Nova Jean Chapter Three

The Women Who Came Before

The family lineage of remarkable women

Nova Jean and a bonfire/Photo from family archive

Nova Jean loved a fire. This simple sentence does not begin to encapsulate how much she enjoyed good old fashioned bonfires! On her small ranch, Nova Jean would work on a burn pile like an artist works on a painting. Never impatient, she wanted to put the pile together for a good, long, burn evening. She had extra fuel to keep adding to the flames. She enjoyed every part of the fire, from building the pile to the strike of that first match.

To Nova Jean, a fire carefully planned is a fire that must be shared. She always tried to make sure there were others to help enjoy her latest masterpiece. I am not quite certain where this love of a good fire originated, but I believe it comes from the strong pioneer women found on both sides of our parental ancestry. All of them had a work ethic unmatched by anyone.

I’ve written about some of these women in the past. I wrote about our maternal Great-Grandmother, Mamie. You can read about what I know, or think I know, of her background in this story that traces her roots from Lookout Mountain, Georgia to Indian Territory, Oklahoma at the turn of the twentieth century.

[embed]Great Grandma’s Legacy The pioneer woman who shaped my lifemedium.com

Our Great Grandma’s sister was also a big part of our story. She brings her own humor and pioneer spirit to the family, and her enjoyment of laughing about going through life uniquely named is a story unto itself.

[embed]Learning That Age Is Just a Number Life lesson from my elderly Auntmedium.com

You probably think it odd that someone still has memories of some of the early pioneer women who settled in Indian Territory back in 1904. Our generations barely overlapped. I was lucky to hear these stories as these women, born in the late 1800s, were nearing the end of their lives while my life was just beginning.

For them as young people, travel was by wagon or horseback. Roads were non-existent. Out on the plains in the early 1900s, there was no phone, no electricity, and neighbors were scarce. Help was often far from you, either in time or distance.

My maternal great-grandparents settled far out in the wilds of Oklahoma Indian Territory, before statehood. Yet, even then, there was a time when my great-grandfather left his young bride and took the wagon and some horses by train and went to see if perhaps New Mexico offered a better place to settle. Great-Grandma, a young woman in her 20s, was out on the plains by herself for several months until he returned, finding that they were in the best spot to homestead.

Mamie had no daughters. Her two sons continued to farm that land and nearby farms and continued the family legacy. One of these farmers was father to my own mother. In her teen years, she was a skilled cowgirl known for riding Tony, a big, bald-faced, red-colored stallion, around her farming valley.

In 1968 I was able to ride my mother’s horse, Tony, before he died. By then, Tony was an old stallion still chasing mares across the fields. He fell over a sloped field terrace and died from his injuries. He was nearly forty years old, a very old age for a horse.

I don’t know much about the background stories of my paternal grandmother, Ada. I do know she married a young Pentecostal preacher, my grandfather. His family was migrating from Sevierville, Tennessee, to Arkansas when they met. They married, and she began a life of following him from town to town and congregation to congregation, all the while giving birth to six sons and six daughters.

Maternal Grandmother in cap, sixth from left, next to Grandfather. Eight of their children are pictured. Family archive

The picture above was snapped on the old Mother Road, Old Route ’66, in the thirties. Grandmother is pictured with all of her six sons, including my father (in front of grandfather), as they traveled from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California to pick fruit during the Great Depression. She is carrying her last, but not yet born, daughter in this picture. Two of the daughters had married and remained in Oklahoma, and one uncle is cut off from the picture on the right. I don’t know of a picture that has all twelve children.

Poor Uncle John was always told that he was “just off to the right” in this family picture!

Ada was always very proud to tell me that she was related to the “Homespun poet”, Edgar Guest. Her mother was of the Guest lineage. Because I now attempt to write, I am also proud to know about this.

On their last trip on old Route 66, they were moving from Oklahoma to California in the early 40s, and either my father or his older brother fell asleep driving the old pickup, and the pickup, trailer, and the family of nine passengers rolled off the road and flipped over out in the desert, just near the California state line.

Most injuries were minor, but my dear grandmother’s right foot was severely injured. They had to wait for help, then finally found a ride to get grandmother to the nearest town, well over an hour and a half away, to get medical help. The doctor told her he would have to remove her foot. She would not consent, so he did the best he could.

My dear Aunt (the unborn baby in the photo), who told me about this terrible time, was only four or five years old when the accident happened. She and her youngest brother, who was perhaps ten, were taken along with my grandmother, and a nurse at the small hospital took them in for several weeks as my grandmother fought to recover enough to leave. To this day, she remembers being terrified she would never see her family again!

The remaining children were left to camp alongside the old Route 66 mother road and salvage what they could from the wreck. They depended on food they had with them and help from passersby until my grandfather could get to California and organize a rescue party of friends to come collect them, my grandmother, and their worldly goods, which was several weeks after the wreck.

Dear Grandma walked on the side of that foot with a limp for the rest of her life, but thankfully, her hardest years were behind her. She continued to care for my grandfather far too long into his dementia, and died of stomach cancer in 1967.

She had endured a hard childhood in Arkansas. She endured the hard life as “the preacher’s wife” and mother of twelve as he traveled from town to town, never settling down completely. I remember our visits to see them in retirement. We lived in Oklahoma when I was a child, and my father would load us all up in an old Studebaker coupe and drive straight through to California, again on old Route 66.

No air conditioning. No motel stops. Roadside attractions called Stuckey’s after tourist-trap Stuckey's never saw us stop. There was only money for gas. We had picnics by the road, that featured crackers, cheese, canned sausages, and peanut butter and jelly. My mother kept us fed and entertained while she and my father and my brother, when he was old enough, took turns driving.

My father, being a long-haul trucker, and with wages being less than what would really sustain our family of seven, would only take enough time to see his mom and dad for about two days, then we all piled back into the Studebaker and headed back to the dusty, red-clay dirt of Oklahoma.

But my grandma’s house in California, near Visalia, was heaven. Every kind of plum, nectarine, or peach grew in the yard. There were beautiful, big laying hens in a pen. She kept a huge vegetable garden. Cold water from the real “ice box” was always there for us, and big bowls of almonds and walnuts to crack on her back porch! Her backyard and green, soft lawn were a child’s paradise! My sisters and I would sit on top of picking ladders and throw down pits from fruit until we were too full to move!

My father also had several of his sisters living nearby in California, so we would see cousins on the same hurried trip. To us, it seemed they lived in a green, luxuriant, mysterious oasis! Visits were brief and never gave us time to know any of them well, and there were so many of them!

Not only was grandmother a strong, resilient woman, but she also gave the world six strong-minded, well-educated daughters. Executives, teachers, political activists, and a police officer among them.

That is the story of a few of the resilient women who led up to Nova Jean. Women who braved the unknown. Women who defied convention, and struck out on their own paths with determination, bravado, and courage. None of them considered failure. None of them shrank back from a challenge. They were from pioneer stock that came to America on the early settlers’ ships in the 1600s. These women were survivors.

Nova Jean carried all of that resilience and independence from previous generations. She carried self-assurance. If she didn’t know how to do something, she taught herself, and did it. She could sew curtains or put a roof on the barn. She built props for the local theater, and excelled in her professional life through sheer force of skill and willpower. All the while, she kept an eye out for anyone struggling and extended her hand to bring them along with her.

Generous, always, to a fault. Stubborn. Kind. Forceful. Independent. A little bitty woman who was always a force to be reckoned with. Nova Jean did not go through life quietly. There is so much more to her story.

Jim is a retired teacher and a Death Care specialist. He writes from a graceful old Civil War-era home in Iowa, where he lives with his husband, dogs, and cats, surrounded by beautiful gardens.