Vintage Valentines

(These families were well known in Lebanon and Windyville and Bennett Spring (Brice) and Flatwoods, all over that area so I thought a lot of you might locate a relative’s name. I wrote this column for the Lebanon paper several years ago.)

How many of you remember in grade school in the 40s and 50s we all made valentine boxes and took to school and exchanged valentines? Boys to boys, girls to girls, made no difference in gender, we all were friends and we loved to take and receive valentines, homemade or "boughten" . This was even more true back in the 20s and 30s. It was like families sending Christmas cards to other families like we do nowadays.

The picture I used for the cover picture are just a few of the Valentines my Uncle Loran Dame received in the 30s when he was a teenage boy. Uncle Loran saved these all those years in a box where we found them after he died in 2008. The valentines and the friends were most precious to him all those years.

First there are Valentines to Uncle Loran from Cassie Jennings, Charline and Broox Jennings. They were sisters to my mother - in - law Pauline Jennings Hart. So its the late 30's. These "kids" are 12 to 16 probably and here is what blows my mind: The 3 Jennings girls were sending Valentines to Loran Dame (not one year but several years). They could never have known that in due time their nephew Milan Hart as yet unborn would grow up to marry Loran's niece (also unborn)!!!!! Isn't that just the coolest thing ever? That's how you know when your "family roots" are buried deep in this Ozark soil.

Most people papered their walls back in those days and they liked the big colorful floral designs so kids would take leftover pieces of wallpaper and cut them to size, usually 3x3 or 4x4, and draw hearts on them and make up a poem or just sign their names. If you looked on the back of these wallpaper scraps you saw instructions on how to make wallpaper paste and apply the paper to the walls, and sometimes the name of the design, etc. Apparently kids always had crayolas or pencils and they colored them. They made do with what they had.

A favorite inscription was "My love for you will never fail as long as a piggy wears his tail."

DORTHA AND JAMES JEFFRIES were probably siblings and their names appear on several Valentines.

There was also a RAYMOND THOMAS and HOWARD THOMAS, probably siblings. Howard wrote this poem inside in long hand. Here it is as he wrote it: from the toe of your shoe to the top of your lid ill say you are a dog gone nice kid

There was a HATHAWAY family, and GLENN AND WILMA WISE, also siblings. One from DARRELL DAME.

Police officers were a popular picture theme as in "To My Valentine How I'd like to "cop" your heart.

A girl named WILMA FLANAGAN ( beautiful handwriting). And PEARL BUCK. WILMA CLAYTON was a sister to Asa Clayton who married my great aunt Inez Hawk. She was one of the ladies in the picture I posted a few weeks which had been outside the dining lodge at Bennett Spring. Another sister was a teacher several of us had in Lebanon school. Her name was VERA JONES. Another CLAYTON (ZELMA) married a Medley and they had a daughter I went to school with named SANDRA MEDLEY. And there is a valentine from a WILMA CLAYTON.

There was a GENEVA MARLEY.

And a CLIFFORD which I am guessing was Uncle Loran's cousin, CLIFFORD SMITH.

There is a beautiful card dated 1935 from PAULINE JENNINGS (Milan's mom) to NELLIE DAME (my maternal grandmother) Again this was 8 years before Milan and I were born.

Several valentines from Otto Phillips who was a teacher I think (maybe at Flatwoods?)

Someone used a lined tablet to cut out a valentine with scalloped edges and wrote this poem on it: Roses are red and vilets are blue angles in heaven oh I love you. (I copied the misspellings as they were written).

Near Death Testimony from Judge Larry Winfrey

Larry Winfrey has given me permission to share this testimony. Grab a box of Kleenex and maybe a sweater for the cold chills you will get in the middle of it. "During my recent medical crisis, I was unconscious for two days. The following is what I experienced during that time. If you have the time and the inclination, I would be interested in your thought. I am pasting what I have sent to others who have inquired. Thank you! Thank you for expressing interest in hearing what happened to me during the two days of unconsciousness, it has had a profound effect upon me. Whether real or imagined, or you believe it or not makes no difference, it will all depend on your relationship with God. Nor will it affect my appreciation for you. I could not breathe! I remember thinking I was dead and that I was not ready to die. I thought of my family. I did not see any bright light or passed loved ones. I did not see any angels enveloped in a holy penumbra. What I saw was Sata

LDR column published 05.09.12 - Jess Easley

Straight From The Hart By Joan Rowden Hart Jess Easley , Lebanon Historian and StoryTeller I’ve been trying to trace a place called Railroad Pond from the early days of Lebanon. Perhaps some of you “old-timers” will have more information, but I found a reference to it in Jess Easley ’s recollections of Lebanon. Jess talked about skating on Railroad Pond when he was just a kid, and also working to cut ice on it during the cold winters that Lebanon experienced. The grocery stores which had meat markets would hire people to cut ice from the pond to put in their ice house and store for the summer. Jess was one of Milan’s favorite customers when Milan started working at the barber shop with Fred Pitts in 1968, and he quickly became one of Milan’s mentors in collecting oral memories and memorabilia of Lebanon history. Jess was born in Lebanon in January of 1891, and died here on March 1, 1983 at the age of 92 , and had a good strong mind right up to the very end, so he had many memories

Anti-semetism

Vandals knocked over and damaged at least 100 headstones at Mount Carmel Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia on February 27. The Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in St. Louis suffered major damage when more than 200 headstones were toppled and damaged by vandals also in February. After numerous headstones were desecrated at the Waad Hakolel Cemetery in Rochester, the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester New York stated on its Facebook post, “In the past month alone, there have been more than 180 anti-Semitic incidents nationwide. We are deeply disturbed by rising acts of anti-Semitism across the country, including bomb threats made to Jewish community centers, Jewish day schools, and synagogues.” As of February 28 this year more than 100 threats have been called in to 77 Jewish Community Centers, eight Jewish schools and several advocacy offices like the Anti-Defamation League, around the country. In his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday of last week, President Trump said

Straight From The Hart

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