The Shockingly Pink Shell

There.  That one.  The shell.  That's the one.  She liked picking out the ceramic pieces.  They were bare.  Naked.  Just sitting there.  Ready and waiting for someone's imagination to come along and bring it to life.  Being a mother of eight, she knew a little something about that.

She sat down and turned the shell over, and picking up her scraping tool, her sister began to tell of Aunt Vyla's latest antics and she began to scrape the line left by the shell mold.  Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.  Every so often she'd pause, put the tool down, take her small sponge and dip it into the water bowl that she shared with her sister Anne, wring it to near dryness, and gently rub it along the area she had just scraped smoothing the line away.  Making sure with her finger the line would never be seen again.  She kept alternating between the monotonous tasks of scraping and smoothing.

As she was wringing the sponge once again, Anne said something about Aunt Vyla that grabbed her attention away from her task. And she wasn't careful to wring the sponge completely.  She swiped the base where the mold line had been.  Her recognition of what she'd done was too late.  "God bless America and all the ships at sea," she muttered under her breath.  "What?"  Anne inquired.  "Oh nothing," she replied.  "Go on.  What did Aunt Vyla do?  This time?"  Really, it was something.  Now the shell's base would be lopsided.  The extra water on the sponge had made the fragile greenware bend.  Just a little.  But just enough.  She sighed.  Then she went on to scrape once more.

Having finally smoothed the mold line away, there was only one thing to do before the piece was fired in the kiln.  To etch her initials on the bottom of the shell.  Using her scraping tool, she first scratched an "A".  "Not too bad," she thought.  Almost whimsy with the swirls on the bottom of the letter.  Almost.  Next she scratched a "B" into the soft clay.  Hm.  A wee crooked.  Which just about summed up her relationship with the man who stayed around long enough to share his name with her, to father their 8 children, and to leave once the going got tough.  Then she smiled.  O.K., maybe it was a smirk.  God forgive her.  At least she didn't snort.  This time.  Ladies don't snort.  Well, not in public at least.  Or so her mother had told her.


The next week, her shell was waiting for her at her place at the crafts table.  Scandalously naked.  Waiting for her to clothe it in color.  She'd thought about what colors to use all week.  She'd finally decided on pink and maybe a little turquoise for accent.  As she sat down, she gingerly placed a finger on the rim on the back left-hand side of the shell.  She pressed down and then released it.  Clunk.  Yup.  Lopsided.  She sighed.  As she picked up her brush and dipped it into the pink paint, her sister Anne asked her, "Did you hear what Aunt Vyla did yesterday?"  And as her sister talked about Aunt Vyla, she painted the shell.  Pink.  Actually it was starting to look shockingly pink.  She covered the whole shell in shocking pink paint.  Then sat there waiting for it to dry.  Once dry, she rinsed her brush clean and dipped it in the turquoise paint, and began to paint along the rim of the shell providing some depth and a very necessary break from the shocking pink.


When she entered the room the following week, she instantly saw her shell.  Her very pink shell.  It was hard to miss.  She sat down, dipped her brush into the milky glaze, and began to apply the glaze all over the shell.  As her sister began to retell a story about the neighbors, she wondered, "What?  No stories about Aunt Vyla?"


Three layers of glaze and five stories ~two including Aunt Vyla~ later, she was finally done.  She sat back.  And smiled in approval.  She liked it.  She liked its whole shocking pink and lopsided self.  Next week, she'd come pick it up after its last firing.  

Then Anne interrupted her thoughts, "What are you going to do with another ashtray, Alice?  You don't even smoke.  And its lopsided to boot."

Alice sighed and rolled her eyes heavenward.  Sisters.  She finally replied, "'To each his own,' said the old lady as she kissed the cow, and the old man who peed in the sea to keep the boat from sinking."


Then she snorted.

Note: I have no idea what the story is behind this ceramic piece.  I just know that my Gran, Mary Alice (Truitt) Blacketer, made it, and that she did so after she was married.  I took creative license, but the names are real.  Also there were always stories about Aunt Vyla.  Always.  Further, one of my older sisters taught a ceramics class that I attended when I was younger, so I do know a little something about ceramics.  I did witness on occasion my Gran snorting [and quite unlady-like at that].  Yes, she did use the old-lady-cow-old-man-boat saying.  [You didn't think I made that up, did you?  Even I'm not that creative.]  And yeah, my grandfather was a jerk.  It seems I've got a lot of those. [Snort.]  Anywho, here it is, and I use it to hold my paper clips in my office.  It matches absolutely nothing.  It's worth nothing to most.  And it means the world to me.

Gran's Initials.

The lopsided base.

My Gran ~ Mary Alice (Truitt) Blacketer

© Copyright 2010, Caroline Martin Marshall Pointer

"I Have Believed...Impossible Things..."

"'Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.  Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I--I hardly know, sir just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'" [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 5 by Lewis Carroll]

I went to a little private elementary school in the small town that I'm from in Texas.  We wore red plaid jumper uniforms over white blouses with Peter Pan collars, and to top it off, black and white saddle shoes

with knee high socks.  It was a pretty good little school, and for the most part I was a good student.  However, every once and a while my Irish leperchaun would come out, and I'd get into some trouble.  [Hard to believe, I know.]  Many of these times I'd end up in the corner staring at the brick wall that was painted white.  [By the way, I like that decorative effect...]  Anyway, there was this built-in bookshelf that contained a large set of books.  Well, being the good student that I am [sarcasm], I became bored and decided to look inside one of these books.  To my surprise, there was an inscription that read "Donated by Mary Alice Truitt Blacketer".  The handwriting looked like my Gran's, but the only name I recognized was Blacketer...This was the first time that I ever saw her full name in print.  [You mean her name wasn't Gran Blacketer?]  As I've mentioned before Gran was Catholic.  So, of course, her first name was Mary.  [This is a joke for those of us who keep finding so many Mary's in our research.]    But  Alice?  Truitt?  Of course, later I asked her about the name Truitt, and she replied, "Dear [my Gran always started a story with this endearment], I am a Truitt.  It's my maiden name and Blacketer is my married name."  During the rest of her lifetime, I heard her mention this several times, and she'd always say it with a declaration of assurance..."I am a Truitt, " as if that explained everything.  [In my research later, I did find out what that meant...a story for another time.]  The name that has captured my interest right now is Alice.

"'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice"[from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2]

Not only is my Gran named Mary Alice, so is her mother, my Boo.  I even have a second cousin named Mary Alice.  Hmm...Just where does this name come from?  I never really thought much about it until I started researching my Boo's father [my great-great grandfather, Daniel Rook(e) Vaughn.  I wasn't looking for it, but I may have found the answer, but of course it's opened up some more questions...

"The White Rabbit put on his spectacles.  'Where should I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked.  'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'" [Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Chapter 12]

Daniel Rook(e) Vaughn was born in Ypsilanti, Washtenaw Co., Michigan in 11 Nov 1847.  The very first avenue of research on him was, of course, the U.S. Federal Population Census Schedule [accessed through Heritage Quest and Ancestry.com].  I found him and his family in 1850 in Ypsilanti, Washtenaw Co., Michigan .  His father was B.H. Vaughn 29yo  born in Canada, and his mother was Susanna 28yo born in New York.  They had 3 children: Prudence (5yo), Daniel (3yo), and last [but certainly not least] was Alice (under 1yo).  So then I looked to the 1860 census, and I was able to find Daniel, but he was living with a family by the name of Rook(e), who I have since found out were his grandmother, aunt, uncle, and his aunt's future husband on his mom's side.  Though I performed many searches, there was no sign of his family from 1850.  It was if they had fallen down a hole...

"Down, down, down.  Would the fall NEVER come to an end? 'I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud.  'I must be getting near the centre of the earth'..." [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Chapter 1]

I have since found Daniel's older sister Prudence.  She was living with a family by the name of Ogden in Shelby Co., Ohio [I'm pretty sure.], but I've lost her from there [possibly due to marriage, death, or moving out of the country].  As for the rest of the family, I have searched high, and I have searched low.  In looking at the history of the wee township of Ypsilanti, I did discover that there was a terrible fire in 1851 in the town proper.  However, there were no casualties mentioned -- just damages.  [Alexander Winchell, History of Washtenaw County, Michigan:... (Chicago: C.C. Chapman & Co., 1881), 1121. accessed through Heritage Quest Online].  So, I'm left with a missing family.  Were Benjamin, Susanna, and "baby" Alice casualties of the fire of 1851 in Ypsilanti?  Or did they succumb to some sort of disease?

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, " said the Cat.

"I don't much care where--" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Chapter 6]

I'm not sure what happened to Daniel's family.  I don't know why, but I always think of Daniel's sister as "my" Alice.  Maybe because she was so young...  The one thing that I know for sure is that I will never rest until I find "my" little Alice, for she has been on her adventure in her wonderland for far too long.  There have been three women named after her in my family [I think ;)], and it's about time that we found her.

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said : "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.  "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.  Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

[Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, Chapter 5]

[Note: All of the above quotes and original illustrations are from Lenny's Alice in Wonderland site.  The color illustrations are from Wikipedia.  All items are in the public domain due to copyright expiration.]

Caroline