Vik-Thor's Journal

There are a couple anniversaries today in my Rose line:

My great-grandma Grace Florence Gibbs was born on 10 May 1892 in White County, Illinois. She married my great-grandfather William Henry Rose on Halloween, 1908, in Hamilton County Illinois. She was only 16 at the time, to his 20... I would like to learn more about the timing of their marriage, since their first child was born less than 6 months later. My grandpa Rose was their 6th child. Grace ended up divorcing William in 1932 for abandonment and adultery. They had moved to East St. Louis (that is actually where my Grandpa was born, along with several of his siblings...) where William worked as a blacksmith for one of the railroads. She ended up back in Hamilton County, with the kids, and sued him for divorce. She actually named the woman who he "had carnal relations" with whom he ended up marrying shortly after the divorce was granted. 
Anyway, Grace remarried, to a William Edward Swallow (or Swallows) and had a couple more kids. She died in 1961, and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Hamilton County, and I have visited her grave. 
I would like to get over to White county at some point, and do some research there, as several other ancestors are born there also.

the other anniversary is the death of her ex brother-in-law, my great grand-uncle Joel Rose, who died on 10 May 1958. I don't know much about him. He is buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in McLeansboro Illinois, but I have not yet visited his grave. His gravestone on Find a Grave notes that he served in WW1.

Grace's link is to her entry on WikiTree.com , while Joel's is to his entry on FamilySearch.org. they are both collaborative family trees. FamilySearch has the document images, but WikiTree to me is more fun. To find out more about WikiTree, visit: www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:About_WikiTree

Well, one of my uncles has passed away. (one of Mom's brothers-in-law) So I am down in Vienna IL right now. The visitation was this evening, in the Masonic Lodge in Goreville.  (Didn't know he was a Mason. But then, he's not one of the uncles I have ever been that close with..{Of course, that actually applies to most of them…})

The visitation ended up as (basically) a reception line… my aunt at the foot of the casket, and the 2 cousins at the head of the casket. with everyone going past them , chatting/giving condolences/hugging/etc. I can't imagine doing that for 3 hours! And literally, Mom siad that's what it was like before I got there. The line streched out the main room of the lodge and back through the dining area for close to 3 hours.

Mom has already expressed wish to be cremated. So I think the cremation soon after, have a nice urn with pictures of Mom, some of her bird figureins around it, I think I can handle. I really don't think I could handle standing next to her dead body for that long though.

After the visitation was over, the MAson's had a short ceremony. Pretty uch Christian based, but there were some oddities. May read a bit more about the Masonic Lodges
Funeral is tomorrow, again at the Masonic Lodge, and then burial out at Webb Cemetery..

(A big thanks to Hank, who let me have vacation on such short notice. I have a GOOD boss! :)

I am annoyed at T-Mobile. Mom left me a voice mail last Wednesday letting me kow the uncle was in hospital in St. Louis, for ccancer treatment. It didn't pop up until Sunday night. It didn't even show she had colled. Would have been nice to have visited. Oh Well.

I am tired enough, I think I shall head to the Dreaming.

OK, I guess it's about time to get this down.

Sunday, we got a late start. As in probably about 3 hours later than we were originally planning on. I would have been happy with a Hotzi from QT, but Jos wanted a real breakfast, so we stopped at the Denny's by my job. (Denny's now has Breakfast Burritos! They are GOOD!)
I had done a trip planner on the local Gasbuddy.com website, and we followed it fairly well on the way out to San Antonio. Filled up in Tuscon AZ, Las Cruces NM, Kent TX, then we basically skipped the last one, and arrived at the hotel pretty much on fumes. (As mentioned in my/his posts, I drove to Tuscon, Jos drove to Las Cruces, I drove to Kent (exit 176) (I've stopped at that gas station before, on the trips we've done across Texas so many times... and I really have no idea exactly WHY there is a gas station there, unless it's far enough down to McDonald observatory that they need to fill up for the drive?) then Jos drove for awhile, but he was so tired that we switched fairly soon, and I drove the rest of the way to SA. We called the hotel to let them know we were going to be a late check-in.

the hotel we stayed at was the Comfort Suites Near Seaworld, that we found through hotels.com. (I'm sure most of you who do much traveling already have your favorite site like that, but I definitely have to recommend hotels.com if you don't! We got a very nice rate for the hotel through them, and it was an excellent hotel! We don't do a lot of traveling, but Comfort Suites is at the top of our list when we do in the future!)

Jos's uncle, who we went out there for, actually lives about a mile from the hotel.
Monday, I wore my kilt (basically for the first time, other than a couple hours around the apartment) and I think I surprised Uncle Peter. I've only met him twice before, when his band played here in Phoenix (the second link is one of the official band photos. Peter is keyboardist, on left side), and both were for short periods of time. So the first time he really meets me for much time, I'm wearing a kilt. ;) I did get a compliment from a waitress at the Denny's we ate breakfast at Monday (got up too late for the hotel's breakfast.)
Got the pass so we could get on base ourselves. Went to The Alamo and the RiverWalk. Took the boatride on the RiverWalk which was very interesting. I did pick up a new bolo tie there, since I could not find mine before we left. Ate at one of the Mexican restaruants, and then headed back to the hotel. crashed faily early, because we were both fairly tired after the late night before. Watched some of the news regarding Obama's inauguration.

Tuesday was the actual retirement ceremony. Met Uncle Peter's commander, and his cousin (John Conn), who was the only other family member able to make it. (Jos was the only blood relative.) Jos got to participate in the ceremony a bit, pinning one of the pin's on Peter's lapel.
After the ceremony, we went back to the hotel for a bit, then Peter picked us up, picked up John, and headed back downtown. Swung by the Alamo again, and back down to the RiverWalk. Ate at another Mexican restaurant, and basically talked for probably about 4 hours. (Actually, the others did the vast majority of the talking. I did my wallflower thing again. but after all, they're family and most of the talk was about family members...) Then back to the hotel, where I watched some of the Inaugural Balls, while Jos did some computing.

Wednesday, we decided to not get onto I10 for awhile, rather Jos drove on smaller state routes to Kerrville. Like I said at that time, the area is beautiful, even this time of year. (I did the trip planner again on GasBuddies, but that was pretty much useless. Most of the stations it gave us that time were CostCo and Sam's Club, neither of which we belong to... They need to have a way to block those from the trip planners.)
Jos drove all the way through Texas, and to Deming NM, where we ate supper. I drove for awhile, but switched not all that far into Arizona, I was close to falling asleep while driving (NOT a good thing!) and having trouble keeping my eyes focused.