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Gracious Courtliness the Gift of “The Mayor of Clifton Terrace”, William Gradolph—seasonal memory from back in the day by Erwin A. Thompson
I knew him personally. In my growing up years he was a legend. He lived on Clifton Hill, so designated because it was a pretty formidable hill on the road from the main highway to the little settlement of Clifton Terrace. He was a veteran of the 1898 Spanish-American war. In his younger years he…
Holding a Family Lineage and Heritage: What does it take?
In past generations…way back in the day…families made it their business to hand down their lineage and heritage–whether planting tomatoes in manure-rich dirt, singing together in the car or around the piano, or recounting a treasure trove of family stories. My mother, as matriarch, was part of this tradition. Even now, five years after her…
Down on the (Riehl) Farm, Evergreen Heights, with Erwin A. Thompson–chestnut history in America; the rise and fall of the cut flower business
When my father read at the Alton, Illinois library this Spring, someone in the audience asked him, “Did you work the farm during the years you were at Union Electric?” My father responded as follows: We worked it, but not as a working farm. Evergreen Heights was founded by my grandfather E. A. Riehl, at…
Why funerals? Erwin A. Thompson gives 3 good reasons
Photo by Susan J. Tweit I’ve gone to several visitations and memorial services with my father this past year since I’ve moved back to the Midwest. Recently, we lost one of my cousins in a rather haunting death. In thinking ahead to her memorial day at the cemetery, we began discussing the purpose of these…
Reading the River: Life along the Mississippi with Erwin A. Thompson
I’ve come from Northern California to SW Illinois now, to vist Pop for a month. We live in what my poem “Rising” refers to as “the oldest house in the world.” It’s the house my 91-year old father, Erwin A. Thompson lived in all his life, built in the 1860s by his grandpa Riehl, and…
Erwin A. Thompson Sings of Bums & Tramps
My father wrote me that recently one of his friends had educated him on the difference between bums and tramps. These were terms in use during the Great Depression…before Street People and Homeless. Listen and learn.–JGR I had always thought that the words “bum” and “tramp” were interchangeable. Not so. A tramp is a person…