Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Three Things About Your Mother

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings:

1)  Sunday is Mother's Day in the USA, and usually a time for memories and gratitude to our special birth person.

2)  For this week's SNGF, tell us three things about your mother that are special and memorable  to you.

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

Here's mine:

My mother was Lela Nell (Johnston) Hork (1934-1992). She was born in Texas but came to California during the 1940s. She met my dad, William J Hork (1930-2007) at the Walnut Festival in 1951 and double-dated a week later. They married 19 April 1953 at Queen of All Saints Church in Concord. They had six children and I’m the oldest.

1. My mother was very artistic. She had a little studio in back of our house in Pittsburg where she painted still life. My sister has her easel. She created all kinds of crafts. One year she melted old 78 rpm records over large coffee cans so they melted into a bowl shape. She then spray-painted them with gold and silver paint. She crocheted rugs using pieces of old fabric. She made Christmas trees out of egg cartons, painted them gold and filled them with little trinkets. She sewed clothes for all her daughters and made doll clothes for the baby dolls and Barbies. She even found patterns for my trolls. She made arrangements for the holiday center piece and spent hours decorating the Christmas tree with tinsel. All of us kids have the creative touch, too!

2. My mother was a good cook. She had recipes, but was also very creative with what was on hand. We had some typical dishes of the 60s, those casseroles made from inexpensive things like tuna or hamburger. But she also made some really nice things like casserole round steak, Hungarian goulash, jumbo meatballs, and her cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving was especially delicious. She decorated our cakes to make

our birthdays special. Later, when I’d come visit, she often had a pot of soup on the stove, mostly made up of leftovers from the frig—they were always so delicious.

3. My mother was a homebody, though she did like going out on a date with my dad to their favorite restaurant, Cape Cod House in Lafayette, where they had steak and lobster. She liked to go up to Tahoe and see shows and gamble a little. But mostly, she stayed around the house, shopping a little at thrift stores. She appreciated old things that can have a new life with some paint or decoupage. She was a reader, too, loving biographies the best. And when at home, she listened to the radio. There would be one on in every room, either country western or a talk show station.

She left us too soon, and we miss her very much! Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.