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Slow blogging for a week

Posted by David Hardy · 8 August 2006 10:53 PM

Hurrah! I'm taking a vacation, for the first time in two years! I'll be out until the 16th, maybe able to blog a little between now and then, but probably very little. But it's 75 in the San Diego area, and I'll be wandering the beach.

As some minor matters until then--

Here's a bit on my family history. I discovered that the family name of Hardy is an alias taken by an outlaw gunman. Nat Hickman fled the law in Colorado, escaped to Arizona Territory, and became Judge Charles W. Hardy. In a state where quite few people can say they were born here, we date back to 1871, and to 1859 in the case of my great-grandmother.

Here's a load of Civil War research that I've undertaken.

Here's my late father's recollections of growing up on the Arizona frontier. Dad started in dirt-floored adobe hut, maybe ten by fifteen feet, that housed him, his grandparents, an uncle and two siblings. No
1000
water, no electricity. Laundry boiled on a pot outside, propped up on three rocks. Daniel Boone could have wandered by, and known the use of everything. And Dad lived into the 21st Century.

Here's a memorial webpage for my ex-wife, Frances, who died of cancer in 2003, age 52. Someday I'll fill in the full story. It's one of those things blasted into your memory. You have to look someone you once loved, and have known for 20+ years, in the eye and tell them the docs are coming over to tell them there is no hope, and you see their eyes go round....

Anyway, take a look, and I'll be back online next Wednesday or so!

6 Comments

Bob Roland | August 9, 2006 10:08 AM

A "must read" for any genealogy nut is the story
of Nat Hickman/ Judge Hardy.
thanks so much for sharing.

Tom Gunn | August 9, 2006 2:07 PM

I haven't finished reading your Dad's accounts, but one of the garbles in your transcription I may be able to help you with.

Your Dad was talking about harvesting grain, wheat and barley - "In the summertime we would take it at the harvest, they had barley and stuff like that and mostly the one I hated the worst was wheat and barley. I used to have to [word unclear] and all those little barbs would get on you and it just seemed like you couldn't get them off of you. They would just eat you alive but then you still had to do it."

I am just old enough and fortunate enough to have harvested grain that was *threshed* ie. gleaned through a thesher, a machine that traveled farm to farm and threshed the small grain.

The grain was cut with a machine called a binder that tied the grain in bundles of 20 pounds or so and 24 - 36 inces in length. The bundles were picked up by hand and stacked stem down head up in the field to dry in *shocks* of 6 - 12 bundles. That was called shocking the grain. You wore long sleeve shirts b/c the whiskers on grain heads would tear your arms up. After drying in the field for several day the shocks were picked up and taken to the thresher where the grain was separated from the straw and chaff.

Hope this helps.

KCSteve | August 10, 2006 11:18 AM

David,

Hope you didn't fly on your vacation - sounds like it could be a bit trickier getting home if you did.

W. Bailey | August 10, 2006 12:25 PM

TG: I've been there too. It was miserable, but I think I'd do it again for the food served to threshers

Tom Gunn | August 10, 2006 1:23 PM

I was an inquisitive kid . . . I saw the binder but I didn't get to see it work. I shocked 90 acres of oats with another kid. Took day and a half. We were cautioned not to make the shocks too big b/c we were going to have to pick them up a few days later with a pitch fork, stacking them on flat bed wagons.

I worked for all the farmers around here and was called to another place when they thrashed the oats.

That was 45 years ago.

The Mechanic | August 11, 2006 11:33 AM

Quick check of the Waco page, http://www.hardylaw.net/waco.html
brought back fond memories of the Bill Clinton/Janet Reno days. Our current president has glossed that over well. As well as retaining Clinton appointees in many key departments. Like Norman "don't arm pilots" Mineta. Hope you don't have to travel by air and watch your wife get frisked at the airport. We don't want to offend the Moslem terrorists-or-offend them by even identifying them. Defending our freedom by willingly losing our freedom?