Riverbend Journal

  Perhaps it is due to her theatrical leanings which she would later go to study for at college yet again, but my 2nd great aunt Clara never seems to look straight at the camera in most of the photos in which she is featured and put into her photo album. She is the one crouching, first girl on the left of the kneeling row in the upper left and bottom photos above and she is the half crouched girl in the middle of the scrum in the upper right photo. There is probably some psychological reason for that but not being a psychologist or sleeping at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I don't know that reason. I did do som e research though and found that the A.C.A probably stands for the Association of Collegiate Alumnae which was a prestigious group for college educated females back in those times. Among some of the things the organization stressed were  issues including standards of academic programs, isolation following the college experience, living wage for college alumnae and c...

  On our past Florida trip, we spent one very cold afternoon stopping at a couple of nearby pawn shops to see what there might be to see. As we walked towards the entrance of the store, our daughter had looked at that bookshelf and thought it would be perfect for her new apartment which she will move into during the summer between semesters of college. I thought it would too but there just wasn't enough room to haul it back to Iowa with us with five people and all our luggage. Besides, it was a bit on the rickety side too. But I am a woodworker. So in between my LEGO project, my genealogy research on the albums belonging to my great great aunt and designing the new bedroom furniture I promised my wife, I spent some time working out a design for a bookshelf for my daughter as an apartment warming gift of sorts. I stayed close to the design though I will vary the joints a bit and make the shelves fixed instead of floating so that it will be more sturdy for all those college textbooks...

  Spring of 1920 was Clara Kuck's last school semester in Great Falls and she decided to head back east for more college education in Boston. But for some reason, her photo album skips backward in time because there a number of pages featuring her cousin Leta and her daughters. Above is a picture of her cousin Leta who was the daughter of her uncle Frederick and aunt Katherine Brandau Kuck, Frederick is the younger brother of her father John Kuck and Katherine is the older sister of mother Elizabeth Brandau Kuck. Isn't it fun keeping things straight when brothers marry sisters! Leta Adelheid Kuck would marry Leo Grant Titus on 17 December 1912 in Seattle, Washington. Leta and Leo's first born was named after Leta's mother Katherine. She was born December of 1914 so I'm guessing the two pictures above were taken sometime in the spring of 1915. When I cam to this page, I spent a fair amount of time and comparing it to Clara Kuck's mother Elizabeth Brandau Kuck...

Generated by A.I. What's wrong with people? As I did with my eldest, I am now taking my youngest to confirmation classes that occur once a week during the school year. It doesn't start until 6:00 in the evening and lasts until 7:15 so there isn't a lot of light this time of year. It is about a 20 minute round trip each time I go downtown to the church and during the time of year especially, is over streets that are rough and full of potholes. Most people just rattle down them anyway, drop off their child, go home for the next 45 minutes or so and then repeat the journey. Since I would likely be doing the same thing at home as I do in my own car, I just dress accordingly and sit in my car reading using my backlit kindle paperwhite and save the fuel and wear on my vehicle. I have found that it is quite tolerable to read for 75 minutes without my car on for most days where the temperature is above zero degrees F. On the rare evening it is below those temperatures, I have been ...

  I always enjoy looking at old photos with cars, not because I'm a car guy because I'm about as far from that as one gets, but because it tickles something in my engineering brain, much like my small collection of vintage cameras on the bookcase downstairs. I like seeing all the mechanical aspects of it and the simplicity on how it works compared to modern versions of cars where you can't really see anything but the body panels.  Clara Kuck spent one of her Easter holidays while in Great Falls, Montana going to such places as Bozeman, Helena, Missoula and a town called Anaconda in March of 1920 according to a newspaper article I have found. Butte is along one of the sides of the giant triangle those towns form in reference to her starting point of Great Falls so I have no doubt that this picture is likely taken during that particular trip.  I wanted to identify that particular vehicle so turned to A.I. which promptly told me it was a 1911 or 1912 Packard or Peerless tour...