 "My,
my, how homesick this picture of the old home place makes me," Jewel
Wagner of Fairfax, Oklahoma, stated in 1993 when she was 87. "This is
Mommy (Aletha Artemis Collins, Hobson, Mrs. Nathaniel Hobson) standing
there on the porch and this is my sister, Dewey's boy, Ralph, standing by
Dad's little dog.
Penny was the dog's name. Dad sure loved
that little dog. He was a rat dog. He kept the place as clean from
varmints, we didn't have a one there to dirty things up. When Dad was
driving down the road, Penny would be beside him in the truck with his
front paws up on the dashboard. When Dad was working in the field, Penny
would wait by his truck, patiently, no matter how long it took Dad to
finish. Penny died of chasing a varmint down into its hole. He dug down
and the dirt caved in on him, by the time we found him, he was dead,"
Jewel remembered back over time with a nostalgia to grip one's heart.
Unless one has lived through these
circumstances an appreciation of the value of a dog like this could not be
understood. Varmints getting into chicken houses, destroying a family's
source of meat and eggs in one night could be a serious loss. Rats on a
farm are an impossible pest unless they are controlled. A dog like this
could mean the difference in a family's living clean and stable during a
time when any financial loss could be too much to endure for that family.
Aletha on the right, her sister Margaret, on
the left
Nancy Bellzona Collins, Mrs. Joseph Hubbard
Jones on the left
Her sister: Aletha Artemis Collins, Mrs Nathaniel Hobson, on the right.
Pity the child or adult who crossed these fiery women's paths with wrong
doing.
They believed in being "faithful to the end." The love they exhibited for
family and
God was unwavering.
From
a descendant of Nathanial and Aletha Collins Hobson...
The
youngest son of my grandfather Nathanial Edmond Hobson and my grandmother
Aleatha Artemis Collins, Eugene Debbs Hobson, my dad, died on 1 October
2006 at the age of 92, just two months short of his 93rd
birthday. He often talked about his aunt Bell, who was your
grandmother. My mom, who is 91, and my brother, Les, still live in
Richmond, California. I retired as professor emeritus of
oceanography from the University of Victoria in 2001 after my 65th
birthday. Since then, I continue to do some consulting work in
marine ecology, but most of my and my wife’s time is devoted to running
our small farm, where we husband egg-producing chickens, grow fruit trees
and berry bushes and lots of Christmas trees. Our son, Jason, works
for the Electronic Arts Corporation in Vancouver, British Columbia,
and he and his wife, Kamini, are expecting our first grandchild in late
August. Our daughter, Lauren, works for Parks Canada in Sidney,
British Columbia, and remains unmarried. Both graduated from the
University of Victoria and Jason, continued on and obtained a master of
science degree in physics from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
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