Good Morning All & Happy Monday!
Kudos to my friend Jaci Michaelis for the stunning 9/11 memorial that she put together on her front lawn this past week to honor all those souls who died and/or were injured on that horrible, awful day in September of 2001…our generation’s “Pearl Harbor Day.” Jaci’s lawn was covered in American flags and tributes to first responders and other heroes of that day were included. It was quite something to see and our local newspaper featured a color picture of it. Thanks to you, Jaci, for taking the time and effort to remember 9/11 in this way. May we always remember that day and fight terrorism wherever we find it with total resolve…
Happy Birthday wishes go to my cousin, Larry in Walla Walla WA, who’ll be celebrating his birthday this coming Friday, September 18th! Here’s to you, Larry! Have fun on your special day of celebration! Happy Birthday also to friend Paul, husband, father, grandfather and custom wood products distributor (need any teak and/or mahogany, among many other specialty wood products?); to friend Kathy in Spokane; to friend Shelby in Boise ID; and to my former high school history teacher, basketball coach and later high school principal extraordinaire and University of Oregon Sports (Basketball) Hall of Famer and “Pride Of Hoquiam WA, Dale Herron, all of whom celebrate their birthdays this coming week! Here’s to all of you!
I had occasion to visit with my mom, Chris Newbold, the other day about her early life and she told me a story about kindness that was shown to her and her mother, Tempa (Grandma Testerman as we called her) that I thought was worthy of sharing:
After working for a time (approximately three years) after high school graduation (Class of 1944, Raymond High School) with Willapa Harbor Motors, a General Motors dealership in Raymond, Tempa (Chris) went to work for Raymond Auto Company, a Ford dealership. Henry Keller was the General Manager there and his wife, Goldie Keller, worked in the Business/Accounting Office there. She befriended Chris and went about teaching her the ins and outs of auto dealership accounting. Both Goldie and Henry took a liking to Chris (Mom) and offered to carry the contract on the house that Grandma (Tempa) Testerman bought from her cousin, Ezra Carden (married to Nettie (Buttrey) Carden, on Bush Avenue (Street) on the heights across the river from downtown Raymond (going north toward Aberdeen WA)…the first right after passing the bridge over the Willapa River, I believe. The Kellers’ act of kindness made it possible for Grandma to purchase the home, the first one she ever owned. She didn’t have to go through a bank to finance the home purchase. That would have posed some challenges for Tempa (Grandma), as she did not have sufficient assets to qualify for a home loan at that point.
The Kellers were originally from The Dalles, Oregon area along the Columbia River Gorge. They had no children of their own. Henry Keller had a drinking problem…my mom said he used to hide his liquor bottle in the toilet basin in the women’s restroom at work. Mom said she supposed he picked that hiding spot because there weren’t that many women who would use the bathroom at the dealership!
My mom (Chris) made approximately $300 a month in 1948 working at the auto dealerships in the Raymond WA area. Learning the Ford Motor Company accounting system from Goldie Keller gave her the skills to be able to find a number of accounting jobs with various auto dealerships throughout the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Seattle & Tacoma) during the early years of her marriage to my dad.
The Kellers’ kindness to my mom enabled her mother (my Grandma Testerman) to purchase a home of her own and for my mom to gain employment with a sought after skill in automobile dealership accounting…Here’s to Henry & Goldie Keller and all those who give others opportunities to better themselves in their journeys through life!
I came across another one of my collectible cards from the late 1950s & early 1960s yesterday…it features the deHavilland DH-106 Comet airliner, the first major jet passenger plane built in Great Britain after World War II. According to my collectible card, which shows a color picture of the plane, “The early Comets were plagued by a series of unfortunate mishaps which resulted in loss of life and bad publicity. After exhaustive tests, supervised by the British government, the redesigned Comet 4 model featured strengthened fuselage and wings to help assure safe operation of future Comets and commercial success. The legacy of the Comet was that subsequent passenger jets that were made had stronger and more reliable structural designs (including the use of oval windows rather than square windows) and much was learned from crash investigations of earlier Comet models.
Here are some trivia facts for the day:
The Empire State Building has 73 elevators.
Q: What did the abbreviation “O.K.” originally stand for?
A: In Spring, 1839, readers of the Boston Morning Post likely noticed two small, obscure letters at the bottom of the paper’s second column: “o.k.” These letters were the fact-checking team’s abbreviation for “all correct.” It symbolized the team’s sign-off for article accuracy. The term “O.K.” gained so much linguistic traction that Martin Van Buren coined it as his presidential campaign slogan in 1840. For Van Buren, who had the nickname “Old Kinderhook” from his hometown in upstate New York, the slogan O.K. insinuated that “Old Kinderhook was all correct.” Van Buren may have lost the race to William Henry Harrison, but O.K. was the real victor. The abbreviation spread like wildfire, later earning the spelling adaptation “okay” in the 1868 novel “Little Women.” How about that???
Here’s the word definition for the day:
Remember “Gonzo The Great” from the Muppets? Well, there is actually a word “Gonzo” in the dictionary. It is a 1970s Italian word meaning “Of or associated with journalistic writing of an exaggerated, subjective, and fictionalized style” and/or “Bizarre or crazy.” Now you know how “Gonzo The Great” got his name! It also can be said that alot of our media these days engage in “gonzo journalism,” don’t you think???
Here is the thought for the day:
“Some days it’s out of my control…when the nighttime closes in, I hold my breath
Worryin’…
Thinkin’ about my family and my friends…And all the hard things we’ve been up against
That I wish I could fix…But I trust in this..
He will redeem it all…Every sigh of sorrow will be turned into a song
He will redeem it all…Every tear will dissapear in the light of that dawn
It’s always darkest right before the morning light…
So hold on, He will redeem it all.”
So much injustice every day…It’s here at home and far away
The newscast is so bad…
But through it all my hope is in the One
Who says all pain will be undone
We’ll never cry again…And in the end…
He will redeem it all…Every sigh of sorrow will be turned into a song
He will redeem it all—Every tear will disappear in the light of that dawn
It’s always darkest right before the morning light
So hold on, He will redeem it all.”
Melanie Penn, “He Will Redeem It All” (2020)
Here’s to a great Monday and lots of love & good wishes always!
Stay safe…stay strong…press on,
Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, Mark, etc.)