13-15.5/11-13 Rest Stop at Phoenix Cousin McPhee

This is a wedding photograph of our grandparents in 1874.
Bill McPhee is the third child of my father’s sister, my Aunt Bea McPhee. I spent many happy hours with Bill’s older brother, Anthony and sister Bea May in Minnesota fishing , playing, exploring the small town of Shevlin (pop. 200) near Bemidji in Northern Minnesota where they and our grandparents lived. Reminiscences of my grand parent’s house include priming the pump just outside the kitchen door, the wood-fired stove with its hot water cistern, boiling water in two hugh copper boilers for washing clothes on a corrugated washboard, a four-holer out in the wood shed with a pile of Sears catalogs at hand (my those pages were rough!), the big barn with horses and cows (needing to be milked every morning and evening) and old shays and wagons, and of course the fragrance of the fresh baked bread from my grandmother’s oven.
Where does Bill come in? He was the whiny little boy (5 years younger) that we wanted to lose while Anthony and I did big boy things (I was 8 or 9). Remember, you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it.





The old picture (about 1934) is a Pawek-Mcphee family picnic at Lake Itaska State Park (the headwaters of the Mississippi River). I am the little boy farther to the right in the picture. My grandfather (handlebar mustache) sitting between my father and mother, my grandmother is the lady in the foreground, while my aunt is under the hat with her two small children, Bea May & BILL. Anthony is sitting to next his grandmother. My other paternal uncle, Hugo, &his wife Helen are at the end of the table with me.




The McPhees live in a comfortable house on the west side of Phoenix. The picture is of a block party—after the sun has gone down, of course. Love that central air conditioning! Nancy is such an innovative and good cook, the neighbors depend on her to be the major chef. They have a colorful backyard (see pix above) with a pond with waterfall and of course a swimming pool. They love traveling in their motorhome especially to Minnesota for fishing and visiting relatives and to far away places like Newfoundland to pursue their genealogical research.
Our memories of our visit are of go-out-of-your-way-hospitality and Nancy’s wonderful cooking.