Reminiscing
Every year, in the tradition my grandparents started, the Byer family gathers to celebrate the Christmas season together, and to keep my grandparents’ dream alive. It was their desire that their children wouldn’t drift apart after they were gone. The family has done their very best to honor their wish, and the Byer Family Christmas Party is a big part of honoring that wish. Over the years, we have all worked together or split the hosting into families, but the party has always been held. Santa Clause has shown up to talk to the kids, bags of treats for the little ones were always given out, and the food…the best in the world. But, the most important part of these wonderful gatherings is the family. Re-connecting with all of them and hearing all about what is going on in their lives…that’s what it’s all about…that’s the dream that our grandparents had for us. The connection to family.
This year I had a chance to hear about how well Autumn Beadle is doing in school, and her plans to graduate at semester in her senior year, and then it’s on to Nursing School for her. I got to see how much she cares for her grandma, my Aunt Virginia. I got to touch base with Aunt Dixie, Uncle Jim, and their family. We used to see them at the mall a lot, but in recent years that hasn’t worked out so well. I ran into Michael and Deena McDaniels on Black Friday, and we laughed about our shopping trials tonight. I had seen Missy and Mindy Grosvenor at 
the movies on Thursday, and we had a chance tonight to discuss how much we liked “A Christmas Candle” tonight, as well as how much they like taking care of their niece, Piper and sometimes her brother and sister, Parker and Payton. Cousins, Clyde and Susie Young spend much of their winter months in Arizona these days, but they were able to get home for the holidays and the party.
Anthony McDaniels showed up in a suit, adding a special touch of class to our party, while Shai Royce and Christina Masterson dressed up as twins, even though they are not. Aunt Bonnie’s little grandson, Noah spent the latter part of the evening trying to give her a bunny tail. Aunt Sandy has been a mainstay for information for some of the great stories I have been able to relay about the Byer Family, and has also spent several afternoons with my mom this year at the Senior Center, which my mom has cherished and fully enjoyed. The party has brought Elmer Johnson back into our lives after a time of not being able to be there, and since he and I have connected on Facebook too, we have grown to be even better friends than we were as kids. Aunt Jeanette is doing well, and always brings a smile to my face with her awesome laugh. Corrie and Kevin Petersen and their boys Christopher and Josh have been busily planning for Chris to start college in Sheridan next year and Josh to get his driver’s license. Aunt Evelyn and Uncle 
George were not able to join us this year, but their granddaughter, Rachelle French took lots of pictures for them so they would not feel left out.
This year’s highlight, however, had to be the idea someone had to open up bags of cotton balls for the little kids to play with. It turned into a cotton ball/snow ball fight, and everyone had a wonderful time. Xander, Zack, Isaac, and Aleesia Spethman; Kya and Noah Hamilton; Logan and Lea Orr; Mateo Steiner and Dera Elvidge; Noah Williams; Parker, Payton, and Piper Dobson; Raelynn, Matthew, and Audrianna Masterson all had a wonderful time picking up, loading up on, and throwing those cotton balls. I don’t know who thought of it, but it was a great idea.
When a young wife moves half way across the country from her childhood home, she can get to a point where she really misses her family, especially her parents. That was the case for my mom when she married my dad and they moved from Casper, Wyoming to Superior, Wisconsin. While mom was happy in her new life and ecstatically happy with her new husband, she was nevertheless, a daughter far away from her parents. Soon after their marriage, mom became pregnant with my sister, Cheryl. Being a young wife and soon-to-be mother, and being far away from your mom can be very hard, and even a little scary, because as a woman is about to give birth, having her mother nearby is not a bad thing.
Grandma and Grandpa made several trips to Wisconsin in the five years my family lived there, and we were always very happy to see them and very sorry to see them go. The loneliness that always followed their home going was really tough, especially on my mom. 
Of course, like most families, daily life soon fell into place, and she got too busy to dwell on that loneliness too much. With two little girls to take care of she was pretty busy. Still, I’m sure that her family and especially her parents were never far from her thoughts though, because that is only natural.
The trips that Grandma and Grandpa made to visit were wonderful though. Mom and Dad showed them all the sights in the area. Superior, and the whole Lake Superior area is quite beautiful, and I don’t know if my grandparents had been there before my mom and dad move back there, so it was quite likely a very special treat to take those great drives, and be able to just relax and enjoy the view. When you have someone to show you the sights, you don’t have to worry about getting lost, traffic, or anything like that. You can just look, and that was what Grandma and Grandpa got to do. Knowing them like I did, I know that those touring drives were treasured times for them. They always liked the outdoors, and to see that whole region, which is quite different from Wyoming 
was probably a thrill, for sure.
After five years, my family would move back to Casper, Wyoming, where most of us would spend the rest of, or at least the majority of the rest of our lives. My mom was happy to be back here…near her siblings and her parents. She had missed them very much. Their house had always had a bustle of activity in it, and she missed that a lot. Still, now she also missed the family in Wisconsin and the beauty of the area. There is never really any way to have it all, I guess, so you just have to make due where you find yourself, and deal with the feelings of missing the things you left behind you.
All too often, in this day and age, we don’t think about the modern conveniences that we have. Things like electricity, indoor plumbing, gas (both for cars and houses), cars, television, and telephone are the normal everyday items we count on, but think very little about.
When you consider that not so very many years ago, people had to either get out of bed, practically get dressed, and go outside…even in the bitter cold of winter, to go to the outhouse, you know the outdoor toilet which was a little building out back of the house, or have a pot in the bedroom to use, and then emptied in the morning. Neither choice was perfect, but I suppose the pot in the house would have been better than going outside in the bitter cold of winter. These days we abhor the thought of stopping at a rest stop on a trip and finding out that all it has is an outhouse, because we expect that every place has modern indoor plumbing, whether it is a fact or not.
In times past, people went to bed and got up with the sun, because it was too expensive to light candles or lanterns. The work had to be done by daylight anyway, so they might just as well be up at dawn. of course, most teenagers these days consider anything before noon to be pure torture, and might even whine a little if they have to be up before that hour. Still, there wasn’t really any shift work back then, and families were together in the evening, unless the father was working in another state or town.
Letters were used to communicate, and unfortunately that often meant that if your loved ones didn’t live in the same place you did, you might hear of their passing months after the fact. It took a long time for letters to arrive, especially if they were coming from back east. Today, we can inform people of events that happen in our lives, almost the second they happen. In fact, it’s almost like they are there with you, and if it is an event you know about ahead of time, you can Skype with them, and they can watch it happen. Sometimes, even with all of our modern conveniences, we still think life is really hard, but if we think back to days gone by, we will know that we really have no idea what a hard life is.
I found a picture among my Uncle Bill’s family history books, of my dad, Allen Spencer in a water fight with a friend named Ordie at Pattison Park, in Wisconsin, which is just 15 miles east of Holyoke, Minnesota, where the family was living at the time. I could just hear my dad’s laugh as he pummeled his friend with water. Dad had such a great laugh, and he took great pleasure in getting the best of people…in a friendly way, of course. I remember, as a kid, my dad and I used to have sparring matches. Somehow I had it in my head that I could beat him, if I really tried. Our sparring matches weren’t real, of course, but rather a matter of blocking the other persons attempts to pat their opponents face. Dad always won, and he always laughed all the way through our match. I was like a kid with an adult holding onto my head, while I tried to swing and couldn’t hit anything. Dad never held my head, but he almost always blocked my attempts to pat his face. It wasn’t really the sparring matches that drew me back into them, but rather my dad’s laugh. It amused him so 
much, he laughed in pure delight.
Some memories are so vivid that it’s almost as if you can hear the person. Dad’s voice, the way he teased his girls, his laugh, dancing with him on New Year’s Eve, the swatting game he always played with the grandkids from his chair in the kitchen as they tried in vain to run past him before he could swat them, and the whisker rubs he used to give us…laughing all the while. So many great memories of the wonderful dad that God blessed me with. He could even turn a moment when we were really angry or had been fighting with one of our sisters, into a laughing matter, because it was really hard to keep from laughing when he was laughing. I remember really trying a few times though. We would come to him tattling on whichever sister had so wrongly offended us, and he would imitate our whining…while we tried to keep a straight face. Before you knew it, we were both laughing, and the sister incident was forgotten. That was my dad…always the peacemaker.
When a loved one has gone to Heaven, you just never know what things will bring a memory of them that engulfs you. Sometimes, the sadness is overwhelming, and sometimes the memory brings a smile to your face. Either way, it is always unexpected and you are completely unprepared for it. My dad passed away 6 years ago today, and the memories continue to bring both tears and smiles. My mind shows me video clips of those moments in time, and the happiness we all shared with our dad. I see his smile. I remember his teasing. I hear his words of wisdom. And yes, I hear Dad’s laugh. These memories keep him in my heart until we see each other again in Heaven. I love you Dad!!
When my nephew, Barry was a little boy, I used to get such a kick out of watching him open presents. Whether it was his birthday or Christmas made no difference, because Barry got excited!! I know, most kids do, but the looks on Barry’s face were just classic, and when his eyes lit up with pure excitement, it was impossible not to smile. For Barry, the best gifts were always trucks, but that didn’t mean that all the rest weren’t super cool too. I suppose that he initially thought that gifts were going to happen every couple of weeks, since his birthday is just two weeks before Christmas. For a little kid, that second dose of presents in such a short time could make it seem like this was going to be the new normal.
Of course, as time went by, Barry understood how it all worked, but he still got as excited as any other kid when his special day came along, or when Christmas finally arrived. The one thing he decided that he didn’t like too much was having that birthday so close to Christmas. That put all the excitement of receiving gifts in one short little time frame and then left a whole year until he got gifts again. In a way, that was a disappointment to the rest of us too, because we didn’t get to see how excited he got for a whole year either.
I can’t say that Barry still gets so excited about gifts on 
his birthday or Christmas, after all, he is a grown man now. Maybe he just holds that excitement inside…like we all do at one time or another. And he doesn’t have that little baby face anymore or his little boys ways, and in many ways, I miss both of those things sometimes, because like all kids, Barry grew up too fast. He has grown into a wonderful man, who is always there to lend a helping hand. He is someone you can always count on when you need something done. He still likes his trucks and other toys, but these days they are just bigger and more expensive. Today is Barry’s birthday. Happy birthday Barry!! Have a great day, and try to contain your excitement, ok!! We love you!!
For those of us who have worn glasses, it is easy to look back at those old pictures with those old funky glasses and think to ourselves, “What was I thinking when I picked those out??” It doesn’t matter how old we are now, the glasses we picked out a few years ago, are totally outdated by the time we think to look back on the pictures taken with them on. I know that styles change, and at the time we got the glasses, they were probably very much in style, but years later, we can only laugh at how funny they looked on us.
When we look back on the really old pictures, like when our parents and grandparents were young, we have the opportunity to have a pretty good laugh at their expense, because those glasses were really old fashioned. Of course, we do need to be a little bit careful, because just remember that our children and grandchildren will someday be looking at our old pictures with those funky glasses, and having a good laugh at our expense. I suppose we just have to be good natured about it, because it is a fact of life that we will all be considered old fashioned at some point in our lives.
When I was a kid in 4th grade, I got my first pair of glasses. While they were not the cat eye type, they were a royal blue color. I thought they were so cool at the time, but imagine how much they clashed with a lot of the clothes I wore. It didn’t matter to me, they were the coolest glasses ever in my 9 year old mind. I think my mom even tried to talk me into something else, but I would have none of it. I wore those glasses much longer than I would have liked, but you can’t just switch back and forth, especially as a little kid. 
Buying several pairs of glasses for a kid who might just as easily lose them, simply makes no sense.
Then, there was my let’s make those glasses as small as you can stage…never mind the fact that they were black, so you weren’t hiding the glasses at all. I really wanted contact lenses by that time, but my eye doctor didn’t think they would work for me. They probably would have, because they did just a few years later, but that was how it went. So there I was wearing another funky pair of glasses for far longer than I wanted to, and more often than not, removing them before any pictures could be taken.
Anytime you read through a well written family history book, you are bound to find things out about your family members that you never knew…even if you knew them all your life. The big thing is, I guess, that sometimes when things are in the past, they are viewed as ancient history. We all do things when we are young that we don’t continue into adulthood. I knew many things about my Aunt Ruth through the years. She loved animals, gardening, and the mountains of Washington. She was an artist both in paintings and music. She painted a picture of herself that I would have thought was painted by a professional artist…along with other paintings. She could play any instrument that she picked up, as if she had been playing it all her life. She knew things about the weather that surprised me as a child…like the time they were at our house. Aunt Ruth suddenly jumped up and looked out the window. She said there is a tornado somewhere. I thought she saw something, but it was the way the wind suddenly stopped where we were that caused her to think that. I heard later that a small twister was reported on Casper Mountain. I never forgot that she had somehow known.
As I said, I knew Aunt Ruth loved animals, and I had seen pictures of her with several horses. I could tell that she was a pretty good horsewoman. I never had very much to do with horses, so seeing her seated firmly on her horse as he reared up, struck me as an amazing feat. And I knew that the family owned horses, and all the kids, my Aunt Laura, my Uncle Bill, my dad, and Aunt Ruth, road regularly, but never was there any mention of racing except in what I read today. Uncle Bill was describing the scene of one of the pictures he had put in the book, and he said that the horse was Aunt Ruth’s race horse, which she did ride in some races. He doesn’t specify how she did in the races she ran, but if it is like pretty much anything else 
Aunt Ruth did, she was probably pretty good at it.
I had to wonder why I had never heard about her racing before, and if I was the only one in the family who didn’t know about it? Why was it that Aunt Ruth never talked about racing? I also wondered if it was something that she thought about doing professionally as a young girl, or if it was always just something she did to pass the time and to test her horse. If no one else in the family knew about her racing either, I suppose that it is something that will drift into the unknown past…except for that one little mention of it in Uncle Bill’s family history books.
When I think of my niece, Jessi, I think of someone who loves to laugh. She teases those around her in a good natured way, and gets everyone laughing. She brings joy and happiness right into the room with her when she walks in. It doesn’t matter who is in the room, she finds some way to joke around with them or tease them in some way. I guess that simply makes her part of this family, because with us, teasing is a way of life. I’m quite sure that joy and laughter was a big part of what her husband, Jason first noticed in her. A pretty girl with a bright smile on her face, and joy in her heart…yep, I’ll bet that it made her very hard to resist.
Joy and laughter aren’t the only things of interest to Jessi. She is a great fashionista too…always has been. She enjoys dressing up and being casual too. Jessi has always had her own kind of style. In fact, when she was a little girl, she knew exactly what style she liked. She has always liked boots. She knows how to make them look great and one particular day, she decided that her grandpa’s boots were in perfect style…I think she was right…don’t you?
All kidding aside, Jessi is a wonderful person, who gives of her time and talents whenever there is a need. She is the assistant youth pastor at our church, she helps her grandmothers whenever they need it. She is quick to volunteer in so many 
areas. She began working in a law office at the age of 17, and has been doing that work ever since, and she is exceptional at it. She is an advocate for the Casper area, and the local library. She pushes for people to buy local, and support our local community. She works tirelessly to drum up support for causes that benefit our local economy and lifestyle. That can be a thankless job, but she does it well, and our community has benefitted much from her efforts. Yes, she was a goofy little kid, and was always kidding around, which is always fun, but I am very proud of the woman she has become. Today is Jessi’s birthday. Happy birthday Jessi!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
While my dad was in England fighting in World War II, his brother and sisters were working in the shipyards helping with the war effort there. On their days off, the workers at the shipyards liked to go and picnic in the area parks or a friends cabin. There was usually a group of young men and women that would go on these picnics, and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill were among them. In an effort to make my dad feel like he was a part of things back home, they would send him pictures of the things that were going on with them back home. Dad enjoyed the pictures from home immensely, but that didn’t stop him from being the typical big brother.
While Dad was in England, letters from home were like a lifeline. Those men were lonely and homesick. They depended on those letters from family and friends to help them get 
through that time of uncertainty and the ugliness of war. I have been reading his letters home for some time now, and while some of the letters reveal the loneliness that can only be seen if you read between the lines, others are more about having a little fun teasing his siblings, and especially his little sister, Ruth. Of course, you’ll have to admit, that she really walked right into it, but like any 18 year old girl, she probably didn’t realize what would come back to her.
Aunt Ruth wrote a letter to my dad, her brother, Allen, told him a little bit about this boy named Selmer that she obviously liked, and included a picture of Selmer kissing her. Well, my dad couldn’t let that one slide. This was his little sister, and she was growing up too fast for his liking. And who was this guy kissing her anyway? Dad remarked on how unusual the guy’s name was, and teased his sister about whether the guy was kissing her or looking at her locket, pretty much settling on the former thought. He teased her about the fact that she had apparently been telling him that she didn’t have any boyfriends, but clearly she did. And then, out came the big brother in my dad, when he told his little sister that this guy had “all the earmarks of a wolf” as far as he could see.
Now, all the rest of the teasing aside, I had to laugh at that part of the letter. A wolf!! I know that many people wouldn’t really understand the significance of that remark, but we…in this family…totally get it. It was almost as if my dad was predicting the future. Did Aunt Ruth marry Selmer? No, she didn’t! The prediction that my dad spoke, without realizing it, had more to do with the word than the man. You see, when my Aunt Ruth did get married, it was to a man named Lester (Jim) Wolfe!! So, while Selmer didn’t turn out to be the wolf my dad predicted, I guess my Uncle Jim Wolfe did, and that wolf literally swept my Aunt Ruth off her feet.
It seems that with any gathering you have with a bunch of people, at some point, the men gather in their group and the women in theirs. That way the men can talk cars, crops, trains, or whatever else men find to talk about, that women would find quite boring. The men would be just as bored with girl talk, so it is really to everyone’s advantage. There is still one little problem though…the kids. You would think that they would just go play, thereby keeping themselves occupied and out of everybody’s hair, but just like the younger sibling, these kids, as often as not, tend to want to be right in the middle of the conversation…with the adults. It isn’t that these men are necessarily discussing something that the children shouldn’t be hearing, but often just that it is a little bit above their heads, and most kids tend to ask a multitude of questions.
Quite likely the men tried to get this little boy to go play, but then he either went crying to his mom or he just got into mischief and so she sent him to sit with the men. It was probably what he wanted to do anyway. Hanging with the little kids…or especially the women…would be a horrible thing to have to do. I suppose he figured that it was worth the risk of getting a spanking to have his mother send him to sit with the men…especially since his dad would not be too likely to go against what his mother said, when she said that he was to watch him.
I also noticed that the men were not looking at him like they were ready to “kill” either, so my guess would be that he figured he had better behave himself so he could stay there. A little boy being as quiet as a church mouse is less likely to get into trouble in a place he can’t just leave either, because now that his mother told his dad to keep an eye on him, he has to stay put. That could get ugly if he caused problems. So my guess is that he just sat quietly and listened to the guy things the men were talking about, and probably learned a few things, if he paid close attention.
