Cousin's Fishing Camp

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 20  (May 17-23)
Prompt: Cousin Bait
#52ancestors

Cousins and bait go hand in hand when you are an Evans. Ira Lee Evans’ children and his brother, Bill’s children have spent many hours together fishing. Some of their earliest memories include the old home place on the Sunflower river fishing for catfish. Even the grandchildren fished with Grandpa Ira off the dock. Once they were grown, Uncle Bill’s family bought a fishing camp together on a slough in the Delta wildlife area in Mississippi and Uncle Ira’s family were always welcome. There was always plenty of things to do and fun to be had. 

Fishing was just a part of going to the camp. Everyone fished and then gathered in the evenings for story telling and visiting. Then there were the fish frys. The cousins knew the secret way to prepare the fish which involved soaking them in milk to have the absolute best flavor.  There were big pots for deep fat frying the fish and the hush puppies. That was just one of the reasons that reunions were epic when the cousins got together. 

Asa “Smoky” Evans became an avid fisherman when she came to the states. When she fished, she spit on the worms because she was sure that it attracted the fish.  She was willing to sit in a boat all day fishing even when the fish weren’t biting, but most of the time she had the most fish at the end of the day.  

We always claim that everything is bigger in Texas but were willing to concede the biggest mosquitoes to Mississippi after one trip to the fishing camp. Bob took Grandpa (Uncle Son), Noah and Bo to the camp one year during the Summer break. Uncle Max took Noah with him to check the trot lines. They paddled the boat away from the camp at a leisurely pace. When the sun started to sink, they came paddling back as fast as they could from around the bend. They were doing their best to outrun the swarm of mosquitoes that surrounded them.  It was worth it though to watch the preteenagers, Bo and Noah, learn how to fillet fish. 

Over the years, the fishing camp flooded several times. Each of the cousin’s families built a cabin which were eventually raised on stilts. In the last flood the water was high enough to go halfway up the walls even though the cabins were high enough to walk under them.  But that hasn’t stopped the memories. 

  

 

My Mother: Gwonda Jane McCarley

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 19 (May 10-16)
Prompt: Mother's Day
#52ancestors

 Gwonda Jane McCarley married Leeland Golightley when she was 22 years old.  Two years later she had me and became a Mother.  Over the next 8 years, she became a mother 5 more times. Well, really 3 more times considering two of those times she had twins. Over the next years, she became a grandmother and a great grandmother. I want to celebrate her life in pictures.

 

#52Ancestors: Loss

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 12  (Mar 22-28)
Prompt: Loss
#52ancestors

It has been awhile since I posted anything. Life and work displaced genealogy for awhile.  Yesterday I presented a program at the TXGenWeb Virtual Seminar and the seminar has inspired me to take my time back and start writing again. I want to go back and write about all the prompts that I've missed so I'm going to add some empty posts to keep them in order.  I'm going to be patient with me as I get caught up and continue on. I hope you will be too.

The prompt for March 22-28th was Loss and I am feeling the loss right now of time spent in different ways.  I have been doing genealogy research for over 40 years off and on. In the beginning it was often only a couple of times a year when I had time to travel to the downtown library in Dallas or time to write a few letters to courthouses in far away places.  Now those places don't seem so far away when I can jump on the computer at 10 o'clock at night and search the street view of Google or find an index of courthouse records available or search one of the big database websites, like ancestry.com, familysearch.com, or the USGenWeb Project. 

While I'm feeling the loss of time over the last few months due to a reorganization at work and the knowledge that in the Fall I will no longer be working on the El Centro campus, I am thinking of the loss that our ancesters must have felt when they immigrated or moved from one place to another.  They didn't have email to keep in contact with friends and family that were left behind. Letters didn't take 3 or 4 days to arrive. Sometimes letters traveled months to reach their destination.  Even close family eventually lost contact.  Now we keep in contact with email, FaceBook, Tumbler, Instagram, and other social media. 

 One of the ways that I keep in contact and try to bridge the gap between the past and the present is with this blog. That may be one of the reasons that I feel a sense of loss for not posting over the last few months.  Perhaps I'll do better in the future, but either way I plan to be patient with myself.