PrunePicker: March 2020

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

I lost 4 pounds on the move!

Moving everything out of a 32 foot fifth wheel trailer (24 years of stuff) and into a 26 foot trailer is a lot of work. My step history, reported on the attached vital signs record, indicates how many steps I took. 4000 steps one of the days.

Saturday, March 28, 2020

A hose manifold is very convenient.

John Adams installed a hose manifold behind my trailer. A hose manifold is very convenient. I do not have to handle hoses. I just open or close valves.

The following photos show the installation. The background in the photos show what a beautiful back yard I have. Those trees, leaves, and ivy is what I see out my back window. The new trailer permits a much better view. I love the view.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Out with the old! In with new!

Busy week. I helped move very thing that I own out of the trailer that Jackie and I lived in for 24 years. Last 13 years I lived in it by myself. Then the housekeeping declined in quality. The Mike Phillips moving company rolled in.

The OLD

It was a difficult move. It took six or seven see saws to get the rig turned around and in the driveway. But the three person crew pictured below did it without a hitch. Celeste and Mike Phillips, and John Morgan Adams. Thanks a lot you guys!

The next day a Grey Wolf travel trailer by Cherokee was delivered by Bayou Outdoor Supercenter

of Bossier City.

The NEW

Have you ever disposed of eighty percent of your stuff as you move from your shelter of 24 years into a new shelter? This is the first time for me. It is a very stressful and traumatic experince. I think this is the last time for me.

Thursday, March 12, 2020

My Family bought a new RV!

They are letting me live in it for as long as I want. No telling how long that will be. Be five years if I live to 100. It is an open ended lease! I will stay as long as I can.

The trailer that I am living in is 24 years old and has been used hard. A while ago it had a leak in a slid out and suffered wood rot. The slid out floor is gone. A bad odor lingers from fungus. Most factory installed utilities do not work. (The refrigerator, air conditioner, forced air heater, water-dryer are long kaput) I have been using various substitutes. I have been happily getting by.

My family, however, decided that my housing should be upgraded. I want to thank them very much for for their love and care and the loan of their new trailer. I love them all very much (they know who they are.) I thank them very much!

Thankfully I get to go on living in the Adams RV Park. It is the greatest RV Park that I have ever lived in!

Monday, March 2, 2020

Edwin John Knowlton Family Bible.

This Bible has bee in the custody of my sister Donna. It is now in the custody of her daughter Danna Sue. Donna Sue loaned it to me for several months. The Bible is a valuable genealogical resource. I was thrilled to see it. E J Knowlton is my maternal grandfather. He died a year before I was born. He was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He spent his mature years in Kansas, where he was a very successful farmer. He died in 1924 in Oakland, California.

The Bible has pages of listengs of Marriages, Deaths, and Births. This blog is an attempt to make this data available to future genealogists with out having the Bible. Even me. The pages are very faint (the Bible is 150 years old). I could not darken the print with a scanner but found that if you zoomed in that you could read it.

The flyleaf of the Bible has the following inscription.

A Christmas gift for 1870 to Edwin J Knowlton from his Mother Amanda L Palmer. Take this Book as your guide and all will be right.

Here is a wonderful photo of E J Knowlton and his family. Taken in Stirling, Kansas around 1905. The girl on the left is my Mother Olive Knowlton. The sailor suit indicates a well to do family. This family moved to California. I see six uncles and an aunt. They were nice folks. I enjoyed them. The Aunt gave me a ferry boat ride across San Francisco Bay before there were any bridges. Quick quiz. What year was that?

Following is photos of the data pages. Zooming in will make most of the data readable.

The Bible also had a photo album. The first photo is from my Grandfather's first marriage. They had one child (the tallest buy in the family picture). She died in a few years. He then married Ermina Delphine Haight, my grandmother.

I do not know these two ladies, but their photos were in the Bible.

Good luck on reading and using this data. If you can not use the Bible, this is the next best thing.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

Vital Signs for February 2020.

It looks like I am a 250 pound guy. After 1 1/2 years of dedicated effort I lost fifty pounds. In October I reached a weight of 200 pounds. In four months with hardly any effort I put 25 pounds back on.

This is not good for me and it is not very smart.

My niche in the Blogosphere.

My blog is about me, my family, my interests, my opinions, and my daily activities. My name is Chuck Monson. I am a native born Californian. I worked in the oil exploration and production business and am now retired and living in Ruston, Louisiana. I am a 91 year old widower. I blog because I really enjoy it. Posting gives me a schedule and is a wonderful make work project. I like pictures, both the taking and looking at them. I really like old historic pictures. I enjoy a good photograph. I like putting pictures and text together in a way that is hopefully interesting to others and that will be interesting to me in the future. I like to be silly now and then. It is also putting my memories down on paper. My blog serves as a diary. I have used it for a reference quite a few times.

I do mix it up. Some of my blogs are “what I had for breakfast”, some are just pictures, some are items of genealogical nature, and there are items from my family history. I have a history of the Munson/Monsons in America. The study of this history has led me to the discovery of much American history that had previously been unknown by me.

I have had a lifelong interest in history, archeology, philosophy, religion, politics, architecture, technical subjects, music, food, and sports. I spend time every day reading blogs and posting to my blog. I do not pontificate on religion or politics because I do not consider myself wise enough to try to persuade others to my beliefs. My beliefs are quite nebulous anyway.

I was started on blogging by my late son, Christopher David Monson. Chris wrote the blog "snaggletoothie of the Loyal Opposition" There is a link to his blog above. I look at Chris's blog often. I have read most of his posts.

My adult years.

I married Jackie Lois Ireton in 1944 in San Luis Obispo, California. I met her on a blind date when I was taking amphibious training at Moro Bay. We have been blessed with four children, nine grand children, and nine great grandchildren. They are an exceptional group. I love them and I am proud of them.

I was an army combat engineer (infantry with shovels) during World War II. I served in the Pacific. I was wounded on Peleliu Island helping the marines on Bloody Nose Ridge. I was shot in both legs just above the knees. The wound locations indicate that I was not running away.

I received a BSME in 1950 from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. Jackie received a PHT. (pushing husband through.) I retired from oilfield work in 1985. Jackie and I moved into a fifth wheel trailer and enjoyed the RV lifestyle until Jackie's health failed. We traveled across the continent 3 1/2 times. We spent a summer as volunteers at Acadia National Park. For 17 years we helped build an Escapee RV park in Chimacum, Washington. Jackie passed away in 2007. We had been married 63 years. We were married on June 3, 1944. I still live in our fifth wheel trailer. It is parked in the yard of my daughter Kerry's home in Ruston, Louisiana. It is by far the nicest RV park that I have ever lived in.

My teen age years.

I was born in 1925 in Pomona, California. Pomona is on the east edge of Los Angeles County. It is halfway between Los Angeles and San Bernardino and halfway between the mountains and the beach. I thought that it was great to be an hour from snow covered mountains and an hour from the ocean surf.

In my days of growing up, Pomona was completely surrounded by orchards and truck farms. Oranges, lemons, grapefruit, peaches, apricots, olives, persimmons, and walnuts. Watermelons and strawberries. During the depression I had many meals from the orchards.

They say that you cannot go back home. That is true of the Pomona Valley of my youth. Because it is no longer there. Most of it is now covered with asphalt and stucco buildings.

My ancestors.

I am getting more and more into genealogy. I have a trove of information on the Munsons/Monsons. My father is buried in California. His father by adoption (He was an uncle.) is buried in Kansas. His natural father is buried in Kentucky. So I have two grandfathers. I have a grandfather and four great grandfathers buried in Kentucky, one great buried in New Jersey, and three greats buried in Connecticut. I have two greats buried in Rattlesden, Suffolk, England. I have been led to believe that my ancestors before that came from Denmark and Normandy.

Captain Thomas Munson was the first Munson to move to America. He was baptized in Rattlesden, England in 1612. The baptismal font is still in use. He served in the militia in the Pequot Indian Wars in 1637. He served in the militia all his life and reached the status of Captain. His signature is on the founding document for New Haven, Connecticut.

In 2011 I visited New Haven and took pictures of his gravestone. In May 2012 my oldest daughter Nancy Ann escorted me to England and France. We visited Rattlesden and I took some pictures of the Captain's baptismal font.

Why is the old prune picker living in Ruston, Louisiana?

In 2006 my wife Jackie was in poor health. Jackie had kidney failure and was on dialysis. She had heart problems for some time with A-fib. She had fallen and broken her hip. She had broken ribs and vertebra just moving around normally. My family thought that I needed help caring for Jackie. My daughter Kerry and her husband John offered to park our trailer in their backyard in Ruston and help. Jackie and I accepted their kind offer. My daughter Nancy accompanied Jackie in an airplane flight from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to Ruston. My son Mike took time off to help me pull our trailer for five long days to our new home. We were and are grateful. We enjoyed our new home very much.

Unfortunately and sadly, Jackie passed away in six months. I had sold our truck and was permanently parked. I was ready to give up full time RVing anyway. It is very pleasant in Ruston and I am close to family. So that is why I have been living in Ruston, Louisiana since October 2006.