Category Archives: Family

Happy 11th Anniversary, Sam & Emily

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Sam and Emily’s wedding was 11 years ago now. That gives me just a little pause. I think I was going to post some images for their 10th anniversary last year, but forgot. Then again, why the overemphasis on multiples of 5 or 10?

Eleven’s a nice prime number. According to people who make such lists, the 11th anniversary is “traditionally” the steel anniversary. Sure, why not?

Who decided that? I don’t feel like looking into the question, but I suspect the notion of various gifts for various anniversaries evolved over the years, and was put into modern form by Victorians (for sentimental reasons) and early 20th-century ad men (for commercial reasons). The usual suspects, in other words.

Be that as it may, here’s an image of many members of the family as we were then. And Jesus.

Also, all of the grandchildren of Sam and Jo Ann Stribling.

The first image has been on the wall in Lilly’s room, or at least the room she uses when she’s home, for some years. The second one’s been on our refrigerator for years.

Texas Winter ’19

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My recent trip to wintertime Texas took me to Dallas and Fort Worth, San Antonio, and a few other burgs. February is winter in Texas, but it’s a pale moon of a winter compared with where I live. During the trip, temps varied but didn’t drop below freezing, and we experienced rain but no ice or snow.

I spent the weekdays working, but I also visited my brothers, one nephew and his family, one nephew by himself and a friend I’ve known for 45 years now.

I made it to a few new places and a few familiar old places. No matter how often you go somewhere, there are always new places, and no matter how familiar an old place is, there are always new aspects.

One new place was the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which I’ve had a mind to see since we went to Wrightwood 659 in December. Tadao Ando designed both Wrightwood and the Modern, which is easy to visit from Dallas, as Jay and I did: just pop on over on I-30.

While gadding around in greater DFW, we also saw the Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple and the Cambodian Buddhist Temple of Dallas, whose neighbors in the southwest of the city are the likes of Mission Foods, Standard Meat, Cartamundi USA and Old Dominion Freight Line.

In San Antonio, we had the benefit of a free evening admission to the McNay Art Museum — an example of a familiar place offering some new things to see. Later, while on the road between San Antonio and Dallas, we stopped by the Hays County Courthouse in San Marcos and the San Marcos City Cemetery, whose burials go back to the 1870s.

Had some good meals along the way too. In San Antonio, a dinner at one of the Paesanos locations, a local Italian restaurant with roots in the 1968 world’s fair. Good pork shank and gnocchi. In Waco, a lunch at a joint that goes even further back: the curiously named Health Camp, in business, as the exterior says, since 1949. Good burger and shake.

In Dallas, on the day I flew in, I enjoyed sausage and homemade sauerkraut and Texas beer and other good things at my nephew Sam’s house, on the occasion of his 36th birthday. Naturally there was birthday cake too.

Reminded me of the morning, late in my college career, when Jay called me to tell me that Sam had been born. Been an uncle ever since.

Ann at 16

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After the deep freeze at the end of January, we had some warmer days — above freezing, quite a relief — and more recently just ordinary winter cold. The sort of persistent chill that makes February both the shortest and the longest month.

On Saturday, Ann had friends over for her 16th birthday.

She requested a birthday pie. Chocolate and peanut butter, made by a local grocery store that does fine pies.

Which reminds me of the question — something I’ve wondered about occasionally — why cake? Why not birthday pie? I suppose since cakes don’t need refrigeration, they trumped pies in pre-refrigeration days.

But why cakes at all? Know who I suspect of inventing the custom? Victorians, of course.

I’m not sure how reliable this source is, but it implies that while birthday cake had antecedents in German lands before the 19th century, the Victorian middle class made it the popular custom we know today. Like the Christmas tree.

In fact, birthday celebrations themselves, especially children’s birthdays, became popular in their modern form during the mid-19th century. Can’t say I’m surprised.

Cow Ride at the Mall

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Australia Day has come and gone. Oz is reportedly suffering a viciously hot summer this year. Adelaide, a pleasant place in my recollection, seems to be getting hit especially hard.

Meanwhile, here in North America, or at least my part of it, after being a slacker for most of December and part of January, winter is hitting hard. Dead ahead, according to the NWS on Sunday evening:

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM CST MONDAY… Heavy snow and blowing snow tonight with freezing drizzle and blowing snow likely at times Monday. Snow rates overnight into early morning are likely to reach up to an inch per hour at times. This will result in very low visibilities and rapid snow accumulations into the early morning commute. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 7 inches and ice accumulations of a light glaze expected.

This after subzero temps on Friday, and ahead of temps as low as minus 20 by Tuesday (Fahrenheit, the only scale that’s made for humans). Still, on Saturday things had warmed up to low double-digits, so we were out for a while. The three of us and a friend of Ann’s, on the occasion, not quite precisely, of Ann’s birthday. Nice to get out of the house.

We ate at Gabuttø Burger at Ann’s request. Since I discovered the place at the Mitsuwa food court, the Japanese burgerie has moved into a small strip center on a busy street in Rolling Meadows and seems to be doing well there. We visit a few times a year.

Then to a northwest suburban mall. Not the biggest one, the 2.1 million-square-foot Woodfield, but a smaller one. The one we visited isn’t a dying mall, but it has lost an anchor or two, along with some of its inline stores.

Still, the mall is doing what it can. It now sports a number of places to take children and entertain them, for instance. Not playplaces in the middle of the mall, but small entertainment venues that used to be more conventional retail.

Including a place where you can rent animal-ride scooters for a few minutes. She’s not in the main demographic, but according to Ann, it was a birthday thing to do, so she and her friend spent 10 minutes tooling around the mall.

She picked a cow. Looked like she had a jolly time of it.

Christmas &c

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Only a few days after Christmas, I started seeing Christmas trees chucked out by the curb, as I do every year. And as I do every year, I think that’s too soon. Done right, the run up to the holidays should begin around December 21 and not peter out until after January 6. Our tree’s still up. So are the outdoor lights.

We opened our presents on the 21st this year. The next day, Yuriko and Lilly were off to Japan, returning on the 3rd.

For Ann and I, the holidays were mostly quiet and relaxing. Food, reading, electronic entertainment, as usual. One day Ann even persuaded me to watch Elf with her, which I’d never seen, but which she’s seen a number of times with her sister. It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

The weather even cooperated for the most part. Some recent days have been cold, a handful warmish for this time of the year, but no polar vortex events have struck. Some rain, making back yard mud for the dog to investigate. A little snow, but it all melted after a few days.

Made it into the city a few times, including on Boxing Day. Wandered around looking at downtown decorations. The holiday windows at the former Marshall Field’s were again uninspired (unlike a few years ago), but I’m glad to report that Union Station’s Grand Hall was done up well this year.

At the Chicago Cultural Center, we spent some time at an exhibit about South Side nightclubs of the Jazz Age, and a little later. Included was a telephone you could dial to listen to songs of the period.

It’s important somehow, I don’t know why, that she appreciate the operation of a rotary dial.

Lilly at 21

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Good Thanksgiving to all. Back to posting on Sunday the 25th, probably.

Lilly has turned 21. To mark the occasion, recently we went to the same restaurant as last year at her request, and by chance sat at the very same table.

No pics of the food this year. A similar array of sushi. The place, called Sushi Para, does wonderful sushi. One difference this year was that Lilly ordered hot sake to go with the meal, expressing surprise that there was such a thing. Heated in winter, chilled in summer, I told her.

At home we had a cake made by Yuriko. A big chocolate torte actually. Rich chocolate with a dash of edible gold leaf and chestnuts.

Lilly had a good time with it.

At one point, before she blew the candles out, the 2 fell over still lit, releasing rivulets of wax onto the chocolate. Ann sneezed at about the same time.

Once the wax had hardened, however, it was easy to remove.

Big Lou’s Really Big Pizza

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The evening after the funeral all of the family members in town got together for dinner at a place in east San Antonio, way down on W. W. White Road, Big Lou’s Pizza. My nephew Sam had heard about it and took care of the logistics.

The logistics involved ordering a 42-inch pizza ahead of time. Here is everyone at the table posing with a 42-inch pizza.

I’d never seen a pizza that large with my own eyes. I’m certain that went for everyone else at the table. According to one source anyway, it’s the second-largest restaurant pizza in Texas: bested only by a larger one that Big Lou’s makes.

I’m glad to report that it was a good New York-style thin pie. For my part, I ate about a piece and a half. I don’t think anyone else at the table ate any more than that, so there was pizza enough for two boxes of leftovers.

My Mother In Pictures, Part 2

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At the end of the last posting, there was a picture from 1964, shortly after my mother had been widowed. It was hardly the end for her. A few years later, she returned to school to get a masters in nutrition, the better to support her family.

I took this picture in the summer of 1972, when I was 11.

I took this one was well, in 1976. She’s with our cousin Jean, whom she was close with.

A laughing shot with an old friend of hers at her friend’s daughter’s wedding in 1980. I never saw this image until last month.

With her first grandchildren, Sam and Dees.

At our cousin Ralph’s wedding in 1987, with Jim and me.

She enjoyed attending American Dietetic Association national conventions in such places as Denver and Philadelphia in the ’80s.

During her visit to Japan in 1994.

The picture of her for the St. Paul’s church directory in 1997.

With Lilly, also 1997.

She told me once she wanted to live long enough to see the 21st century. In the fullness of time, she did. I found this picture recently, another one I’d never seen before. Doing volunteer church work on Christmas.

During our 2013 visit: Ann posing with her grandmother.

And on her 90th birthday, only three years ago now.

My Mother In Pictures, Part 1

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To go with the obituary posted by the undertakers who arranged my mother’s funeral were pictures we collected. I scanned some of them in September in anticipation of a posting, while the funeral home scanned others from physical prints that we provided.

Since then, I’ve scanned a few more. Such as this one, taken soon after New Year 1926, when she was two and a half months old.

A month later:

Ca. 1929 in what must be a special-occasion dress.

Around the same time. I’ve posted this one before, of her with her father’s mother.

The mid-1930s, when she was about 10, pictured with her little sister Sue.

With her father in San Antonio, ca. 1938. According to the back of the picture, they were going, or had just been, to a baseball game. Presumably the minor league Missions, which have had a long history, with some interruptions, in San Antonio.

In San Antonio with her mother, 1942, just before she went to college.

A series of college pictures.

This one is dated December 31, 1945. Attending a New Year’s Eve party, no doubt. In no other picture have I ever seen her hair done up this way.

A formal pose around the time of her graduation in 1947.

A less formal shot at the time of graduation.

I’ve posted this one before. A trip with her family and one friend to Monterrey, Mexico, in the summer of ’47.

My parents’ wedding, November 26, 1949.

On to the 1950s. With my brother Jay, her first child.

With Jim, her second child.

With both of them in Germany.

With my father, going to some social event while he was in the Army.

 

Forward to 1963. I’ve made my appearance.

The contrast with the next picture is pretty clear; my father is gone, only a year later.

More tomorrow.

RIP, Jo Ann Stribling, 1925-2018

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The week after my mother died last month, I wrote an obituary for her. This is a slightly modified version of it.

Jo Ann Curnutte Stribling, longtime resident of San Antonio, passed away on October 14, 2018, less than two weeks shy of her 93rd birthday.

Jo Ann is survived by her sons Jay, Jim and Dees (Yuriko), her grandchildren Sam (Emily), Dees (Eden), Robert, Lilly and Ann, her great-grandson Neil, her nephews Ralph Arnn and Vernon Jay Stribling, and their families, and cousin Michelle Gottfred.

Her beloved husband, Samuel Henderson Stribling, predeceased her, as did her parents, James and Edna Curnutte, her sister Sue Arnn and Sue’s husband Ken, her daughter-in-law Deb Stribling, her cousin Jean Horsman, and many other friends and relatives of her generation.

She is now at peace after suffering the ravages of dementia during the last few years of her life. For most of her life she had the good fortune to enjoy robust health.

Jo Ann was born in Jourdanton, Texas, on October 24, 1925, and spent most of her formative years in South Texas. After graduating from Corpus Christi High School (now Roy Miller High School), she attended Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman’s University) in Denton, studying nutrition and graduating in 1947.

In 1949, she married Sam, a physician from Mississippi, and soon devoted herself to their growing family as her children were born in 1952, 1955 and 1961. The young couple lived in Houston and later McKinney, Texas, along with a stint in Germany during Sam’s service as a doctor in the U.S. Army in the mid-50s.

Sam died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1964 at only 41, leaving Jo Ann bereaved and the sole parent to her children. She worked hard from then on not only to provide for their material well-being, but to guide their growth to responsible adulthood with a steady hand that was never heavy-handed. In her later years, she was delighted with the coming of her three grandsons and two granddaughters.

Jo Ann returned to TWU and obtained her master’s degree in nutrition in 1967, thus re-starting her career in that field. In 1970, she became a clinical dietitian at Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio, a position she held until she retired more than 20 years later. Dietitians are unsung healthcare professionals who make sure patients receive the best nutrition they need to speed their recovery.

She was a longtime member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, attending church regularly until her health failed, and supporting the church financially and by volunteering her time and energy. She was happy to be known as a church lady. Her faith in the Lord was quiet and steady.

Jo Ann made friends easily and was well regarded by her colleagues at the hospital. She was largely free of the social prejudices that marked many of her generation and, as the decades passed, was open to new ideas.

Though a stable and hardworking individual, she had a well-developed sense of humor — she enjoyed sharing jokes with her sister Sue in particular — and a sometimes surprising whimsical streak. She was fond of her dogs, her sewing projects, and the many books she read.

Jo Ann was a good person who had a good run in this world. She will be missed by all those who knew her and especially by those who had the very good fortune to be part of her family.