My great grandfather had guns that belonged to Wild Bill Hickok and to Buffalo Bill Cody (as well as a hundred others). Elmer McArdle would perform shows until he died in a fire in 1951. Elmer would ride in the Westville Illinois parade every year and my mother has stories about her childhood visiting him.
Elmer McArdle
Elmer McArdle Article upon Death.
My uncles would tell stories about him trying to teach them to sharp shoot. He would set up a bell with iron rings in front of it. My grandfather and uncles would have to shoot through the ring and hit the bell. My uncles being the pranksters they were, would set it up to hit the bell from the side making it look like they hit it – making it impossible for my grandfather. My grandfather and uncles were serious trouble makers. Stories include them breaking out of jail, stealing a billy club from a police officer, and running off from a dentist without paying…. My uncles ended up burning down a barn and one was sent to the army (Frank) while the other went to jail (Ralph). Ralph ended up dying of tuberculosis a short time later.
Elmer McArdle, April 15, 1916
Stories also include my great grandfather having a collection of clocks throughout his house, my uncles and grandfather would sneak in and reset the clocks when he was out.
When Elmer passed away he was found in the ashes from the fire that destroyed his home and his gun collection. At the time he was over 80 years old and still living on his own in Hawbuck.
There is so much talk about gun violence anymore, I am brought back to the memory of sometimes a gun is just a piece of history.
My family has a ‘family reunion’ every year. It’s basically a family party with extra people…. and we do have a BIG family. The party has moved around to different houses throughout the years and been hosted by different people… The earliest I remember were at my grandfather’s pond, then on to my Uncle Franks, my cousin Buddy’s, my Aunt Margaret’s, and on to my cousin Don’s.
Who comes to the events also changes and as time 
goes on we have gained and lost family members. This year though I caught myself having to ask my mother more and more to identify people (and I am afraid to admit, she had trouble on several). I still know the family that I grew up with, and I so want my kids to know their kids, but as time goes on and we meet once a year – it becomes harder and harder to keep up.
I should also mention that for us the trip is 6 hours each way, always now on a Sunday during a weekend after school starts up here in Kentucky. The longest we can stay and still get home for bed time is about 1 or 2 hours. This last year I literally had to run from a conversation as I saw my husband and son heading to the car to leave without me (I’m 98% sure they wouldn’t have).
I remember one of my children replying that it wasn’t a big deal to miss a family trip as he wasn’t familiar with the people we were visiting. To me these family are only distant in location….. I so want my children to have that close tie to family, yet with miles between us all, how do you maintain that?
As I was home the other day I was discussing with my brother the many reasons why we were lucky to have made it through childhood. It’s funny though, my husband talks about people smoking on his bus on the way to school, but that would have NEVER happened on our bus. On the other hand, kids driving themselves to school as soon as they hit their 16th birthday was pretty common. – Mostly because farm kids started driving as soon as they could see over the dash board. I still remember the rules: If you see another car, pull over and park. If they hit you parked it’s their fault, if you are moving it’s your fault – child, no license, driving by yourself. My parents would have me follow to take an extra vehicle to the field, my aunt would have me drop her at the mushroom patch, and my dad would just let us practice.
Childhood though also included rides such as getting in the front bucket of the tractor and 
my dad spinning us around while he made the bucket go up and down. We would climb grain bins into the air and jump into corn and beans that were drying. Learned to swim by being thrown into a pond (at least doggie paddle). We started hunting as soon as we were old enough to hold the gun to shoot. Mini bikes, horses, and in our case odd animals that my dad collected were all part of childhood.
I remember cold days snowmobiling on a frozen river racing after my father (my dad would make us get off for the really steep hills and he would ride our snowmobile up), skating on frozen ponds where railroad tracks had been removed, and even playing in old railroad equipment that had been left buried on the earth by the removed tracks through a field my parents bought.
One of the dangers of growing up on a farm is getting lost in a field…. Surprisingly I don’t remember anyone I know getting lost, but I do remember wondering into fields when I desperately wanted to pee – and remembering the stories. I always wondered how it happened that anyone older could get lost in a field and die knowing the layout of most field in rows.
One story that my brother and I discussed though was my dad chasing down one of our deer that escaped (with antlers). He chased it up and down the field in an old scout, and then wrestled it back into the pin. My brother remembered looking out to see the deer with my dad pinned against a propane tank. My dad apparently always said he would have been gored if the deer wasn’t worn out from running back and forth down the field.
As the question is raised time and time again recently I am brought back to the question I asked previously (http://myrootsrundeep.info/separation-of-church-and-state)…..
In history the United States was founded based on separation of Church and State. A large part of the reasons for the country involved people leaving England because the King of England was forcing his religion on the people within the country. Ultimately a new country was founded to allow for that freedom and to protect those rights it was expressly written into the constitution that the people were free to choose. (And this means choose what religion they believe in without being forced to follow anther’s beliefs. ) To ensure this freedom the government. To gain these rights the people went to war with the King of England and fought for our freedom.
To ensure that these rights were maintained and separation of church and state occurred – some states put in place laws that no ministers could serve office. My ancestor being the first minister thrown out of office as a minister because of this. We currently have people making the news making the argument that – People that don’t follow their religious beliefs can just go to another county (if you read country hear we can just go back over 200 years)….
I too am really getting tired of hearing the said person’s name and hearing her all over the news. I’ve even seen opinion pages comparing her to Rosa Parks (The page said let Christians move to the front of the bus)…. The author obvious knows nothing about Rosa Parks history….. 1. he
r seat was in the colored section in the front of the bus. 2. she didn’t give up her seat because she was tired – it had nothing to do with moving from the back of the bus to the front. The segregation case was Brown vs. the Board of Education and involved school busing to the ‘white schools’.
I do want to quit hearing this in the news, but I also want everyone to have equal rights under the law. The current case going on isn’t a case of someone being forced not to practice her own religion – it’s a case of someone trying to force others to practice her religion.
Whatever you believe in…. I think everyone should agree that kindness to strangers and treat others and you would like them to treat you should play into this. I can’t think of one person I know that would say they haven’t done something at one point of another that they would do differently if doing it again.
There are things that they don’t tell you about Dementia…. Like the fact that a dementia home can decide they are refusing to keep a resident any longer. Really they aren’t supposed to do that. But it happens, and it happened to us, recently. Some of the behaviors of dementia are things a lot of people don’t talk about, but they apparently can make some homes throw up their hands and give up. When you’ve never dealt with this before there isn’t a book on what to then do with your parent, who you turn to for help, where you find a new home for them – and believe me at that point you are totally confused, upset, and in a lot of cases embarrassed. In our case we were dealing with a nurse that had an attitude also that didn’t really help.
For us the final straw was my father being dropped at an emergency room with the nurse at the dementia ward of the nursing home saying they refused to take him back. To top all this off they had included lots of things on his papers that made other nursing homes afraid to take him in. The social worker at the hospital tried to help by calling a few places, my mother called everywhere close, and my dad stayed in the hospital waiting for 6 days. Not knowing what to do we finally called nursing homes and dementia wards at a further distance away. We were lucky and found a place 1 1/2 hours away (and I have to say they definitely seem to know what they are doing a lot more than the first place!). Besides calling other nursing homes I tried other leads, we had been eliminated from the VA because all my father’s active duty was ACDUTRA which apparently disqualified him., so I started calling all the organizations with fancy names that included long term care in their names.
The Association of Long Term Care Nurses for Illinois (or something similar) was nice enough to point me to the Department of Public Health. It turns out, you are required to be given 30 days notice before being turned out of a nursing home and they have a group you can complain too. It may not come to anything, but at least I felt better having someone listen.
I just have my mothers stories but the new dementia ward my father is at seems to care more. The nurses are always seem to be with my dad when my mother visits, there haven’t been all the calls saying he has fallen when he escaped notice anymore. They put a bed alarm on him to make sure he doesn’t fall at night (this is something the first place said was illegal to do????)
The thing though that brought me to tears was when they brought my dad the phone and dialed my mother when he was concerned about her safety. It reminded me of the times when my mother and I would be somewhere and my dad would call to tell us that they were having a storm and we needed to find a place to stay so that we would be safe. – Forget the fact that he was in Illinois and we were in Arkansas at the time, he wanted to be sure we were safe. That was a few years ago and now having them show the care to help him call to ease his mind really made me feel that was the right place for him…. BUT I also was able to see a small glimpse of my dad again. Some of the old thought processes were there. It may not be a lot, but at least it’s something.
