About twenty miles southeast of my childhood home near Mt. Dora, is Seneca, New Mexico, another near forgotten place. There, ten to fifteen miles from the panhandle borders of both Texas and Oklahoma, the soil is sandier, but marginally better suited for farming than Mt. Dora to the northwest. Seneca was almost “Ground Zero” for the Dust Bowl. Rabbit Ear Mountain shadows this country and from certain angles it’s said to resemble the face of an Indian chief. From various perspectives of the rock structures, I’ve recognized the form of the dead Cheyenne Chief (Rabbit Ear) probably killed in a battle with Spanish colonialists in 1717. Coronado is said to have passed through this area in his futile search into what is now Kansas for the Lost Cities of Gold. Every town in eastern New Mexico and some towns in West Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado can suggest that Coronado passed through their area since the route isn’t precisely known. As far south as Carlsbad, there are such vague assertions. Coronado amassed a large expedition searching for the cities and was encouraged by the corroboration of natives who repeatedly pointed him to the north and east, probably to rid themselves of the strangers. It’s speculated that marvelous sunsets cast a golden hue on some pueblo and thus the myth of “The Cities of Gold” grew. So Coronado finally reached Kansas to the northeast and encountered some pitifully poor Wichita Indians. Returning to Mexico he was regarded as an abject failure for the rest of his life. I can almost hear Parker chuckle again (“and he died”), because in some strange way, Coronado was another who made his mark and died, disappointed by the reality of a land that offered less than expected. I believe, but cannot establish that Grandpa Douglass was drawn to Grenville and Mt. Dora by deceptive land speculators. The facts that Coronado took his massive expedition as far as he did, or that my family survived in this country are no small feats.
The experiences in the darkness of the depression and dust bowl days paint a picture of the Oldham’s determination to survive. After leaving the Carroll home and stalled in the car, the Oldham family endured one dust storm breathing through rags dampened with water that Pop (Grandpa Oldham) drained from the radiator. In the aftermath, Aunt Ellen Oldham’s future husband, Shearon Carroll, walked through the eerie, filmy dust, across dunes of sand up to the tops of fence posts, to find and aid the family. For weeks on end, the skies were yellowish from sunlight filtered through the atmospheric dust. In Washington D.C. and along the Eastern U.S. seaboard, these storms darkened the days and confused chickens and maritime navigation. Both Oldham and Douglass families were simply in the middle of an event characterized as “the worst man made environmental disaster in history”.
So, Seneca is where my Dad grew up. Pop and Grandma Oldham, drawn by the misleading allure of cheap, dry land, left east Texas in about 1920 and bought some ground in the dry, heartless grassland. They farmed with horse teams and eventually a tractor. They farmed in stinging wind and dirt, blistering sun and freezing mornings. Dad let it slip once that he thought if I’d sat on a tractor for sixteen hours a day, I might’ve been more inclined to stick with something.
Pop loved grandma. That is without question. There is a post card picture of him as a lumber jack at the base of a huge redwood tree in California. Affectionate writing is on the reverse side. Jody (my sister Jonell is called Jody) recalls him leaning his head on grandma’s casket and weeping. I watched him as the family passed by Grandma Oldham’s casket for the last time. Somehow he got through the sheer veil and kissed her and then extracted himself from the shroud. Later, so strong was his memory of her, he told of waking to her calling out, “Walter, Walter.” Shortly thereafter, he returned to the fellowship she’d embraced. Although to me his stories were gloomy and sad Pop was generous, warm and loving to his family. My memory of Grandma is vague. Grandma’s legacy to those who knew her, including my mother, is almost saintly. Mom was among those in the family that changed the dressings on the putrid open wounds of her breast cancer. (Mom told me it was lung cancer, presumably because little boys shouldn’t hear words like “breast”) Grandma Oldham died when I was five and I have a vague memory of her talking to us as we played in the dirt near the old wringer washing machine (the same machine in which my cousin Linda Carroll caught and badly scarred her hand and arm) outside their back door.
It is good to reflect for a moment on Grandma Oldham’s life. Her line of people included names like Seabolt and Coyle. Seabolt was Grandma’s maternal side and Coyle was the paternal side. When she was ten days old, her mother died in East Texas and her Grandpa Seabolt in Kentucky stepped and provided support as well as a nanny and nursemaid who will be mentioned briefly later. At some point Grandma’s father remarried and back in his custody, she was abused and neglected by her stepmother who was reported to have mental issues. Grandma told of having head lice. So, once again my Great Grandpa Seabolt was there and ultimately, I believe, bequeathed her the property that seeded the comparative success of Pop in later years. Grandma’s gentle goodness is still spoken about today, and I believe her presence and legacy is alive today in Aunt Ellen Carroll (age 95) and some of my cousins. Jim Carroll, my cousin who honored me as “the brother he never had”, embodies a similar innate goodness that was reported present in Grandma Oldham. Among others but not limited to, I sense such gentle goodness in my cousin, Avabelle Oldham. Perhaps because I was so young and my times there were sad, my memories of their home is of huge old trunks in dark rooms, old furniture, old photographs of stern severe people, and the smells of moth balls and kerosene lanterns. Others in my family recall happier things.
The roots of my grandparents, Walter (Pop) and Belle Oldham, are somewhere in Kentucky. The names Seabolt and Coyle run through my Grandma’s family. Stewart is a family name from Pop’s (Grandpa Oldham) family. My dad has quaint letters that my Great Grandpa Seabolt wrote to my grandma Oldham in which he reported on the farm and prices received for crops, pigs and eggs. There was a sweet relationship that comes through in these letters hinting at strong grandfather/daughter bonds. I should quote one or two of those letters here and will, should I get access to them. My great grandmother Coyle (nee Seabolt) died ten days after Grandma was born and a black woman became Grandma’s nurse maid – her name long forgotten. Being from the south, in “Jim Crow” times, grandma apparently grieved at the way she personally treated this black woman who’d breastfed her. It seems the nursemaid was an ongoing presence in Grandma’s life after she was weaned. When Pop went back to Kentucky to visit Grandma’s family in the early sixties, several years after Grandma died, he took a picture of this forgotten old woman who remembered him as “Miz Belle’s husband”. From the stories told and from the nature some of her children inherited, my grandmother must have been very tender hearted. In a time when people ridiculed “niggers” with no second thought, Grandma Oldham stands out to me as a force of conscience in a shameful period for America and both sides of my family.
The experiences in the darkness of the depression and dust bowl days paint a picture of the Oldham’s determination to survive. After leaving the Carroll home and stalled in the car, the Oldham family endured one dust storm breathing through rags dampened with water that Pop (Grandpa Oldham) drained from the radiator. In the aftermath, Aunt Ellen Oldham’s future husband, Shearon Carroll, walked through the eerie, filmy dust, across dunes of sand up to the tops of fence posts, to find and aid the family. For weeks on end, the skies were yellowish from sunlight filtered through the atmospheric dust. In Washington D.C. and along the Eastern U.S. seaboard, these storms darkened the days and confused chickens and maritime navigation. Both Oldham and Douglass families were simply in the middle of an event characterized as “the worst man made environmental disaster in history”.
So, Seneca is where my Dad grew up. Pop and Grandma Oldham, drawn by the misleading allure of cheap, dry land, left east Texas in about 1920 and bought some ground in the dry, heartless grassland. They farmed with horse teams and eventually a tractor. They farmed in stinging wind and dirt, blistering sun and freezing mornings. Dad let it slip once that he thought if I’d sat on a tractor for sixteen hours a day, I might’ve been more inclined to stick with something.
Pop loved grandma. That is without question. There is a post card picture of him as a lumber jack at the base of a huge redwood tree in California. Affectionate writing is on the reverse side. Jody (my sister Jonell is called Jody) recalls him leaning his head on grandma’s casket and weeping. I watched him as the family passed by Grandma Oldham’s casket for the last time. Somehow he got through the sheer veil and kissed her and then extracted himself from the shroud. Later, so strong was his memory of her, he told of waking to her calling out, “Walter, Walter.” Shortly thereafter, he returned to the fellowship she’d embraced. Although to me his stories were gloomy and sad Pop was generous, warm and loving to his family. My memory of Grandma is vague. Grandma’s legacy to those who knew her, including my mother, is almost saintly. Mom was among those in the family that changed the dressings on the putrid open wounds of her breast cancer. (Mom told me it was lung cancer, presumably because little boys shouldn’t hear words like “breast”) Grandma Oldham died when I was five and I have a vague memory of her talking to us as we played in the dirt near the old wringer washing machine (the same machine in which my cousin Linda Carroll caught and badly scarred her hand and arm) outside their back door.
It is good to reflect for a moment on Grandma Oldham’s life. Her line of people included names like Seabolt and Coyle. Seabolt was Grandma’s maternal side and Coyle was the paternal side. When she was ten days old, her mother died in East Texas and her Grandpa Seabolt in Kentucky stepped and provided support as well as a nanny and nursemaid who will be mentioned briefly later. At some point Grandma’s father remarried and back in his custody, she was abused and neglected by her stepmother who was reported to have mental issues. Grandma told of having head lice. So, once again my Great Grandpa Seabolt was there and ultimately, I believe, bequeathed her the property that seeded the comparative success of Pop in later years. Grandma’s gentle goodness is still spoken about today, and I believe her presence and legacy is alive today in Aunt Ellen Carroll (age 95) and some of my cousins. Jim Carroll, my cousin who honored me as “the brother he never had”, embodies a similar innate goodness that was reported present in Grandma Oldham. Among others but not limited to, I sense such gentle goodness in my cousin, Avabelle Oldham. Perhaps because I was so young and my times there were sad, my memories of their home is of huge old trunks in dark rooms, old furniture, old photographs of stern severe people, and the smells of moth balls and kerosene lanterns. Others in my family recall happier things.
The roots of my grandparents, Walter (Pop) and Belle Oldham, are somewhere in Kentucky. The names Seabolt and Coyle run through my Grandma’s family. Stewart is a family name from Pop’s (Grandpa Oldham) family. My dad has quaint letters that my Great Grandpa Seabolt wrote to my grandma Oldham in which he reported on the farm and prices received for crops, pigs and eggs. There was a sweet relationship that comes through in these letters hinting at strong grandfather/daughter bonds. I should quote one or two of those letters here and will, should I get access to them. My great grandmother Coyle (nee Seabolt) died ten days after Grandma was born and a black woman became Grandma’s nurse maid – her name long forgotten. Being from the south, in “Jim Crow” times, grandma apparently grieved at the way she personally treated this black woman who’d breastfed her. It seems the nursemaid was an ongoing presence in Grandma’s life after she was weaned. When Pop went back to Kentucky to visit Grandma’s family in the early sixties, several years after Grandma died, he took a picture of this forgotten old woman who remembered him as “Miz Belle’s husband”. From the stories told and from the nature some of her children inherited, my grandmother must have been very tender hearted. In a time when people ridiculed “niggers” with no second thought, Grandma Oldham stands out to me as a force of conscience in a shameful period for America and both sides of my family.
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