Getting to Know You:What's My Line?

[WaterWitchin]

So we're starting up a new thread. It's been requested a couple or more times just recently. The title is different than the old ones, and in the Off Topic Forum. Because you can talk about anything, even orchids, but there are better placed on the other threads.

This one's to spiel away about yourself. What you do, what you like, your background, the kind of stories about work, reflection, growing up, that make you how you are.

I'm personally an individual who these days goes to bed early, because I get up before the sun rises. Perhaps I'll share the whys of that soon. Meanwhile, I'm gonna cheat and grab some stuff from another post I did not so long ago. Because I really need to eat and go to bed. But it is a good start into who I am...

When I was born we lived with my paternal grandparents until I was five. My parents both worked long hours, so almost all my time was spent with grandma. This was back in the days where one lived with extended family, all food was grown and canned or stored. All meat was butchered by two of grandma’s brothers (one pigs, one beef). We had our own chickens, geese, and fished during the summer.

We made our own cheese, yogurt, kefir, butter, etc. (another of grandma’s brothers did dairy cows). We had fruit trees, a vineyard, etc, and made our own sauerkraut (cabbage and turnip), wine, beer, whiskey, and a passed down secret recipe from the old country for catsup with forty ingredients. The list goes on. I’m sure you get the drift by now. We didn’t go to a grocery store for anything other than salt, flour, baking soda and powder, cinnamon, vanilla, etc.

My grandma spent her “spare” time growing any and every type of flower or plant she could get her hands on. She passed on her “recipe for fertilizer” to me (really probiotics) and I started assisted in making it when I was old enough to walk. It was a base mix, then when necessary we would add something else to the soil depending on what we were growing… like fish heads and egg shells and matches when we planted tomatoes. I’ve rarely bought fertilizer unless it was a convenience thing.

[early]

Thanks to who ever suggested doing this. I was born a month after Pearl Harbor on a farm in the exact center of "Missourah" as the old timers always called it. I went to a one room country school for 8 yrs, walked 3 miles each way. Even when young, my brother and I each milked a cow before and after school.

My father was a jack of all trades, dirt poor but always put food on the table. worked in the wheat fields of KS. on army base near by during the war and for weeks and months, left the farm even worked in a silver mine in Nevada, leaving my mother and two brothers to run the farm

When I was early teen, I worked in the hay field, loading bales as well as the other farm kids, only girl tho that did that kid of work. We raised broiler chickens, 49,000 per year, 2 barns, new chicks every six weeks. Lots of work. I could carry 50 lbs of feed. on my shoulder, up three stories.
It was a good training to have hard work as an ethic, passed on to me and I to my two daughters.

My paternal grandfather, Roe Gardner, had a large farm but lost it during the depression. It was sold on the court house steps for taxes. When I was three my father built them a small house across the road from our home.

My grandparents were my biggest influence in my life. They always had a big garden . I spent hours with them raising all the food we grew, and like WaterWitchin, grandma taught me to can all their food, make cabbage sauerkraut and to make
yeast bread, to sew and crochet. Grandpa taught me to love the land and let me ride one of his work team horses when I was about 4.

When I came home from school, I would run to their little home, go to a 5 gallon tin, reach in and pull out two buns, what we would call a roll today, and eat them, chattering away with grandma. If grandpa was down by the corn cob tiny building, I would then run to see what he was doing. He had a grinding stone, and often he would be there, sharping his ax. They were in their 60s when I was born. He never drove a tractor or car, depending on family to take them 10 miles away to town for supplies. They raise 2 grandkids of two daughters, who had move to Kansas City.

Grandma was 15 when they wed, and nine children but only raised six of them, three dying of whooping cough and diphtheria.

In the early 1900s, she was trained by a doctor to be a midwife and to go with him in his buggy to make house calls all over the area.

I left the farm to go to nursing school and was RN, when I was 20. I was so happy to leave the farm and explore the world. I married the next year, moved to Los Angles and had two daughters. I raised my daughters alone, working full time and supporting them after then were wee ones. I worked many years as an ICU and other critical nurse at the UCLA Hospital.

[WaterWitchin]

I finally got around to viewing the older "Orchid Sunday" and "Orchid Saturday" threads that were being discussed. I see they're of a different flavor than this one I created. I'll leave this here, and start another here (Off Topic section) that's more in line with the flavor of the old "Orchid Sunday" threads.

And I agree with Mountaineer, 'tis better to start a new one rather than dredge up one that's four or five years old. That just confuses us old folks...

[Connie Star]

I have a very different background than the 2 prior posters. I grew up very middle class in a suburb of New York City. My father was an engineer, my mother a teacher. It was a given that I would go to college, as had my mother and both of my grandmothers. I eventually went to grad school and then medical school. I'm told that "I" accomplished a lot, but really my circumstances dictated that. I've met plenty of people who were smarter than me but did not have the same advantages. I'm now retired, live with my husband of almost 50 years and have 2 grown sons. One of my graduate degrees was in botany (although in the lab) and I always wanted to grow orchids which I finally had time to start about 10 years ago.

[Ray]

I was born in upstate NY (Rome) to an engineer father and teacher mother. My dad worked for the FAA and was transferred to the tech center at the Atlantic City Airport, so during Christmas break of 1st grade, I moved to Asbury Park NJ and lived with my grandmother for 3 months, before ending up in south Jersey. I lived about 3 blocks from Waldor Orchids, but knew nothing of that then.

When I was 10, my father was transferred to the US embassy in London, so off to England I went. My two-hour school bus ride took me past Black & Flory, but again...What's an orchid???

Moved back to NJ 3 years later, then to DC 3 months after that, where I went to Jr & Sr. High. I was just a few miles from Kensington Orchids, but who knew or cared?

College in Atlanta, where I obtained degrees in ceramic engineering and ceramic science. Was given my first orchid by the grower at the public greenhouses in Piedmont Park (now ABG).

I worked product and process development for Corning in Louisville KY before hopping over to the chemical industry for the rest of my career. That consisted of process engineering, technical support, technical sales, marketing, sales and technical management (my territory was North-, Central- & South America, Japan and China, with occasional trips to Australia and Europe - corp HQ was Paris), quality management, manager of business process analysis and reengineering, then demand management, director of corporate forecasting, the global director of logistics, customer service and purchasing.

20 years before retiring, I started First Rays...

After 28 years in PA, I retired to the beach in southeastern NC (residence #19) in Dec 2016, where I like to boat and fish.

[WaterWitchin]

I was born in Wamego, Kansas. Just about the opposite of NY. My dad followed in the father to son line of work for five generations back. GGGgrandpa was a saddle and harness maker, and GGgrandpa joined in, becoming Talbott & Son Saddlery. Then GGgrandpa and Gpa also got into the windmill business, and it was Talbott & Son Saddlery and Windmill. Then Gpa and my dad's dad became Talbott & Son Plumbing & Windmills. By the time it was my dad's turn, it was Talbott & Son Plumbing Heating and Air. I am the end of the line for that particular Talbott line.

My mom's family GG grandparents came over from Germany and finally settled in the middle of nowhere farm ground about 50 miles northwest of Topeka, KS. Ggrandma was a German housewife, her husband a farmer. Couldn't speak a word of English. Mom's grandma became a schoolteacher, Mom's mom a schoolteacher, Mom and her sister schoolteachers.

None of them traveled, other than vacations, outside the US. Other than Dad, who joined the Navy at age 15-1/2, and a maternal brother who was a Lt Colonel in the ??? and lived in Okinawa for most of his life.

That's about all to report for today.

[Ray]

Ancestry...

My father’s ancestors hit North America in the late 1600’s from Holland. In the late 1800’s, they added some native blood.

My mother’s family emigrated from the Ukraine at the start of WWI and homesteaded land in Saskatchewan Canada.

My folks met while my dad was installing Dew Line towers...

[Dollythehun]

And then....?

[camille1585]

I love reading about your lives! Sometimes I wish I was born earlier, I've always liked the idea of being self sufficient and growing/canning/preparing most of your food, even if it was probably not a really easy life. Also interesting to see how many people have European ancestors

I've moved around a bit in my not so long life. My parents are French (dad a telecoms engineer, mom was a housewife then), and emigrated to the US (Connecticut) several years before my birth. I spent my early childhood there until we moved to northern VA when I was in 4th grade. My sister and I would get shipped to France every summer to spend the 2 months with our grandparents, who lived in a tiny village in the counrtyside not far from Lyon. My grandpa was always busy with one project or another, and I was always tagging along behind him. I got my love of plants and gardening from him, he loved his vegetable garden!

The summer before 9th grade my parents divorced, and my mother took my sister and I back to France. It was rough at first, and although I could speak French, my level of reading/writing elementary school level... We were put in an international school where we had intensive french lessons to catch up. It was also hard because the US curriculum, particularily in math and physics, is 1-2 years behind the French one. Even my English litt class was far more advanced. I cried when I got my first essay back and saw that I had the equivalent of an F, which hurt all the more since I had been an honor roll student in the US.

I stayed in France through high school and first 3 years of college (horticulture, and this is where my love affair with orchids started), and then moved to the Netherlands to continue my studies. A Msc, PhD, and 12 years later, I'm still living in the Netherlands and working in R&D for an indoor farming company, and speak Dutch rather decently.

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by Ray

Ancestry...

My father’s ancestors hit North America in the late 1600’s from Holland. In the late 1800’s, they added some native blood.

My mother’s family emigrated from the Ukraine at the start of WWI and homesteaded land in Saskatchewan Canada.

My folks met while my dad was installing Dew Line towers...

Holland, Ukraine, and some Native American. What an interesting mix! My maternal side was total German ancestry. My dad's was half English (paternal side) and half German (maternal side). And of course, a bit of Native American here and there.

---------- Post added at 08:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:35 AM ----------

Originally Posted by camille1585

...my mother took my sister and I back to France. It was rough at first, and although I could speak French, my level of reading/writing elementary school level... We were put in an international school where we had intensive french lessons to catch up. It was also hard because the US curriculum, particularily in math and physics, is 1-2 years behind the French one. Even my English litt class was far more advanced. I cried when I got my first essay back and saw that I had the equivalent of an F, which hurt all the more since I had been an honor roll student in the US. ...

My grandson just started all day kindergarten this year. He's in a magnet school, and it's a French immersion. My daughter and husband speak a bit of French, but just enough to communicate. He was raised just on the US english language. I was concerned, as they speak no English, period, at the school. Unless they choose to at recess.

After half a year, I'm astounded. He speaks French fairly fluently! What an excellent choice his parents made. I always wanted to be fluent in Spanish, but never achieved it. I lived in Puerto Rico for a couple of years in my late teens, and over the years have forgotten almost everything. Don't use it, ya lose it.

I recently discovered when they reach 9th grade, they learn a second language. The choices are Mandarin, Spanish, and one other (can't recall). Right now he's thinking Mandarin would be cool.

The US is so behind the curve when it comes to learning other languages. I am beyond pleased he's been given the opportunity to expand his horizons at such a young age. Wish I'd had that opportunity sixty years ago.