Riverbend Journal

  When it comes to genealogy research, two dates really stand out due to the repercussions left in their wake.  1. 20 Jan 1921 - The date a fire started in the U.S. Department of Commerce building destroying almost the entire 1890 Census record. 2. 12 July 1973 - The date when a fire started on the 6th floor of the National Personnel Records Center destroying millions of records being stored there at the time comprising 80% of all army records and 75% of all air force records.  This post is about the 2nd fire. The first calls about the fire came in only minutes past midnight on July 12th stating that the 6th floor of the building was on fire and firefighters were quickly dispatched. They fought the fire for nearly 3 hours before having to withdraw due to heat and smoke and then pretty much let it burn for the next 22 hours before trying again to put the fire out. Forty-two fire districts got involved pumping water onto the flames from outside the building and sometime on July 14th, fin

  While cleaning out an old drawer at the farmhouse my grandfather built, I ran across this picture of my grandfather (on left) apparently taken during his service in World War II. Many years ago, when I was doing military research into a number of other ancestors, mostly Civil War and World War I era, I had requested my grandfather's military records as well. However, I was disappointed when they responded that there were none to send to me as they had all been destroyed by a fire in 1973. My grandfather never really talked about the war at all. I seem to remember him once saying he had driven a truck in Africa but that was the sum total of what I remember. So I decided I needed to do a little more digging and see what I could turn up. At that time, my torn rotator cuff muscle was keeping me from sleeping for long periods of time so I had plenty of time to kill in the wee hours of the morning while others were still sleeping. The first clue I turned up was on Ancestry where there

  If I had a dollar for every time someone showed me a family tree with ties to royalty, I would be able to afford several high end steak dinners as a result. My quibble with this isn't that they think they are related to royalty because most of us our indirectly, but rather due to direct route up the tree that involves more often than not 12 years and younger or 45 year old and over women giving birth to descendants. This is one of the easiest ways to spot wishful family trees. These family trees are full of wishful thinking with absolutely no proof having been obtained. It is a tempting thing to see someone with the same or similar last name and add them to your tree thinking they have to be your ancestor. It only takes a few to succumb to that temptation and errantly add an incorrect person to their PUBLIC family tree and then it propagates like a weed as hundreds if not thousands of others come after and copy that information assuming it to be correct and assuming the other per

Per family tradition, shortly after Thanksgiving, our family liberates an Eastern Red Cedar tree from its earthly toil to use for our Christmas tree. This year, due to a torn rotator cuff, we put it off a week before I got the above supplies ready in the back of our van. It always looks like I am on my way to dispose of a body so just in case a police officer might think so too, I always obey all traffic rules extra close. For most of the decades, the cedar trees have been cut down on the farm. They grow wild and are prolific but are undesirable by many. As a results, the stands still on the farm have matured while the young trees that grow around the fringes have been removed to prevent them from infringing on good farm land. It became harder and harder to find a tree and so for the last few years, we have looked elsewhere.  Another acquaintance of mine bought 40 acres of land that was chock full of cedar trees but he has grand ideas of cutting them all down for some vague reasons I h

  A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I started building a porch swing and then got interrupted with life, the high heats of summer, life and now we are going through a classic fall much like we had last year with mild temperatures in the afternoon. So with some free time, I dusted off the porch swing project and got to building the back.  The plans called for an arched  back and an overly complicated process for the joinery that would create lots of future problems with water migration so I just set them aside and other than the general dimensions, winged it. Instead of cutting mortises and tenons on everything, I just cut mortises on everything and glued in tenons. It doesn't seem like much difference typing that sentence but in reality, it took probably a week long project and condensed it down to one afternoon.  After the glue dried, I scraped and sanded everything which took quite awhile and clamped it in place just to check out proportions, since I'm winging

I thought the natural conclusion to this series of posts on various trips to the Philippines would be one describing the process of going home again. I had thought we might go back to the Philippines this coming year and I would have more posts to write but alas, due to my brother-in-law's expiring tourist visa, they are coming here for a couple weeks next summer. I can't wait to see them again and unfortunately, I'll have to wait to see the Philippines again. The airport in Manila is notorious (in my book anyway) for being a model of inefficiency. It has three terminals that are separated by some distance and I had only been through terminal one up to this point in my career. However on this trip we were leaving via terminal two which I have never been in. With our distance from the airport, the huge increase in traffic congestion and other uncertainties, we opted to leave at 4 a.m from Tarlac for our 11 am flight out to Los Angeles. The traffic ended up being light due

  Along with the unopened baseball cards, the farm house basement cleaning also yielded these two handheld games by Tiger Electronics. They were evidently some of the forerunners in the handheld game industry that was starting to explode in my youth. I consulted with google and found that while not worthless, they aren't real valuable. Many people were trying to sell them on eBay for $12 to $14 each in working condition which these are according to my kids who played them a bit when we got home. I'm not going to go out of my way to sell them but if I run into someone who might appreciate them, they might go to a good home. I really don't remember playing them but I suppose I did at some point. Not everything I found was worthless though. Also in the same stash was an original Game Boy in a box in extremely good condition. I do remember my brother and I both having one at some point so I couldn't tell you whose this one belonged too since there was only one of them found

Christmas in the Philippines is a much different experience than here in the States. In prior trips at this time, the air has been full of sulfur fumes as millions of pounds of fireworks were set off in a non-stop stream from sometime in the week before Christmas to the day after New Years. I have always struggled to explain but it is like being in the middle of the fireworks display for the fourth of July at any major city on the east coast and by middle, I mean the middle of where they shoot them off. Riding through a city on New Year's Eve in a motorized tricycle, I could hear the cherry bombs bouncing off the metal enclosure around me a second or two before they exploded. It was spooky and dangerous for sure but that was the Philippines where the birth rate far exceeds the death rate. This time was different and I noticed it almost as soon as we got off the airplane. The sulfur smell or the sounds of exploding fireworks wasn't present. In fact, the only fireworks I heard th

  Growing up on a farm without a television or a radio, I never got into baseball, or sports in general for that matter. But for a time, an uncle (I think) would buy my brother and I each a case of baseball cards for either our birthday or Christmas or possibly both. We both ended up with several cases of them. I opened mine and sorted them so that they were neatly organized by name and team categories both in alphabetical order. Sometime after college when I was cleaning out my room of personal items, I boxed up all those cards, sealed the box with tape and it has stayed with me through many moves. It now resides in the basement of this house, unopened for the last 30 years.  One day awhile back, I was taking some items out of the farm house basement to sort through and dispose of and found a nearly unopened case (one pack of 36 has been opened) of baseball cards. I'm assuming they belong to my brother but he isn't interested in them. I put them in a plastic storage tote to de

The tradition in my wife's family is to have a New Year's Eve celebration with all her mom's brothers and sisters (there are five siblings total) and all their descendants. On New Year's Day, the tradition is a family reunion that includes the brothers and sisters and descendants of my wife's grandparents. This year that amounted to about 150 to 175 people. On more lightly attended years, we hold it at the same place as the New Year's Eve celebration in the courtyard of my wife's uncle's house. But it just wasn't big enough for 175 people so a first cousin of my wife who works in Saudi Arabia, let us use his farm. He bought the farm only about four years ago with absolutely no improvements made on it and has since put a lot of work and money into it. Above is the house he is having built. It isn't done yet but did have a working bathroom and electricity. Surrounding it was fencing to keep his sheep that he raises from straying to neighboring pr

  With my home state in the news a lot right now, I can't help but see a lot of misconceptions about our state, our caucus and what it represents. So I thought I would set the record straight. Before that though, I'll start out by saying I'm happy to let another state take the lead for a change and what that really means. More on that in a bit. Misconception #1: Iowa botched the 2020 caucus. Fact: Less than three hours after polls clothes, half the results, the Republican half, were finalized and reported on by the media. It was only the Democrat party that wasn't able to report their results. Most outside of the state don't even know half the story as to why. The Iowa Democratic party, under pressure from the National Democratic party, wanted to get some more information on the middle parts of the caucus. For those that don't know, the Democratic caucus goes through alignments where people vote for their candidate of choice. If candidates don't achieve a ce

  Above is the frame work of the pseudo canopy bed frame up in place. It only has one post on the outward corner and the rest is screwed in place to the walls. I'm not sure the peak is traditional but it is what she sketched up on paper and thus I made it so.  Below is some wrap around curtain rods and bolts of fabric later. My MIL, on her final day in the country until springtime, sewed the fabric into curtains. My youngest daughter, who requested this for her birthday above all else consumerism, is a very happy camper indeed.  I would like to say I am going to turn my attention from this project back to the porch swing project languishing in the garage but as I write this, it has snowed, is snowing, and will snow all day along with a ten day forecast of barely above freezing for highs. There is still a chance for one more warm streak for me to finish it up but it may still be spring before it gets hung. P.S. I didn't think the title of this post was a word. I didn't know

I have skipped several prior posts in this series due to them being repetitive or not holding up to the test of time well. So some of my writing references posts you haven't seen. After our beach overnight vacation within a vacation, we spent the next day going around Baguio, mostly stuck in traffic jams, visiting people and buying a few souvenirs to bring back home. The following day, we began our journey into the lowlands and eventually start our journey home. However since we didn't have far to go for the first day, we left at a reasonable hour and I was able to see the view on the descent down the mountain, my first time in probably well over a decade. It was as beautiful as I remember it. Unfortunately, Filipinos have gotten crazy with their window tinting since my previous visits. Almost every single vehicle has the darkest tinting on all sides and rear windows and even strips of tinting on the top and bottom of the front window. It isn't conducive to taking shots thr

  Our youngest will be having a birthday soon and when I asked her what she would like for her birthday, she surprised me with her answer. She asked if I could build her a canopy bed. She even produced a 3D sketch of what she wanted it to look like. How could I say no? I still haven't finished up the porch swing but if I am to complete this project in time, I had to start quickly so I set the porch swing aside, gathered up some cheap one-by lumber and proceeded to make a top for the bed as defined in her sketch. Ignore the center two boards with the clamps on them. I just put them there to give me a place to rest the peak of her bed canopy until I could get it glued and fastened together. The one problem is that her bed is one of those basic metal frames that has brackets on one end to fasten a headboard but no brackets on the other end. So even if I wanted to, I can't make four posts to support the canopy. Fortunately her bedroom is fairly small and her bed is in a corner so i

One of the reasons we went back home was for the wedding of my brother-in-law. I was named as a Godfather by the couple, one of many so honored. In the Philippines, it is tradition not only to have godparents of children but of married couples too. It was held in a very old church in the old part of Manila and apparently has quite the revolving door for the marriage industry. Just as we were arriving at the church, another bride ahead of us was just entering the doors and getting walked down the aisle. Less than five minutes after she walked out of the church, my brother-in-law's bride was walking down the aisle. Five minutes after they exited the church as husband and wife, another bride was lined up to walk down the aisle. My brother-in-law looks to be 16 years old but is 30 and is a very successful CPA in Manila. He obviously shelled out a lot of money for the wedding because it was very elaborate. Being a godfather at a Filipino wedding has its advantages because I got to be se

We headed down south the family cabin to celebrate Thanksgiving and we accomplished that. We had prepared a lot of what we ate for our Thursday dinner back home in Iowa so there wasn't much to do except to heat things up and make a few odds and ends to go with it. The forecast was for rain and indeed it was raining. We decided to do a small hike anyway and went on a hike we did the last time we were down there to a somewhat famous outcropping of rock seen above. Our daughters, who had never been there, were with us this time. We walked out on the rock and had our picture taken so those who get our Christmas card, will see us in that version of the photo. The following day wasn't raining but we spent it helping friends of ours collect a winter's worth of firewood. Although there is some work involved, we enjoy doing it and just being in each other's presence. Unfortunately for me, on the final (as it turned out) load of wood, I was helping to throw it from a pickup into

On previous trips to the Philippines, our flights have always originated here in the Midwest, flown to some major hub, usually Dallas, flown to the far east to Japan, Hong Kong or Korea and from there down to the Philippines. On this trip nearly five years ago, we opted for a different route flying to the west coast on the first day, overnighting, and then catching a direct flight to the Philippines. The comments in this post reflect this new route. Other comments also reflect the purpose of this trip was to attend the wedding of my wife's adopted brother.  On previous trips to the Philippines, our flights have always landed in the wee hours of the morning and then we have to drive five or six hours up into the mountains to Baguio where our home is, arriving just after dawn. Spending 30+ hours traveling and then staying up another ten hours until evening is hell. So this time with our new flight route, we got to Manila in late afternoon and spent the evening there staying in the ho

  Smoked turkey cooling down The earliest Thanksgivings I can remember attending were those hosted by my maternal Grandparents. They were elaborate affairs that involved my grandparents getting up at four in the morning to start cooking the turkey. Why turkeys took so long to cook back then is beyond my comprehension. If I had to guess, I suspect it would be so it was done early enough that the last few hours could be used baking other things in the oven like rolls, green bean casseroles, dressing, etc. After the meal, sometimes the adults would go out shopping for deals while we kids stayed home and played cards with our great grandmother for nickels. Although I'm sure there were sports on a television somewhere, I never recall them being a big part of our day. In my early adolescent years, my grandparents retired and moved down to Florida. About the same time, my parents bought some land with a little cabin on it in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas. So for many years, our traditio