Family history continued

As I get older it has become important to me to try to remember stuff and write it down.  Stories told to me as a young adult went in one ear and out the other.  My Dad talked about being a POW during World War II only one time.  He was in Patton’s Third Army, went in with the group that liberated a POW camp that Patton’s son-in-law was in and then ended up being captured by the Germans on the way out.  I would give anything today to have had a recording of that conversation.  He never would talk about it again.  Hopefully, some day my grandkids, nieces and nephews will find and read this blog to get a sense of who their family was (is).  My mother and grandmother use to tell stories about their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, children born and died young.  My mother lived in New Harmony, Indiana and remembered when a devastating tornado came through and killed hundreds of people.  She helped to pull bodies from the wreckage.  She also told me about her first marriage to Bill Hyatt.  She didn’t really want to marry him but when he showed up at my Aunt Dena’s cabin (where she was staying) in a wagon pulled by horses she got in and they went to town to get married. I do remember my Aunt Dena. She had a twin sister named Lena.  I don’t think I ever met her.  I’m not positive but I think they were my grandmother’s sisters.  My family history is murky.   Aunt Dena was a little looney.  She not only smoked a corn cob pipe but kept dead copperhead snakes in some sort of liquid in quart jars.  Ii have no idea why.  Maybe that’s why my mother got in the wagon!