Monday, August 9, 1926

Monday, August 9, 1926
Cloudy and cool

Washed and scrubbed and ironed some. Put Gilbert’s pants in the washer and then pressed them. They looked like new. I was afraid to try it but they were ruined anyway. He sweats till the dried salt covered the goods in spots and they were stiff. Gilbert had a typewriter sent out on approval – a used machine but it seems to write ok. I sat up till 1o’clock to write a letter to Uncle Jesse. Marjorie learned to say “Mom”. Gilbert started “doping” his hay fever as symptoms appeared.

(Aunt Marjorie wrote, "I still can smell the scent of the smoke or mist or whatever Daddy used in their bedroom to ease his breathing in hayfever season. Ned inherited hayfever and Dick had allergies. Uncle Jesse was Grandpa Campbell's brother. Mother met him once when he visited when she was a child but never saw him again. He lived in Denver at that time. Mother and Uncle Jesse corresponded as long as he lived. She seemed to idolize him and wrote a lot about him in the family history."

Here's what Grandma wrote about Uncle Jesse in the family history:

"Jesse E. Campbell married Della Kelsey on October 30, 1881, and had one son Kelsey Burnett Campbell, who died in infancy in 1885. Della died February 2, 1885. For years Jesse worked as a telegrapher in, or near, Denver Colorado. It was during this time in 1904 or 1905 that he came here to visit us for several weeks, where we lived on Fifteenth Street. That visit from Uncle Jesse was one of the highlights of my childhood, for he took me to see "Sis Hopkins", my frist stage show, and bought me my first box of "store chocolates". He was lots of fun and I never forgot how much I enjoyed his visit, though I never saw him again. We kept up a correspondence for the rest of his life. Sometime after his visit here, he married Aunt Mattie. They lived in Colorado for awhile, then bought a small truck farm near Francitas, Texas where they lived the rest of their lives. They somtimes had a hard time financially but were always cheerful and well liked, and hoped that they would find oil on their place, as there was some hear there. Jesse spent his spare time writing poems which for years were published in The Palacios Beacon, the weekly paper of Matagorda County, under the headings of "Sass and Sentiment from Orchard Place" or "Crumbs from a Country Cupboard". They were a mixture of wit and homespun philosophy that must have made him noted in that part of the country. I still have a number of his poems in a scrapbook. He died on December 23, 1931."

Oddly enough, on the other side of my family, there was also an Uncle Jesse who wrote poems which might also be described as "a mixture of wit and homespun philosophy", I think.