Mother was born Oct. 17, 1921, which means she would be 103 had she not died in 2015. While rooting around in some old boxes, I discovered some photos of her that I had never seen before.
I love this shot of her wearing a jaunty hat and a saucy smile. It was a tiny print that still had tape around the edges, so it must have been pasted in something.
8 or 9 at house that burned
A note on the back said she was 8 or 9 in this picture in front of her family’s house in Advance that burned. I don’t know any details.
1938 graduation pictures
This sequence was slugged “1938,” so I have to assume this was when she graduated from high school.
A pack of den mothers
Mother was a Pack 8 den mother. She’s in the back row, second from the right.
She the only one with a medal pinned on her. It might have been a Purple Heart for injuries sustained while herding a bunch of Cub Scouts around.
Christmas in the dining room
Mary Steinhoff Xmas
We called this side of the living room the dining room, even though I pretty much sure we never dined there. In fact, we hardly ever lived in the living room except for special occasions.
We were kitchen, basement and porch folks.
A pensive moment
She’s all dressed up, but I don’t know where she was going.
Slipping in a Dad and Mark moment
LV and Mark Steinhoff at Easter
I don’t want to steal Mother’s thunder, but this never-before-remembered shot of Dad and Mark at Easter is going to become one of my favorites.
Lots of Mother links
Mother was the subject of many blog posts.
Here are some links I pulled together for her obituary.
Dad travelled quite a bit looking to buy used heavy equipment for his next job. He’d pore over auction and sales catalogs until he had made a list of possible buys; then, he’d saddle up his pony and take off to see if the equipment was suitable and in good condition.
He told me one time that if you were going to stay in the construction business, you had to work the margins: one piece of equipment too many or one too few, or one worker too many or one too few could mean the difference between making deadlines, and profits and loss.
He had a good track record of paying a good price for a bulldozer or dragline, using it on a job, then selling it for what he had paid for it or more.
Disputing a charge
LV Steinhoff credit card receipts 1977
One file folder I ran across had many exchanges between Dad and his credit card company over a Cullman, Ala, Days Inn charge that had been double-billed.
The amount in dispute was $14.71. Like I said, it was all about the margins. Nobody was going to soak Dad for $15.
Look at these amounts
I’m sure Dad gritted his teeth before paying a Best Western in Americus, Ga., $21.20. I can remember the first time I stayed in a place that gouged me $24.99 (plus tax).
The Guest House Hotel in Bushnell, Fl., was a more reasonable $12.48, and even the Cullman Days Inn wouldn’t have been bad at $14.71 if they hadn’t tried to charge him twice.
Expense account confessions
LV Steinhoff credit card receipts 1977
I was a collector of receipts, even if I didn’t use them on a particular trip. I was especially fond of Waffle Houses because they were almost everywhere, and they didn’t have any identifying marks on them.
Not all my staffers were as diligent about keeping track of receipts, so I went to an office supply store and bought one of each receipt pads they stocked. Rather than having accounting kick back a report that was light on backup, I’d give the staffer some receipt books, and say, “Fill in the holes, but don’t use the same book in multiple towns, and don’t keep them in numerical order.”
I learned that from Dad
Dad’s partners were great at what they were great at, but they were a little light when it came to business matters.
At tax time, Dad sat them down and said, fill out your expense diaries to account for what you spent to the best of your knowledge. Don’t use the same pen to fill out the entries. Here are black, blue, green and red pens. Vary them.
They followed his directions
When he looked at their diaries, they had followed his directions.
Exactly.
The entries were black, blue, green and red; black, blue, green and red; black, blue, green and red….
That’s when I learned that you can never be too careful giving directions.
“Find the jacket”
Florida-born Sarah Steinhoff shovels snow on Christmas Eve 2000 while I watch in my field jacket
When I left on an out-of-town assignment, the weather was supposed to be warm at my destination. Unfortunately, a cold front moved through and caused the mercury to plummet.
It’s hard to take sharp photos when you a shivering, so I dropped into an army surplus store and picked up a field jacket for less than fifteen bucks.
Accounting kicked it back saying that we don’t pay for clothing items.
I reworked my report and shot it back.
“This is for the same amount as your first report,” accounting said.
“Find the jacket,” was my answer.
That coat is still one of my favorite pieces of clothing, even if it HAS managed to shrink in the dark of the closet over the years.,
Every family has stories that may or may not be true. Dad often told a story about pulling his toy wagon full of sheet music for the woman who accompanied the silent movies at the Broadway theater.
We all dismissed that as his version of walking 12 miles to school in waist-deep snow (uphill both ways.)
Eventually, Mother sent me the obit of the woman who HAD played music at the silent movies. I guess he wasn’t just funnin’ us with his tale.
Dad and the basement boat
I don’t ever recall Dad mention the boat he built in the basement at Themis Street before discovering he couldn’t get it through the door. That strikes me as a story no man would tell on himself.
I was never able to determine if the tale was true, and all the folks I could ask are no long with us.
Then, I ran across a couple of Missourian classified ads from 1944. The one at the top of the page was to sell a new, 12-foot row boat; table top model radio, $25; electric jig saw, $10; and one 4 and one 6 cylinder magneto.
Maybe he HAD gotten the boat out of the basement, and maybe that’s why he was also able to sell the jig saw.
Bicycles for sale
1944 LV Steinhoff classified advertising
About the same time, he was trying to sell two pre-war bicycles, like new. (And the boat.)
Mother with bikes
Mary Welch Steinhoff holds her bike and one belonging to L.V. Steinhoff in front of the garage in Advance, MO. They rode the bikes from Cape Girardeau to Advance shortly after they were married.
Decades later, she still talked about how their legs cramped up from the 36-mile ride.
The first year I started serious biking, I did the 72-mile round trip in their memory. I had quite a bit of long-distance cycling under my saddle by then – including at least one 100-mile day, so I fared better than they did.
Another bike photo
Mary Steinhoff and LV Steinhoff w Roy E Welch in background – Rolla MO 1942
Here’s Dad on a bike. Mother’s dad, Roy Welch, is looking through the screen door in the background.
I think that Advance ride dampened their enthusiasm for long two-wheeled expeditions.
I ran across some snippets of letter between Dad and Mother mixed in with business correspondence.
My parents weren’t particularly demonstrative (maybe that’s where I got it), but they conveyed their closeness in shared moments and glances.
This series was part of a photo book I put together documenting Christmas 1969.
A letter from Mother
Based on the fact that it’s on Markham and Brown stationary, this must have been written shortly after they were married. I’m not sure if she sent it to Dad or to her parents.
“I wish everyone could be as happy as I am all my life. I had most everything I wanted and now I still have what I want. I don’t see how it can last forever. I am twice as happy as I ever expected…”
Mother buries the lead
Newspaper writers constructed their scribblings in what was called the “inverted pyramid” style, meaning that the most import elements were at the top, making it easy for an editor to trim from the bottom if space was tight.
If you put the important thing at the bottom, it was caused “burying the lead (spelled lede in journalistic jargon). Friend Jan says I’m bad about doing that.
Anyway, in this undated letter to Dad, Mother lists all kinds of mundane things she had taken care of, then, in her buried lede, she says, “Thank you for a nice day. So glad you made me a mother. Love MLS.”
Making memories
In 2012, I discovered this frame.
I wrote, “I don’t remember taking it, probably because the moment didn’t mean as much to me then as it does now. I often say that some days you make pictures; other days you make memories. This was one of those cases when I’m glad I made a photograph that lets me fill in a memory that I DIDN’T make at the time.”
That’s one of the shared moments I mentioned in the lede.
