Martin Wineinger / Courtesy photo Josie Young, center, disappeared in 1967 and was never seen again. Her sister, Annie, right with hair covering and their niece, Helen Young, child in front, are pictured with other family members.

I don't know if it is because of the color - or lack of color - to my hair or the fact that I write about old, sometimes historic things around the area, but I get a lot of questions about early day people and things people cannot identify or about which they want more information.

Martin Wineinger of Sherman told me about a mystery involving a missing person back in about 1967. Josie Young, an aunt of his mother, Helen Young Wineinger lived east of Denison near what was known as the city dump where the town's trash was taken. One day she went for a walk in the area of Red River and was never seen again.

Josie had worked for the Denison Herald, but no one that I could find who is still around today remembers her on the job there. She was born in about 1881 so possibly it was in the early 1900s when she held that job.

She and her sister, Annie, were very close and neither of the girls ever married. Annie was born in 1886 and died in a Denison nursing home in 1974 never learning for sure what had happened to her sister. Annie worked in the office for Sidney Karchmer's Iron and Metal Company.

Martin said he had been told that Josie, when she was pretty elderly, had walked into the woods on that fateful day, into an area that she knew very well.

The Young's house was on a hill just west of the city dump. Martin remembers that it never had electricity, gas or running water. A cistern and buckets caught rainwater to provide water for the family. Martin said he remembered that Josie and Annie and their family picked up broken pottery from the Bluebonnet Katy Special a lot of the time.

Only possible remains of Josie were found by a young man walking through the woods when he had been hunting near Flagpole Hill and found a small Ike jacket like one that she wore hanging on a fence post. Some bones that were never identified also were found under a railroad trestle nearby.

Hanging tree

Joyce Edelen-Jarvis had a question that I couldn't answer, but maybe someone who lives in the area can tell me a story about it. An obituary ran in the Herald-Democrat recently for a woman whose had lived on property that extended to Fannin Avenue, where "the legendary Shannon Hanging Tree" was located.

The tree was supposed to have been in the middle of South Fannin Avenue and was removed from the roadway in the late 1960s by the Grayson County Road Department.

I remember as a teenager going out Fannin Avenue where there was a bridge that was supposed to have a ghost or a headless horseman or something like that. A few times some of us went out there hoping - or hoping not - to see it.

Joyce and I would be interested in hearing any stories about the Shannon Hanging Tree. My e-mail is d.hunt_903@yahoo.com or I can be called at 903-465-8412. Joyce can be contacted at jarvisbill@msn.com.

Washboarding

Last week when I attended a meeting of NARVRE (National Association of Retired &Veteran Railway Employees), Willis Whitten brought a bag with wooden legs sticking out to see if I could identify the item.

It looks sort of like an antique wooden washboard, except that the scrub board isn't galvanized steel it is wood and put together with square nails.

Willis' daughter, Nowana Blanton found the item sometime before 1979 in an old oil shack near Sherman. Willis' wife, Bonnie, said they took it to Bud Tucker who ran Tucker Furniture and Antiques Store next door to the Rialto. Bud told them it looked like a washboard to him. He advised the Whittens to put candle oil on it to preserve the wood.

If it is a washboard, it is just about past going and wouldn't stand much scrubbing on the round wire that was placed across the board in various lengths presumably to scrub the dirt from clothes. Washing with the old board would be a housewife's nightmare.

In 1979, John Crawford, then editor of The Denison Herald, wrote a page one column called "The Forum" and one day he used a column about Nowana's find. But the Whittens only received one reply and it was from an elderly woman who didn't know anything about the board either.

A check on the Internet said that in 1869 the New York Times called washboards "a great American invention" and ran a story about a man taking a wooden grooved washboard home to his sister in Germany as a novelty. The article said it was believed that ribbed wooden scrubbing boards originated in Scandinavia and their use spread to other countries during the 19th century.

At the turn of the 19th century, however, washboards were not yet standard household equipment in the United States.

No doubt if you had to wash your clothes in a creek, a washboard might come in handy, but it looks like an awful lot of work to me and calling it "A great American invention" seems like a gross misuse of words.

I've had a couple through the years, but they were not for washing clothes. I decorated or tole painted them to hang in my laundry room, never to be touched by scrubbing hands or dirty clothes.

Whoever made the board the Whittens now have had a great idea and either didn't know about the grooved metal ones or couldn't afford one. I pity the poor woman, and I'm sure it was a woman, who washed dirty clothes on it. Thank goodness for modern washing machines that do the job with a little detergent added.

If anyone has information about a wooden washboard, Willis would love to hear it. He can be reached at 903-465-7371, or I can be contacted at the above e-mail or phone.

DONNA HUNT is a former editor of The Denison Herald. She can be contacted at d.hunt_903@yahoo.com.