Bottled-up emotions

One of the newspaper clippings that always chokes me up a little is found on page 4 of the Saturday, Dec. 16, 1933 edition of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette:

20-YEAR-OLD NOTE FOUND IN BOTTLE

    While working on the Goose Creek project near Logan, Ray Castell found a bottle containing a note which he turned over to the Logan Republican. This recalled to Fred E. Huls, managing editor, a circumstance which occurred when he was a lad attending the East Grade School.

    On the note were the names of C. H. Huls, A. R. Huls, A. E. Huls, and F. E. Huls, together with the date of January 24, 1913.

    The note was prepared by Charles and Fred Huls twenty years ago and was placed in an extract bottle which they threw into Goose Creek one morning while enroute to school [., sic]

    Castell found the bottle a half mile down stream from the bridge where it had been buried in debris.

 

Talking with my dad helped me figure this out. I knew that grandpa Fred and great-uncle Charley had gone to the "same" school I did in Logan: Central Elementary. However, what my young mind didn't know was that Central was rebuilt many times over the years.

Central was too small and needed to be remodeled*, so grandpa Fred and great-uncle Charley went to East Elementary (according to oldohioschools.com, East Elementary was built in 1910 and demolished in 2011) for awhile. They would pass Goose Creek every day on their way to school. Grandpa even told of leaving their gum or jawbreaker candies under the bridge to retrieve on they way home. Yuck.

I can see the two boys creating the message with both their names and the names of their parents. Grandpa Fred (F.E.) would have been 8-years-old at the time and Charley (C.H.) would have been 10.

They probably thought it would go to the sea, but instead it went about a half mile.

I can only imagine the emotions this 20-year-old bottle brought to the family. I can picture my great-grandmother maybe tearing up a little when she saw the message from the past. I hope it gave them all some pleasure to think about the happier times of Charley's youth.

Grandpa Fred would especially need that comfort. Eight months later both Alpheus Eugene (A.E.) and Anna Rebecca (A.R.)  Huls would be dead.

*Central Elementary possibly had to be rebuilt/remodeled after the Collinwood school fire in Collinwood, Ohio (a Cleveland suburb) on March 4, 1908. Also known as the Lake View School fire, 172 students (including four of my mother's known relatives), 2 teachers and 1 rescuer died in one of the deadliest school disasters in United States history.

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Of golden weddings and pocket-watches

Pinterest

I celebrated my 57th birthday this week with my family, and I (of course) tried to pump my father for information. At age 80, he told me that he has learned more about Uncle Charley from this blog than he ever did from his poor father.

One of the things he told me while discussing prohibition was a smart-aleck stunt grandpa Fred pulled.

Apparently my great-grandmother, Anna Rebecca Troxel Huls, had a prescription for medicinal whiskey which was news to me! Apparently she and great-grandpa Gene were teetotalers,  but she did leave the bottle out on the sideboard. She didn't drink, but she wasn't going to hide it either. (Dad thinks she might have even been a member of either the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Ohio Anti-Saloon League.)

According to Dad, grandpa Fred strode into the dining room one day when home from Ohio State, grabbed the bottle of "Golden Wedding" off the sideboard, and took a big swig within their view -- hurting his parents deeply.

It was an action he always regretted, especially after their deaths in August 1934. Grandpa Fred used to show me the gold pocket watches both Charley and he received on their 21st birthdays for abstaining from alcohol. (Sadly, he sold them when he thought no one in the family wanted them.)

Grandpa turned 21 on August 10, 1925 -- six months after Charley's death. I wonder when he began drinking?

Dad wasn't positive the brand was Golden Wedding, but it was the brand he remembered and I had never heard of it so I had to look it up.

First of all, I loath whiskey, bourbon, and scotch so any errors are mine.

Golden Wedding was originally an American whiskey brand started about 1856. In 1920, Lewis Rosenstiel purchased a distillery that contained barrels of Golden Wedding and sold it as medicinal whiskey.

Golden Wedding survived prohibition and its repeal and moved in 1948 to Valleyfield, Quebec where it became a Canadian whisky. I am finding conflicting information about whether or not it is still made.

The best thing about Golden Wedding whiskey (in my opinion) is the golden, carnival glass bottle it frequently came in. My paternal grandmother collected carnival glass, but I never saw anything like these bottles lurking about their house!

Ironically, my great-grandparents never got to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. They both died from injuries they sustained in a car accident in 1934 after 35 years of marriage. 

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The day the music died

Lancaster Daily Eagle, May 14, 1918

One of the most startling things I have discovered about grandpa Fred, uncle Charley, and great-grandpa Gene was that they were musical! I find clipping after clipping of the family playing in Hocking County concerts and at the bandstand at Worthington Park in Logan.

Uncle Charley was even in the O.S.U. marching band for one year!

I personally believe their music stopped the day Charley died. Their joy ended. Just one of the many ripples that was cast when the strychnine capsule went into the so-called pond.

My late aunt played the French horn when she was young, but I don't think Dad ever played an instrument. I certainly never heard of grandpa Fred playing anything -- except for golf!

Heck, the only music I can remember at my grandparents' house was either Christmas music or Lawrence Welk.

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