Happy Birthday, Daddy

John Matthias Gosz

These are the only pictures of my dad as a youngster.  He was the oldest boy, born on March 16, 1904.  His parents, both first generation Americans, followed a custom of the old country.  His godfather was his grandfather, Matthias Meier.  However, he was not named Matthias as he would have been if he had been born in the Rhineland (Kreis Saarburg) as his mother's ancestors were.  Instead, he was called John and it was his middle name that honored his godfather.

How I wish that relatives with every make and model of camera could have attended his baptism.  I wonder if he cried when the water which made him a child of God was poured over his little head.  I wonder if he was born with lots of hair or was as bald as his first daughter, me!  If little John did have hair, it probably was already beginning to show how curly it would be.

Tulips and imitation

This is one of my tulips.  It has decided to imitate both a yellow tulip with red streaks and a white tulip with red streaks.

It is a bit like me - it is unable to resist taking on a bit of other's coloration.Whenever I hear someone with a charming accent that varies from my Wisconsin-style American way of speaking, I start to imitate.

An example:On Saturday I woke to humorist Michael Feldman's Show, "Whad 'Ya Know." on Wisconsin public radio.  He was talking to a witty, down-to-earth woman author with a wonderful North Carolina  accent.  Lee Smith, the author in question, is a born story teller.  In talking about her latest book, "Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-eyed Stranger," she charmed me both with her humor and her accent.

I told a good friend about the book and the radio program and automatically began to imitate the accent.  I know that if I listened to Ms Smith for a few days, I would be talking with her lilting cadence and adding extra syllables to my words - in southern fashion.  It isn't unique to me - this need for exactitude in repeating a story.  After my sister Marilyn, age 8 or 9, spent a few days visiting her cousin Georgene, she sounded just like her.  Our mother wasn't amused, "Talk like yourself, not like Georgene," she said.  She wanted her regular daughter back, not a recording of her sister Laura's child.

Where does this need to imitate originate?  Our maternal grandmother, Mary Boehm Probst, "listened-in" on the multifamily telephone line that was the typical mode of country phone service of the 1920s and 30s.  It was her entertainment before the time of multichannel television.  After a call, she would repeat what she had heard, accurately imitating the voices of any two speakers.  Mom said she was a natural mimic.

Yes, it's genetic for our Boehm clan line to imitate - just as it is for my cross-colored tulip.

Yellow tulip


White tulip