Curious

I think being a genealogist actually REQUIRES that one be curious. I can think of many fragments of stories I long to know more about. Most especially I wish I’d asked more questions when those who would know the answer were still alive.

When the six of us were helping my mother clean out her house, prior to moving to Assisted Living, each of us were allowed to keep items we were interested in. I, of course, grabbed some pretty random things, sure that they had meaning to our family, even if I didn’t know why. Photo albums were one of those things. And thank goodness, I had them, because they ended up being essential for feeding my curiosity about the things pictured below and the story attached to them.

My mother grew up on an orange ranch planted by her grandparents, Luella May Law Johnson and Charles Roscoe Johnson. The Yorba Linda ranch in Southern California helped to sustain them through depression years, as they were able to trade oranges for goods and services.

Her son Ross Bernard Johnson built a home in 1927, down on the flats next to Ohio Street, one of the first homes in the area to be fully equipped with electrical current throughout. We moved onto the property in 1949 after my grandmother Helen died, and stayed there for several years, first in the apartment over the garage and then in the main house after my grandfather died.

I have many memories of riding around on the tractor in the groves, helping my uncle to feed his rabbits, sitting on the front porch with a new very curly permanented hair-do, and learning to ride my first big bike. Some of my fondest memories were going up the hill with my sister, Judy, to play with Grandma Johnson’s miniature tea set. I loved it there.

After her husband died in 1920, Luella continued to live in the house above the orange grove for many years. Luella didn’t stay home, however. She traveled. Sometimes she travelled for the Yorba Linda Chamber of Commerce. Sometimes, she traveled with friends.

The trip I was curious about must have been significant to her. She filled a small photo album with not only tourist-y photos and postcards (some from 1927), but also pictures of she and her friends learning to surf, sun-bathing on the beach of Waikiki, and having a wonderful time in Honolulu and on the Big Island, where they visited the Kilaueu Volcano. They toured Kauai and took a boat trip to see the leper colony on Molokai.

Inside the photo album was also a very small envelope. In it were keepsakes such as more tiny photos, a letter from my mother (then a young girl) telling about her Easter vacation, and a recipe for bean-corn salad. Most interesting was the ticket shown below. I had always believed the album told a story of her travel in the 20’s. Now I know she cruised as a passenger with the Los Angeles Steamship Co. out of Wilmington on April 12, 1930.

My other questions, I may never have the answer to. I want to know the stories behind the objects in the picture below. Were they just tourist shop purchases? Who was the handsome dude (obviously of Hawaiian background) in the album? And on and on…

One last thing. My mother had a copy of a newspaper article written when she returned. She was interviewed about her journey, saying, “Hawaii is a place of contrasts. Snow-capped Mauna Kea looms above, while at the base the warm waters of the Pacific dash against the palm fringed tropic shore. The only sad part of the whole voyage is the leper isle which makes one feel uneasy as the ship glides by the home of those isolated people. That is all they are privileged to see and it reminds me of ‘The Ships that Pass in the Night.” Since Luella became a teacher in 1898, it was fitting that the last paragraph of the interview is about the education and language of the native Hawaiians.

Several of my sisters and brothers love to travel, and just maybe Luella is where we acquired the bug!