Rosemary's Story

(First ten pages – rough draft)

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Chapter 10

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Centenarian

Rosemary Westbrook, 100

"I’m an only child. Just me. Only child. Spoiled brat.”

 

July 21, 2023

If it's OK, I'd like to pull up that chair to get nice and close so I can hear you well. 

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That is an antique chair. Grandpa Custer made that chair about a hundred years ago.

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Oh, well, then I probably shouldn't sit in it.

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No, no, no. It's been sat in for a hundred years.

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Oh, my goodness. It’s beautiful.

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Grandpa Custer was an interesting person. He was, first of all, a farmer. He was also a musician, carpenter, and jeweler. All those things. It was a different world then. People didn't specialize as much. You had to be able to step up and do whatever was to be done. Pretty much everybody had to be a carpenter because they made their things. He made a little chair for me. One time, when Mother was being silly, she sat in it, and it broke. And I said, "Mama break, grandpa fix."

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Grandpa Custer had a farm in Ohio; not a big farm, but a little bit, as most everyone did in those days because big stores like Publix didn’t exist. He had a jewelry store, and he made violins. I have pictures of him in his workshop, if you want to call it that. He had all these violins strung around. He was supposedly very good at making violins.

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So anyway, my grandpa on my mother’s side was Theophilus.

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Theophilus?

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Yeah. Theophilus Bernard Custer.

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Wow, that's a name. 

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Yeah. Bernard. B-E-R-N-A-R-D. Custer. C-U-S-T-E-R. 

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Where did his family migrate from?

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Well, I still need to get complete information on that, but I've discovered Germany through Pennsylvania or Ohio. Which a lot of people did. I did a good bit of genealogy research, but it's hard to find stuff way, way, way back. And this was way, way, way back in the 1860s.

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Most of my ancestors were from Ohio. Did you ever hear “Westward Ho?”[1] It was prominent many years ago; that was the movement in the U.S.: “Go West, young man.”[2]

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Family Moving West

So, many people did go west as a result of the Homestead Act of 1862.[3] My father’s people went only to Nebraska. They had some kind of commercial transportation part of the way, like railroads, but the last was in a covered wagon. As they approached the destination, the wife jumped out of the wagon, ran ahead, and fired a gun to alert their family of their arrival. They were joining relatives who had already settled in Pawnee City,[4] Nebraska.

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My father was maybe six at the time and had three sisters, Angeline, Adeline, and Caroline. His name was John, but his sisters called him “Strychnine” to rhyme with their names. I think a younger sister was born after they arrived in Nebraska, but I haven’t been able to get information about her.

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After Father’s High School

After he got out of high school, my father went to college. He stayed in Pawnee until he could get his education and work a little. He taught school for a while until he had saved up enough money to be able to go, and then he left home, changed his name, and never returned to Nebraska.

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He was alone and wanted nothing to do with his family from that time forward. 

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I always assumed one of the reasons my father left home was that his father may have been a preacher. I don’t know this for sure, but for some reason, his father thought music was evil and would not allow my father to play the violin, which he wanted to do, or to be involved in music. I don't know why his father was so against music. 

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My father was in Arizona for a while, but then he went to California around the time of the Gold Rush.[5] Have you heard of the Alaskan Gold Rush? Before that, there was one in California. Until recently, I didn’t even realize there had been a gold rush in California. Well, he ended up in Alaska. I had a little gold nugget from there one time. I don't know how I can be so careless and stupid, but I keep losing all these relics I should be saving. 

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He traveled through California, Nebraska, Alaska, Arizona, and, for a while Puerto Rico. 

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My father wanted to perform, and he did once he got to California; I have pictures of him in a costume performing in plays and musicals. It was always music. That was the story of his life, to disassociate himself from his family. He was on his own and did well. 

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He spoke Spanish fluently and enough German to communicate because he traveled the world.

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He worked for banks and all kinds of different places. Once, he went from Miami on a boat with a group of newspaper people to Mount Pelée.[6] He was among the first to land on the Caribbean Island of Martinique after it erupted. My father sometimes worked as a newspaper reporter, and that’s why he contacted my mother about interviewing her father for his violin making. 

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My father, John W. Swift, was always called Jack – never Daddy. As a kid, I said, "Well, if everybody else calls him Jack, I can, too." 

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They said, "No, no, you can't do that," so there was a big controversy. Finally, my mother came up with a somewhat solution. "You can't call him Jack, but you can call him Daddy Jack."

 

Anyway, my father had written his life story, which I had after he passed away. It was basically about Alaska and inspired by the gold rush there. So, I rewrote it and then sent my revised copy to “Alaskan Woman” magazine, which they accepted. Then they ran out of money, and it was never published, but it was at least good enough to be accepted.

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In the later part of his life, my father thought he had enough money saved to live on. Then the Depression hit, and he realized he didn’t. So, he was able to go back to Washington, D.C., and get a job with some people he had known.

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My mother refused to live full-time in D.C., but we would live there in the summer. I was exposed to the type of things he read that I would probably have never read as a child.

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“An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!”[7]

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“You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”[8]

 

The group that came to Florida included my mother and father and me, my Grandma Margaret, Grandpa Custer, Aunt Alta, and her two brothers (one was Uncle Gary).

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I couldn’t say “Alta,” so I called her “Atchi.”

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They stayed in Arkansas for a short period, then left for Florida. And it wasn't just one person, but the whole family, who all lived, if not in the same house, at least in the same territory. It was an entourage of people who came to Florida.

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They were all carpenters, and they started building a garage apartment when the hurricane of 1926[9] hit. Parts of the apartment ended up all over the neighborhood. So, they said, "No more two-story buildings. Everything now is close to the earth." That was my introduction to Florida. Everything crashed about that time.

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My mother was born Blanche Rene Custer.[10] My father was born John Everett; he later changed his name to John Swift. Why he chose Swift, I never knew. 

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I was born in 1923. My mother was twenty-eight. John Swift was thirty-six.

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I was about three when we moved to Florida. Well, we got here just at the end of the land boom,[11] a little too late to benefit from it. 

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Footnotes

[1] The name of the book "Westward Ho!" is derived from the traditional call of boat taxis on the river Thames, which shouted out "Eastward ho!" and "Westward ho!" to show their course. The word "ho!" was used as a cry or interjection to attract customers, without any literal meaning apart from an exclamation – like "hey!" or "come!" It also references the drama Westward Ho! written by John Webster and Thomas Dekker in 1604. It lampooned the perils of Londoners expanding West.

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[2] The phrase "Go West, young man" has often been attributed to the American author and newspaper editor Horace Greeley, who wrote in 1865 about America's westward expansion. "Washington D.C. is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting, and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”

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[3] President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862, greatly influencing the demographics and growth of the Western U.S. States like Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas were particularly affected by this legislation. It allowed many individuals, including immigrants and formerly enslaved people, to obtain land and start anew. However, the act also had detrimental effects on Native American communities as it contributed to the further loss of their lands and traditions. The Act lasted until 1976, but its impact lessened over time due to diminishing available public land.

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[4] Pawnee City, located in Pawnee County, Nebraska, serves as a city and county seat, with a population of 854. The townsite was officially platted in the spring of 1857, following its designation as the county seat in November 1856. In 1858, Pawnee City became an incorporated town named after the Native Americans. By the 1880s, it had become a bustling railroad town where two major railroad lines intersected. However, a devastating fire on August 9, 1881, destroyed two-thirds of downtown Pawnee City. In response, downtown was reconstructed with fireproof materials.

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[5] In 1848, when James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, the news of its discovery sparked an influx of around 300,000 people throughout the U.S. and beyond. This surge of gold into circulation boosted the American economy, leading to California becoming a state as part of the Compromise of 1850. Unfortunately, these effects devastated Californian residents, leading to population decline through violence, starvation, and disease.

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[6] The active volcano, Mount Pelée (or Mont Pelée), is at the northern end of Martinique, an overseas department and island in the Caribbean's Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc. Its volcanic cone comprises stacked layers of cooled ash and rock from lava flows. The most recent eruption in the 20th Century occurred in 1932.

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[7] From “Mandalay,” by Rudyard Kipling. The English novelist, journalist, poet, and short-story writer was born on December 30, 1865, in the Bombay Presidency of British India. His birthplace served as the inspiration for much of his writing. Some of his most well-known works include the Jungle Book series (The Jungle Book in 1894 and The Second Jungle Book in 1895), Kim in 1901, and the Just So Stories in 1902. He also wrote numerous other short stories such as “The Man Who Would Be King” in 1888. His poetry includes famous pieces like “Mandalay” and “Gunga Din” from 1890. He died on January 18, 1936.

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[8] "Gunga Din" is another poem by Rudyard Kipling, written in 1890 and set in British India. Its final line, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din," is often quoted and remembered.

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[9] The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 was a powerful tropical cyclone that caused extensive damage to the Greater Miami area, the Bahamas, Southern Florida, and parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast. The destruction it caused led to the end of Florida's land boom and marked an early start to the Great Depression (1929-1939) in the state. It is believed that the hurricane formed in the central Atlantic Ocean around mid-September and steadily grew stronger as it tracked west-northwestward, reaching hurricane intensity north of the Virgin Islands. It kept intensifying until it reached peak strength, equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane. It passed through the islands, destroying hundreds of structures and leaving thousands homeless.

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[10] Blanche Rene Custer was born in Ohio in 1895.

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[11] During the 1920s, Florida experienced its first real estate boom. From 1924 to 1926, investors flocked to the state to get in on the action and take advantage of rapidly appreciating property values. Several cities, including Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah, Miami Springs, Opa-Locka, Miami Shores, and Hollywood, were forever changed by this land rush. The events of the Florida land boom have striking similarities to those during the 2000s boom in terms of the influx of outside speculators, easy access to credit for buyers, and high home price appreciation – before crashing spectacularly and leaving many investors and homeowners destitute. This period shaped the future of Florida for decades to come.