote you was when I was in Texas (down by the Rio Grande). For some reason or other I have never been homesick enough to want to go back there. I ate more dust in 24 hours there than I ever expect to eat during the rest of my life. We left Kelly Field Oct. 28 and were enroute on Hallowe'en night. We took the southern route and saw some fine country. We stopped at several places of historical interest to drill. We spent about three hours at Washington, D. C. The Red Cross gave us a fine lunch there. You can't imagine what the Y. M. and the Red Cross have done for us fellows. The Y. furnishes all the amusements and everything is free of charge. We got into Garden City, L.I., New York, Nov. 1. We were in a concentration camp there until Dec. 7. We all had a chance to go down to New York and...

  The following morning, our view looked like this which doesn't give one a sense of the howling wind outside nor the very cold temperatures. Fortunately, my eldest had planned for an indoor day so we spent the day lounging in the rental with books or playing cards, spending some time at an indoor trampoline park to let the kids blow off steam and attending New Year's Eve mass as a nearby church. The following day was back to being sunny and a lot warmer so we drove to Ha Ha Tonka park and went for a hike to see some ruins of a burnt out mansion built 120 years ago and burnt 80 years ago. Shortly after it was burnt, a dam was completed in the valley below and flooded out the large majority of the 5000 acres estate according to the posted signage. Left unsaid was weather the fire was intentional for insurance collection. The result all these years later in the bright sunlight was still the same, a shell of a stone building contrasting beautifully against the bright blue sky. On ...