Duchess & Sadie's Domain

Bayfield, Colorado - Well! I wokeup this morning and trampled out into about 4 inches of fine, powdery snow this Monday morning. Boy Howdy! Did the winds blow hard last night! I made NW Okie snap this shot of a little pine tree with the snow on it.

Sunday evening between 7 p.m. and 8:47 p.m. we lost power when strong winds blew trees down across some power lines south of us here at Vallecito. And it has been a chilly day around here.

Sounds like they have been having blizzard conditions around Wolf Creek Pass.

How did the first weekend of hunting go for some of you in Oklahoma? Did you get us some quail and some deer meat? Sadie and I would love some BIG steady bones to gnaw on.

Keep Warm and Cozy this Winter! If you are traveling over the river, mountains to your family this year, please watch for those winter storm watches and be prepared with extra water, blankets, food, etc.

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Home Comfort Cookbook (1934) - Candy & My Cookbook

America - T'is the season for sweets and giving something of yourself to those special around you.

We have just the thing from our 1934 Home Comfort Cookbook, put out by the Wrought Iron Range Company with the purchase of their range in the 1930's. Some of our Home Comfort Cookbook Candy recipes can be seen at My Cookbook - Okie's Kitchen or What's Cookin' Cookbook.

This first recipe we would like to share with you is for chocolate and caramel lovers. It can be found in the Sweets category. This Chocolate Caramels recipe is from the 1934 Home Comfort Cookbook, page 129, in the Candy and Candy Making section.

Chocolate Caramels
Source: 1934 Home Comfort Cookbook
1 Cup brown sugar
2 cups molasses
1 cup rich milk
4 Tablespoons butter
4 oz. bitter chocolate
1 Teaspoon vanilla

Instructions: Melt butter and chocolate; add sugar, molasses and milk; cook until consistency of a soft caramel when tested in cold water; pour into buttered square pan and, when half cold, cut into squares, or oblongs. Nuts may be added immediately on removing from range, if desired.

Remember the Divinity that your mother or grandmother would make around the holidays? Check out this Divinity Fudge taken from the 1934 Home Comfort Cookbook, page 129. It has my sweet, chocolate tooth carving and my mouth watering for something chocolate and caramel.

We will bring you some more Holiday Candies in the next few issues of our OkieLegacy newsletters. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

NW Okie's R & R

Bayfield, Colorado - This weekend, Sunday, brought a winter snow storm and strong winds to the San Juan mountains of Southwest Colorado. I am going to estimate approximately 4 to 5 inches, but maybe less where we are. Sounds like Aspen, Silverton and Wolf Creek might be getting the heavy, blizzard conditions.

Have you ever noticed how English Ivy grows? How it intertwines and connects one thing to another? How it ends up covering everything in it path as it branches out?

The legacies and stories we past down from one generation to another are like the English Ivy. It is our vehicle that connects the past with the present and keeps the memories alive for the generations to come.

When those stories and photos get spread around from family to families, it makes it possible for each generation to spread the knowledge of that legacy from one to another, while each sprig of Ivy branches off into yet another direction to create another family tree. Sometime that sprig gets broken because of deaths or bad feelings, but it does not stop the legacy!

Have you spread the legacy of 47 years ago of what, where and how the assassination of President John F. Kennedy affected you, 22 November 1963? Where were you 47 years ago today? What do you remember about that day in Dallas, Texas when John F. Kennedy was assassinated?

Someone wrote me and mentioned, "I saw that one of your old newsletters (Vol. 3, iss. 10) referenced a John F Kennedy Serigraph. I too have one of them and dying to know if it is a Trash or a Treasure. Did you get any information? Thanks!"

In answer to this question, I do not know how valuable the serigraph. If it is trash or treasure. But I guess that is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

Remember the first big family trips when your parents and siblings piled into the family automobile and took? I remember the Summer of 1955 (I think it was) that the McGill Family of six (father, mother and four daughters) piled into a 1955 Pontiac station wagon pulling a tear-drop, homemade trailer and traveled to Alaska from northwest Oklahoma, passing through Colorado, Idaho (to see Uncle Sammy Paris) and Canada. It was just one of our big summer vacations to explore the wild frontiers. We trampled barefoot in snowbanks along the Canadian highway. We picked high/low berries. I can not remember the berries, 'cause I was just a small child of 7 years. I do remember the cherry trees where we picked fresh cherries, though. BUT ... the location has escaped these old memory cells without more jogging from siblings and photos. My father took movie film along the way and sent back to the Kelsey's in Waynoka. Those old movies were stored in my parents home before their deaths in 1986 and 1992. Have not seen the old movies since then. Would love to have a copy of them though!

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James Hiram Mondy (1897-1917)

Alva, Oklahoma - Bill Castle sent us a couple of images that he found of James Hiram Mondy. Bill says, "I really do not have any more information than you already seem to have concerning Hiram's origination and subsequent demise at the runup to the battle of Vimy in 1917. I am forwarding to you some information I received today from Sidney J. Clark, in Wales, UK.

"I originally found the reference to your article in Vol. 9, Issu. 6, WWI Memories today through a Google search. What a useful tool! I will enjoy perusing your online stories as I have subscribed today, number 312. Thanks for all you are doing to keep this information alive."

Bill sent us James Hiram Mondy's Attestation papers [front and back, as seen in these two images].

JAMES HIRAM MONDY died on March 30, 1917, Military Service Number: 887171, at the age of 20, while serving in the Army, in the Canadian Infantry (Saskatchewan Regiment) Division (46th Bn).

James Hiram Mondy was born February 4, 1897, Alva, Oklahoma, United States of America, the Son of E. T. and Ida Mondy, of Paynton, Saskatchewan.

Commemorated on Page 295 of the First World War Book of Remembrance with the following Burial Information: VILLERS STATION CEMETERY, Pas de Calais, France; Grave Reference: VI. H. 8.

The location Villers-au-Bois is a village in the Department of the Pas-de-Calais, 11 kilometres northwest of Arras. The VILLERS STATION CEMETERY is about 2 kilometres northwest of the village. To see a platte map of the cemetery follow this LINK to the Villers Station Cemetery View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

This Day In History - November 22

Dallas, Texas - 1963 -- 47 years ago, president John F Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas Texas. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible.

First lady Jacqueline Kennedy rarely accompanied her husband on political outings, but she was beside him, along with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, for a 10-mile motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas on November 22. Sitting in a Lincoln convertible as the Kennedys and Connallys waved at the large, enthusiastic crowds along the parade route.

As Kennedy's vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository Building at 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three shots from the sixth floor, fatally wounding President Kennedy and seriously injuring Governor Connally. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas' Parkland Hospital. He was 46.

Less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Lee Harvey Oswald (born in New Orleans in 1939) killed a policeman who questioned him on the street near his rooming house in Dallas. Thirty minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater by police responding to reports of a suspect. He was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit.

On November 24, 1963, Oswald was brought to the basement of the dallas police headquarters on his way to a secure county jail, when Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubenstein) emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded Oswald with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver.

Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy.

The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee's findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.

Was it a lone gunman of Lee Harvey Oswald? OR ... Was it a conspiracy? Will we ever know for sure? View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Gunpowder Gertie - Pirate Queen of the Kootenays

Kootenay Lake, - It was in the late 1800's where few roads ran to the Kootenays. The rivers and railways were the main routes of travel. Most used shallow bottomed sternwheelers to ply the often treacherous waterways. That is how they supplied the towns and carried passengers. They also ged the mining boom and transported the valuable metals for smelting.

Where there are ships and treasures, there are pirates. The Kootenay Lake system saw many of these pirates. The roughest, toughest and most to be reckoned with was Gunpowder Gertie, the Pirate Queen of the Kootenays.

What a name for a girl (Gertrude Imogene Stubbs) born in 1879, in Whitby (a port town on the east coast of Britain), England, the daughter of George Stubbs, a train engineer and his wife, Violet, a seamstress.

Gertrude was noted as a bit of a wild thing from the first. She liked oohing better than to spend her time down at the busy docks, listening to the stories of sea captains in port between voyages. Gertie also liked riding with her father on his route from Whitby to Pickering and Scarbourough.

Gertie and her father and mother emigrated to Sandon, B.C., Canada in 1895 when her father accepted a job to run trains for the newly copleted K & S Railway. Gertie's mother, Violet, was a little apprehensive about the decision to move to the wilds of Western Canada, but George was convince that they could make a good life for themselves in the boomtown. They traveled to Canada by steamer from England.

Gertie was very taken with life on board the steamer, as it made a profound impression that was to forever affect her life.

It was less than a month after they had arrived in the thriving town of Sandon, that Gertie's mother was tragically killed in an avalanche that destroyed their home on the steep mountainside at the north end of town.

Gertie was coming home from her job at a general store in town and witnessed the whole thing. Gertie's heart broken father (George) blamed himself for Violet's death and sank into drinking and gambling. George pretty much left his only daughter to fend for herself. Gertie had to make sure her father actually made it for his shifts and accompanied him on his routes to Kaslo, helping him shovel coal.

Gertie's father slid further into debt and depression, and she was pretty much doing the actual running of the engine herself to enable her constantly drunken father to keep his job so they would not starve. After George's death in 1896, the Railway refused to allow Gertie to continue working for them because their policies did not include hiring women.

Gertie was stranded in Kaslo without as much as a penny after paying off her father's debts. She found that what honest work she could get as a woman paid only starveling wages. AFter barely eking out a living through the winter, she cut her hair off short, disguised herself as a young man and hired on as a coal hand on the sternwheelers.

Gertie was happy and her knowledge of steam engines soon proved so useful that she was given more responsibilities. BUT ... unfortunately, Gertie's disguise was finally discovered. her ship and another were racing to establish which vessel had the superior speed when the boiler ran dry. The explosion in the engine room blinded her in her right eye and knocked her unconscious.

Gertie was taken to the hospital where the attending doctor realized she was a woman. Without even compensation for her injury she was given the sack, nor would any other steam company hire her on. Furious that she was not allowed to do the work she was good at merely because she was not allowed to do the work she was good at merely because she was not a man, GErtrude Imogene Stubbs swore vengeance on the steaminess and Gunpowder Gertie was born.

The Provincial Police were most thoroughly embarrassed by her when she stole their own patrol boat to mount her buccaneering campaign against the paddle-wheelers that had treated her so poorly.

Originally it was christened the "Witch" when it was built in Scuttle Bay, just north of Powell River, this 42' (12.8m ) long patrol boat was purchased and refitted by the Provincial Police with the intention of using it to patrol inland lakes and rivers. The "Witch" was transported to the interior by railcar where her hull was sheathed in iron and her stern was modified and fitted with two of the first ever ducted propellers.

It was this gunboat (Witch) that was Gunpowder Gertie's first ill-gotten prize. The "Witch" arrived in Nelson on February 12, 1898, by railcar. On the morning of February 13, it was gone. To this day no one has figured out how she managed to steal the ship from its railcar and transport it to the water without so much as being seen, but Gertie did. The next time the ship was spotted, it was sporting Gunpowder Gertie's handsewn Jolly Roger and robbing the S.S. Nasookin at gunpoint.

From 1898 to 1903 Gunpowder Gertie steamed up and down the rivers in her gunboat, rechristened the "Tyrant Queen," attacking and robbing steamboats of their cargos (gold and silver) from local mines and payrolls on their way to towns. She would appear out of nowhere brandishing the small but deadly Gatling gun, relieve the passengers of their valuables and the paddle-wheelers of their payloads at pistol point and then vanish. With communication much slower in those days, by the time word got through to the Provincial Police that Gunpowder Gertie had struck again, she would be long gone. The law could never catch Gertie and her Tyrant Queen. The Tyrant Queen could outrun anything else in the water at the time and Gertie knew every little twist and turn, isle and inlet on the lake system.

One of Gunpowder Gertie's own men, Bill Henson, an engine man who was dissatisfied with his share of the booty, betrayed Gertie in 1903. Henson went to the Provincial Police for a handsome reward and a promise of clemency as he sold out Gunpowder Gertie.

Henson gave Gunpowder Gertie a phony tip about a supposed fat payroll coming into Kaslo on the S. S. Moyie. When Gertie ordered the vessel to heave to and prepare to be boarded, near what is now known as Redfish Creek, she found it full of lawmen, bristling with guns. Knowing when she was outgunned, Gertie turned tail and prepared to make her escape but the devious Henson had sabotaged one of the gaskets and as soon as the steam pressure reached full, it blew, crippling the Tyrant Queen and making her an easy target for her pursuers. The battle was ferocious! They say the river ran red with blood before the lawmen were able to board the gunboat and capture Gunpowder Gertie, who put up an enormous fight before finally being clapped in irons.

Gunpowder Gertie was sentenced to life imprisonment but died of pneumonia during the terrible winter of 1912. She never revealed where she had hidden her ill-gotten gains. Rumor has it that she buried it somewhere along the river system she had plundered and left a hidden map that would lead to the treasure. All her crew perished in the final battle, including the turncoat Bill Henson, who Gertie shot in the back when she spotted him trying to jump ship during the fray.

Gunpowder Gertie took her secret to the grave and to this day no one has yet discovered the resting place of Gunpowder Gertie's gold. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Oklahoma Trivia & Tidbits

Enid, Oklahoma - Homer in Oklahoma sent us the following URL, Oklahoma Trivia & Tidbits. Have you ever driven through Enid, Oklahoma and noticed a house built with all sorts, kinds of rocks?

That house is known as the Midgley Museum in Enid, Oklahoma was built in the home of Dan and Libbie Midgley, a farm couple who collected unusual rocks during their travels. They built their house in the 1940's using more than 30 types of rocks, and their collection includes fossils, crystals, agate, sandstone and petrified wood. Visitors can view a 7,000-pound petrified tree stump on the front lawn. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Colorado Trivia & Tidbits

Colorado - Ten pioneering women pilots from Colorado were among a group receiving the Congressional Gold Medal for their service during World War II as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, at a March ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. About 1,100 women flew military aircraft during the war; fewer than 300 of the original "fly girls" are alive today.

The Colorado medalists are Lucile Wise, of Arvada; Ruth Brown and Elizabeth Pfister, both of Aspen (pop. 5,914); Grace Lotowycz, Boulder (pop. 94,673); Millicent Young, Colorado Springs; Annabelle Moss, Grand Junction (pop. 41,986); Doris Tracy, La Veta (pop. 924); Kathryn Gunderson, Lakewood; Josephine Robinson, Louisville (pop. 18,937); and Peggy McCaffrey, Montrose (pop. 12,344). View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (1 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe