The Lost Generation

The Lost Generation, also called the Generation of 1914, was born at the intersection of the premodern and modern worlds. Their lives were more media-saturated and consumerist than any prior generation by a significant margin, but they could easily recall their childhood days, during which electricity, flight, and automobiles were genuinely alien things. Many men of this era served in or otherwise witnessed the First World War, an industrialized conflict galling in its meaninglessness, preceding the disorienting aftermath of mass death, influenza, urban modernity, and the Roaring Twenties.

HOMER GREEN BLANKENSHIP. 1886–1961.     My paternal great²-grandfather. Homer Blankenship, known to his descendants as “Papa Blankenship”, was a West Tennessean livestock trader born in White Fern on July 23^rd, 1886, the second of the four children of William Floyd Blankenship (1859–1922) and Sarah Adeline Thomas (1860–1935). He lived in Beech Bluff and traded livestock for a living as well as maintaining a personal farm; he owned a mule barn in Arkansas and one locally in Beech Bluff. Homer married Maude Bowman in a ceremony solemnized by Rev. C. N. Mattock on February 17^th, 1906, and he had three children with her—Merdie Wilma (c. 1907–1909), Curtis Orbra (1908–1993), and Rafe Elco (1910–1983). Merdie died in childhood after eating a banana; Rafe Blankenship’s children, who told me this, also advised me that childhood deaths of obscure causes were often attributed to the last thing they ate.

Homer was a member of the Maple Springs Cumberland Presbyterian Church and Woodmen of the World at a time when the latter comprised life-insurance, sick benefits, parades/drill teams, and a local social network typical of rural fraternal life. He eventually retired from the livestock trade, but continued the supervision of his farm until his stroke of paralysis on December 10^th, 1950, at age sixty-four. For the final decade of his life, he was often confined to bed in increasingly poor condition. Many of his descendants primarily remember him this way; still, he was fondly recalled by his grandchildren, who often saw him sitting under a single oak tree in his front yard in a sweater and feeding robins with ground corn. He was a “colorful character” who “never met a stranger”, gregarious and outgoing; he gave local kids nickels to spend at the general store. Bill Blankenship described him as “calm” and “gentle” as well as a fun and cordial storyteller. Details he remembered were Homer’s preference for L&M cigarettes and his wearing of a .32 automatic pistol under his left arm, probably a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, as a relic of cash-and-carry trade where men routinely handled money and traveled.

During the final eighteen months of his life, Homer’s condition was critical. He had a hospital bed at home and was treated by Dr. Huntsman of White Fern. After five days of hospitalization at Lexington–Henderson County Hospital, he died on January 2^nd, 1961. His long period of limited physical activity and decline upset Rafe Blankenship, who admitted to his daughter that he wished never to die in such a way. However, Rafe did encourage his children to view Homer as he was lying in repose after his death as a way to accept his passing.

MAUDE ANN BOWMAN. 1889–1997.     My paternal great²-grandmother. Maude Bowman Blankenship, known to her descendants as “Mama Blankenship”, was the quiet, industrious mother to the Blankenship family of Beech Bluff. Born in Hardeman County, Tennessee, to James Thomas Bowman (1862–1949) and his first wife, Laura Ann Evans (1866–1912), as the third of their nine children, she spent most of her life in Beech Bluff, where she was married to Homer Blankenship by Rev. C. N. Mattock on February 17^th, 1906. There, she and Homer had Merdie Wilma (c. 1907–1909), Curtis Orbra (1908–1993), and Rafe Elco (1910–1983). Merdie died in childhood after eating a banana; Rafe Blankenship’s children, who told me this, also advised me that childhood deaths of obscure causes were often attributed to the last thing they ate.

Maude’s lifestyle was frugal and technologically conservative. She always walked, never obtaining a driver’s license; never had a television, instead listening to radio shows on a radio with a four-foot antenna; didn’t have running water until Homer installed it for her; and used and heated her house with a wood-burning stove. Her hobbies included gardening and canning vegetables: she made a superb corn on the cob, farmed tomatoes and juiced them into quart jars, and cultivated green beans. She wore hats, liked to sew, preferred Clove and Beech-Nut chewing gum, worked in the local school cafeteria serving foods such as rice and oysters, and excelled at cooking. Her grandchildren recalled her as calm, polite, and quiet, neither talkative nor outgoing. She passed away on Monday, July 4^th, 1977, in the company of Rafe and Curtis; her grandchildren remember her death-day as a Sunday, however, so it is possible she was ailing the previous day.