Spring Cleaning

I do love Ocean Springs. The beach is lovely, the streets are cozy and narrow with many giant live oaks overhanging them, and you can go to lots of fascinating places and eat in more! And then there are the Pascagoula River Audubon Center in Moss Point, the Gulf Islands National Seashore, the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge... So much to do, so little time.

Spring break for me was this week. While my daughters strolled the beaches and wandered the pathways, I sat and thought about a number of odds and ends I wanted to wrap up on the blogs I run.

There are two--this one, of course, and https://theadsnotthreads.blogspot.com/, for my kids and their Thead relatives. For years I promised to make information available somehow, and I'm trying now to do that.

First, a snapshot from Rachel Kittrell. (I did run it through my photoshop to increase the black-and-white contrast.)

All 14 Alawine siblings, date?

I love this picture--which, by the way, I'd never seen before--because it shows ALL the 14 surviving Alawine siblings as adults! It's a pity Aunt Bea's face is cut off, at the left side, but she's there. And they are all laughing and having a good time. In light of Uncle Sammy's appearing to have almost fallen (or is he having trouble getting situated, or is he trying to get up?), 

the women seem to be enjoying the awkward moment. My father Bob, on the left-hand side by Aunt Bea, always looked tired to me. There were originally 7 of us; I guess that's why.

I bet there was another photo made right after this one--or maybe right before--in which they were all posed "properly." If anybody has THAT one, please let me know. But I personally might prefer this one...candid, with them all enjoying something.

A couple of weeks ago I made myself go through three more boxes of Alton Alawine's materials. One entire case was devoted to a "survey" he had devised, in which he apparently got in touch with as many Alawines/Alewines as possible--all over the country--and asked them who their parents and grandparents, children and spouses were. And then he hand-wrote (in his tiny, tiny penciled print) all the information. 

In another location in my house I have a box labeled "drafts." This contains starts and stops of the book he intended to do for Alawine descendants but never quite did; age and physical problems intervened. 

I bring all this up because it's very, very hard for me to do the work of going through every single scrap of paper--but I have to, because hidden inside those manila folders I've found small treasures. Alton subscribed to lots of newspapers and carefully clipped ALL birth announcements, engagement pictures, wedding photos, employment news, etc., etc., etc., of anybody related to us. 

There was also a map of Dutch Fork, South Carolina, which I'd never seen before...again, tucked inside a folder having nothing to do with Dutch Fork.

As I threw out things that were superfluous and rearranged the little gems I kept, it occurred to me that most of us don't do that kind of thing anymore. We see these items on the Internet, mostly, maybe do a quick screen grab, move on. That's good, and bad, I guess. Should we live in the past, keeping these bits of our (and other people's) lives when they've become irrelevant, sometimes? 

I don't know--don't have an answer for that; you have to find your own answer. In the meantime, I'm posting a few little things he cut out, and they will probably be as wrenching to some of you as they were to me--even when I wasn't sure how a particular person was actually related. 

I could only choose a handful tonight, and I attempted to cover several bases, family-wise, but it may appear that I focused on one family (or on MY family!) more than another. For this I apologize. There's just so MUCH! I found myself looking at the clippings, with Alton's scribbled dates on them, and remembered that he cared enough to save them. But if you see something you don't want posted, let me know and I'll remove it. Meanwhile, enjoy this walk through the past! 

Betsy and Olen Mabry

Jimmy Lamar Alawine, Jr., college

Chris and Marlene, Gabe

Corrine Thaggard, wife of Dr. Andrew, died

Joan Alawine and Earl Aycock, Jr., in a play

Edwin and Robbie Thead 50th anniversary

Threatt reunion held

Ælfwine