Riverbend Journal

  This is the last article written by my great grandfather Victor during his time in France during World War I. He may have written more but they weren't published in the newspaper and thus have been lost to the ravages of time. Victor holding the pipe in his hand on the right Bordeaux, France March 21, 10:00 P.M. My Dear Folks and little Joe, This has been one of the most enjoyable days I have had since I have been in France. I think I told you in my last letter last night that I had seen Earl L. and that I was going to meet him in town this morning. I met him at the Midi station in Bordeaux about 8:30 a.m. We were willing to sit in the back seat and let the chauffeur drive as we had a lot more interesting things to talk about that to remark about the scenery. We located Sam and Rufus about 10:00. While looking for them I had gotten in the front seat, as it was easier to get out and in. The side curtains were on the back and we ran into Sam just as he was going up the alley from t...

Today was a warm day at a balmy 4 F below the freezing point of water or 28 F for those bad at math and science. The day before had been -11 F so it indeed felt warm even if it really wasn't. With some snow in the forecast and as I write this, still a 9 more days left in January, I took the opportunity to refill my wood box above.  We just burn wood recreationally in a small fireplace in our basement, maybe one weekend afternoon a week. Normally that would be enough wood to last us two, maybe two and a half years at that pace. But the problem is that the wood is getting "long in the tooth" as they say. The lighter colored split wood on the right side of the box is comprised of wood I split probably ten years ago at this point. It is so dry or "seasoned", that I can fill the fireplace with as much wood as it will hold, take a 30 minute nap and wake up to just a few coals. Compare that to the darker wood that you see on the left two thirds of the box above, one of...

Just when one thinks it can't get any stranger, who would have thought that in the last weeks of President Biden's presidency and the first day of President Trump's 2nd presidency, that together they would issue 1539  pardons (39 Biden and 1500 Trump) and 4003 commutations (3989 Biden and 14 Trump)? Although pardons and commutations were to be expected and for the most part, have been largely justified over the years, suddenly these two presidents have started a presidential arms race that has some pretty serious consequences for our future unless somehow Congress/Supreme Court gets involved and put some limits on then. What really blows my mind is President Biden's rational for pardoning members of his staff and the January 6th investigation committee after arguing earlier to the Supreme Court about the dangers of granting Presidents immunity saying it would make them more "willing to push the boundaries of the law." I would argue that now being able to grant...

Unknown soldier during World War I Bordeaux, France, Nov 2, 1918  Dear Frank. I received your paper tonight and was reading the letters the boys have written from the front and have noted under what difficulties they were written. I decided that if they could write under those conditions that 1 could afford to spend a little time to do the same as long as I have better conveniences and more of the same than the average office does at home. It makes a fellow rather restless when he reads of what the boys are doing at the front and what they are putting up with and then to think that I have been over here almost a year and every time I move they send me farther from the front and every day the front is getting farther from me. I guess the only way I will ever be able to see the front will be to put in a request for a pass to Berlin. It would be as easy as trying to get there as a combatant. Us fellows are doing our best to back the boys up and we do all we can for them when they are ...

  Book of sermons by the Rev. Salmon Cowles I'm not much of a shopper so when my wife and children head for the city to shop, I generally stay home. But recently, I discovered that my 4th great grandfather had a folder of items located in the State Historical Building and so I went along with my wife who graciously dropped me off at the Historical Building while she went shopping. Above is a book of sermons written by my fourth great grandfather, the first Presbyterian minister in Iowa territory. Pretty neat. But this post isn't about that. After perusing the book of sermons and taking a few pictures of interesting pages, I had more time to kill before my wife was done shopping. I headed back to the rows of microfilmed newspapers of years gone by and found a drawer that contained microfilmed newspaper reels from my home town. I never even knew it was big enough to merit a newspaper. So I grabbed a reel of the oldest newspaper on file, 1897, and headed for the old microfilm read...

  Death Announcement for Joseph Baker My search began innocently enough 20 years ago during a visit to Greenwood Cemetery on a research mission for my 2nd great grandfather John Henry Baker. As I visited John's wife's grave, Blanche McKee Baker, I noticed another grave a dozen feet away with the name Joseph Baker on it. I took a picture that day not knowing if we were related or not. It would be several years before I determined that we were indeed related and that Joseph Baker was in fact my 3rd great grandfather and the father of John Henry Baker. It would take me nearly another decade to discover that Joseph Baker was actually born Joseph Chicken and changed his name for reasons unknown to Baker after his discharge from the Civil War.  I have written about all this before HERE . Since that time, I have gone on to discover his father who I have written about HERE . Picture of Joseph Baker's tombstone I took all those years ago Despite getting past the brick wall he presen...

  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 ...

After Christmas presents were opened, dinner was had with a couple of guests who had no family nearby to celebrate the season, and a charity fundraiser was completed by myself, we decided to get away from home for a few days over the New Year holiday. We had no specific plans but we looked south towards warmer weather and settled on the Lake of the Ozarks region which has plenty of rentals to choose from. We found one in a condo next to the lake, reserved it and drove down the following day. Above is the view from our living room. My eldest daughter home from college, was gracious enough to plan everything out and so after cooling our heels for an hour or so, we went spelunking in a nearby cave known for it's elaborate formations. In fact, it is a sought after wedding venue these days which I suppose it why it is called Bridal Cave.  Since it's discover 100+ years ago, it has been on the tourist track and we could see signs of old ladders and walkways overhead between some of t...

This is the first of four letters that my great grandfather wrote about his time serving during World War I and the photographs were taken by him. Victor Kuck Kelly Field 24 Sep 1917 Dear Friends: I have often thought of writing you, but for some reason or the other I have not been able to find time. I suppose you realize a boy would rather wash dishes than write letters. I am at the YMCA writing this. It is about 1/2 mile from my tent. Whenever we write after dark we go to the Y, or write by candlelight. Let me say right here that I will always be a YMCA booster. They furnish us our stationary and reading matter, beside staging all boxing and wrestling bouts and arranging for music entertainments. I was sworn in August 15th at Ft. Logan, Col. About 150 of us took the oath at the same time. While there I did my first kitchen police work. A very nice name, but such work! We had to help cook, wait on table and scrub floors. I bet I could show a lot of women how to save a lot of work in t...

Note: We have gone on a small mini vacation and depending on my level of relaxation and access to my iPad (my girls like to use it for their entertainment), your comments my be slow appearing as too my comments to them. ************************* A week before Christmas, I finally found the time to check something off my list, a rather lengthy list at that. I drove 20 miles south to a county historical library that I had last stopped at maybe a half dozen years before when I found myself there with a couple hours to kill. During that time killing, I discovered they had shelves of obituaries clipped from the local newspaper, like maybe 60 linear feet of shelving full, all neatly stored in plastic sleeves organized in 3 ring binders and helpfully indexed, as long as you knew the year of death. At the time, I didn't know the years of my ancestors death, comprising an entire huge branch of my family tree, and so wishfully told myself that I should compile a list and come back someday. T...