Grandma Amy and her books

My Grandmother Amy, about 1916

Amy Lucille Nichols Peck became a pharmacist in 1916, a difficult career move for a woman of that era. She had been preparing to be a doctor, but the money wasn't there. So she adjusted her plans.  When Grandma died in 1972, she left me a number of her book collections.  Most interesting were the books on science.

In Gray's School and Field Book of Botany by Asa Gray, she assiduously (!) made notes in the pages and pressed leaves. A rather vague comment was on the page for "Xanthium".  Xanthium--such a lovely word! I thought. 

The definition of this delightful Xanthium is:

  A coarse and vile weed, with stout and low branching stems.
  
  Grows in barnyards and waste manured ground, about 1 to 2 inches high

  ....hooked leaves and the fruit is a burr fully 1/2" long, with 2 beaks at the apex

  ....numerous prickles with sharp bristles.

What!! What?? The Xanthium is a burr plant? The kind that catches on socks, pants, every fabric, and resists removal?

I was severely disappointed by this.  I am sure you are as well.

Please share your experiences and/or thoughts of the hated Xanthium. or any other hated plant that has been in your life.

This is Grandma's rocker. She read the Bible through every where. She maintained her pharmacist credential until her 80s. Her textbooks from 1919 were still on her bookcase when she passed. Grandma was brilliant.

 Grandma Amy Lucille Peck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those who act in haste, repent in leisure...

Building Plans available
This example is in much better condition than the one at Grandma's house.

Following Halloween shenanigans, outhouse tipping continued. Every house built in late 1800 era sported an outhouse, a necessity for the pre-plumbing days.  Some were quality, meant to last for many years.  Others were built in haste and their construction showed rickety and rotting wood.  Easy pickings, they were targets of gangs of boys treading through darkness and, with little effort, tipping those over.

My Grandmother Amy lived in one of those old houses and had one of the latter outhouses.  This made her graying and rusting outhouse a frequent subject of the outhouse gang.

Each time Grandma Amy had to phone my father, who then drove through dusky hours to place the structure back over the pit. After almost every night's misadventures, Dad and Grandma devised a plan:  move the outhouse over into wild roses, leaving the pit open under a dark moonless sky.  While they waited in silence and darkness with an occasional smirk and giggle, these monsters approached through with giggles of their own.

Moments later screams and profanity were heard as surprised boys tumbled feet forward into the open pit, a not-too empty pit at that.

Grandma and Dad switched on the porch light, and armed with flashlights, they smiled down on faces of well-known-miscreant teenagers. What the.....get us outta here...damn you...

Grandma armed with a water hose and Dad with a rope managed to pull the three boys out.  A casual stream of water dripped down over the excrement covered boys, leaving a healthy amount of odoriferous matter behind.  Dad directed them to place the outhouse back over the pit, promising to inform the town's mayor about them.

Following the order of penance, grumbling in whispers, the boys settled every outhouse through out town, securing them safely and securely in place.  They even assisted my father in building a new outhouse for my grandma; they also dug a new pit for her outhouse, refilling an old full pit in with soil.

This was a memory that gave Grandma a source of giggles the rest of her life.  God Bless Her.


A few years later, an addition to her house included a toilet and sink.

Amy Lucy (Dolly) Nichols Peck
July 1970

A is for Ancestor

An old woman staring sternly from within a black frame, holding tightly to black and white.  Oh, she is your great-great grandmother.  My grandmother told me about her, how she had long black thick hair, hanging straight down her back.  She was from the Seneca or Oneida tribe, you know...eleven children born in a log cabin in an Indian Reservation....

I did not know that.  Grandma, with her abundance of hair, told me of this ancestor, bits and pieces.

Grandma died at an old age and it was if I were the keeper of the knowledge. 

The photo on the wall, now sepia, was put away, lost in the dark, until boxes and trunks were opened.  My mother stared at the stern ancestor, told me a little more.

When Mom died, there was not any family member who knew the other bits and pieces of this ancestor.

I was the Keeper.

When I am gone, so shall she.

Where my great grandfather (one of eleven) was born, left side, "Mrs. Nichols"

The Disappointment of the Letter X

Source: dlritter

The Letter X

X...Y...Z   and then we are done!!

X is for Xanthium

My grandmother Amy Lucy Peck was a brilliant woman.  She surrounded herself with poetry books, biographies, theology, and books on science.

My Grandmother Amy, about 1916

She became a pharmacist in 1916, a difficult career move for a woman of that era.  When Grandma died in 1972, she left me a number of these collections.  Most interesting were the books on science.

In Gray's School and Field Book of Botany by Asa Gray, she assiduously (!) made notes in the pages and pressed leaves. A rather vague comment was on the page for "Xanthium".  Xanthium--such a lovely word! I thought. 

Source: caf.wva,edu

The definition of this delightful Xanthium is:

  A coarse and vile weed, with stout and low branching stems.
  
  Grows in barnyards and waste manured ground, about 1 to 2 inches high

  ....hooked leaves and the fruit is a burr fully 1/2" long, with 2 beaks at the apex

  ....numerous prickles with sharp bristles.

What!! What?? The Xanthium is a burr plant? The kind that catches on socks, pants, every fabric, and resists removal?

I was severely disappointed by this.  I am sure you are as well.

Please share your experiences and/or thoughts of the hated Xanthium.

To my grandchild with love...

In her 84^th year, Amy Peck sensed that her time was growing short.  Winter would soon arrive and death with it.  While she still remained in her small house, Amy examined her imposing bookcase.  It held so much of her life.

The bottom shelf was weighted down with books from her college years when she first studied to become a medical doctor.  Circumstances forced her to become a pharmacist.  Amy brushed her hands along them.  Organic Chemistry.  Pharmaceutics.  Advanced Mathematics.  Biology and Anatomy.  Heavy tomes even then, but these books were as concrete now. 

The next row contained collections of sermons given by William Spurgeon, 1887.  These Amy inherited from her mother-in-law, Laura A. Peck.  Perhaps she treasured these books more than the first row?

The third shelf up was a collection of books given to her over the years from family.  Knowing that Amy was a voracious reader with a questing mind, family had chosen carefully from contemporary publications.

The final shelf was Amy’s favored book shelf.  It held the treasured books of poetry, her Bibles, journals of poetry she had written, photographs carefully placed in small albums…the representation of her life that was most accessible.

It was here that Amy Peck began the last part of her literary journey.  She pulled volume by volume out, one at a time.  Opening the musty cover with a pen poised over the fly-leaf, Amy considered the book.  Then she wrote. 

“To Susan  With love from, Grandma   Read and enjoy these words that meant so much to me”

Amy worked her way down the bookshelf with the help of her daughter Helen.  When the books were all assigned to people whom she felt believed would love them best, Amy felt was pleased; her journey was almost over.  

She had sent her beloved books forward, like precious gifts.

Will this happen in the future?  Will my grandchild hold one of my favorite books with her name “To….From….” written with love?  Will her child hold a grandmother’s treasured Treasure Island and appreciate that her grandma knew she would love each word?

Kinda hard to do with a Kindle.  

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