This is a postcard from Great Grandpa Phil’s collection; it was sent to him and Great Grandma Lottie by the Hodinka family, John, Helen, and daughter Charlene, from a vacation in Minnesota. It’s postmarked Rochester, MN, August 27, 1966. John Hodinka — “Sonny” — was my grandmother’s cousin; he passed away last Wednesday, September 22 at the age of 81.

Charlene tells me that her grandfather on Helen’s side had a cousin there. Her mother’s aunt corresponded regularly with the folks in Rochester, but they had never met, so this trip was part vacation, part family reunion.

At one point during the vacation, Sonny somehow wound up on a horse, with explicit instructions not to let up on the reins. Of course, he did, and the horse wound up riding in circles, with Sonny unable to get the horse to stop. Another rider had to sidle up to them to bring Sonny and his mount to a stop. Bear in mind that we’re talking about a man who made sixteen jumps into Italy with the 82nd Airborne Division.

For young Charlene, the highlight of the trip was a tour of the Hormel plant, where she was able to observe how ham is made. “Poor little piggies,” she says. “They hung them upside down (on hooks) and a knife stabbed each one in the stomach. The things you remember…. I got pig blood on my white sneaker.” She didn’t remember if Sonny had anything to say about it, but I think he would have found the humor in the situation.

So long, Sonny. I miss you already.

This is a marimba de tecomates (gourds) that is typical of the indigenous population of Guatemala. Similar to many marimbas in basic design (technically an arc marimba), it uses gourds as resonators.

My grandmother’s cousin, John Hodinka (“Sonny”), sent this to Grandma from Guatemala, and my Aunt Brenda added it to her collection. I asked him about the card and why he was in Guatemala. He told me it was sometime in the 1980s, though he couldn’t remember when (however, he mentions “Saturday, April 15″ on the card, which means it could only be 1989):

(I went there) through the church. They had a big earthquake down there and they needed some people to go down and help rebuild. I went down there for two to three weeks.

I’ll tell you what — I got up one morning (I slept at the preacher’s place there) and these guys were having breakfast and they were starting to talk. “What’s going on here?” I said.

“You were sleeping,” one of them said. I said, “Yeah?” The guy says, “Well while you were sleeping we got woke up three different times by earthquakes.” And I didn’t hear anything! You get up high in the atmosphere and there’s all kinds of things that rumble up there, and I was working and you get so tired you don’t wake up for nothing.

When I came back I flew into Miami and my Aunt Florence (his mother’s sister. — Ed.) was waiting for me, and she drove me up to Port St. Lucie (Florida) and I spent time with her and my uncle. They put me back on a plane and I flew up to… well, I had to change planes somewhere… then I got to Philadelphia. It was cold! ‘Cause all I had on was real thin stuff.

I had a good trip down there helping somebody out. One of the guys that I went with from Bridgeton (New Jersey), on the way home, guess what he did? He got a whole bunch of firecrackers (in Guatemala), put them in a box, and put them on the plane right under the seats where we were at. I didn’t know that for a while. When he told me that I said get me out of here! If one of those things had gone off I’d have been running.

On the way home we were lucky. He took that box under his feet out of the plane and went through Customs, they just waved us through: “Keep going, keep going, keep going…”.

From Great-Grandpa’s collection. “Bud” writes from Augusta, Michigan that he’s “having a swell time.” The penny stamp is postmarked June 29, 1949 at 1 P.M. The image is marked as ©1948 L.L. Cook Co., with a production number of L.C.-1. I wonder if there was an L.C.-2.

Great-Grandpa probably enjoyed receiving this. My cousin, John Hodinka (actually, my first cousin twice removed, to whom Great-Grandpa was “Uncle Phil”) says that Phil was pretty ornery. I mostly remember Phil as an old man who carried around his pocket change in a coin purse, and took me to Woolworth’s to buy Matchbox cars.

This may look like a real photo postcard, but it’s actually a black-and-white photochrome postcard with a deckled edge. It was published by Dexter Press of Pearl River, New York.

Owens-Illinois was a key place in my family’s history. This from the obituary of my grandmother, Mildred Cossaboon, who passed away on 27 March 2008:

She was the daughter of the late Philip Nelson Smith and the late Charlotte Blanch (nee Arison) Smith. Born in Flatwoods, Fayette County, Pa., on June 30, 1923, she attended grade school in Franklin Township, Pa., and graduated from Dunbar High School, in 1942. Mrs. Cossaboon came, as did many others, to work at the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, in 1943.

It was there that she met my grandfather, a glassblower, and the rest is history.

Her cousin, John Hodinka (“Sonny”), also came to work there after his service with the 82nd Airborne Division. He’s a great man who is very proud of his service (and rightfully so), and would love to jump out of a perfectly good airplane even today.

Not surprisingly, he’s enamored with the Band of Brothers miniseries. He told me that he was watching the interviews and that one of the members of Easy Company was talking about how he went to work for Owens-Illinois in Bridgeton. (That man was Carwood Lipton, played in the movie by Donnie Wahlberg.) Sonny told me with surprise, “I worked with that son-of-a-bitch for five years and he never said a word.”