Cause A Frockus

Vintage Teeth (or All Up In My Retro Grill Part Two)

Sep 28, 2016 | by Ellen Dial

Ah yes, the story that must be told!  Remember my mention great Uncle John’s teeth?  Yes?  No?  Well I mention them here.

My great Uncle John, one of the dashing bachelor Cassidy boys;  his brother was Jim, married to great Aunt Minnie, she of the tiny waist.  He lived in the Cassidy home, with my beautiful and ever so interesting great Aunt Caroline, she of the jewelry and potential romance fame.

Great Uncle John supposedly died of the drink, but then there’s family legend that states great Uncle Jim Cassidy died of the drink.  Regardless, the drink was well entwined in the stories of these dapper gentlemen – they were quite handsome, I must say.  What with their bowler hats, walking sticks and starched collars.  Men certainly knew how to dress and have a “presence”, didn’t they?  Always so put together and dashing.  Not, you know, like now.

You may also recall, perhaps, the scandalous way they all lived in the family home – four beautiful young people, two married, two not.  All together.  Then there’s the shameful situation of cigars, the drink and the Sonka Café.  And who could forget the almost legendary chair!

Plus the lawn chair in the basement rumor… more on that later.

This story gets even crazier and more amusing.  How?  Vintage teeth.  Great Uncle John’s teeth.  If you want to know more, keep reading – it’s quite the story.

Golden Grill | Background

As mentioned, my great Aunts Minnie and Carrie shared the Cassidy family home with Minnie’s husband Jim and his brother John.  Both John and Carrie were perpetual singletons, though there’s family gossip that Carrie carried a torch for a certain Mr. Cahill for years.

Regardless, though fun to paint a salacious picture of the set up, it was pretty common back in the day – since women couldn’t live alone and maintain their virtue.  And as history tells us, a woman’s virtue was most important. Sigh.

The fearsome foursome lived together for many years.  Aunt Minnie and Uncle Jim never had children, though there’s a distressing story surrounding an extremely difficult still birth.  I’ve been doing some genealogical digging here, and there’s no documentation of this baby or its immediate demise.

The Uncles were handsome and just a little bit naughty.  What with their drinking, cigar smoking and visits to the infamous Sonka Café – which became a notorious speakeasy during the national hysteria of Prohibition..  In fact, Terre Haute has a rather checkered past in terms of crime, Al Capone and John Dillinger both passed through, and then there’s the Rod and Gun Club, a popular brothel.  Oh snap!

I can’t speak for uncle John’s Rod and Gun Club visits, but he was a regular at the Sonka Café, and I’m quite certain the visits were for medicinal purposes only.

Golden Grill | The Basement, a lawn chair and a small white box

Ok. Aunt Carrie, the longest lived of the Fearsome Foursome (I think it’s because she never married and never had children, but who am I to say?) finally shed her mortal coil in the 1970’s. The house she shared with the rest of the Cassidy clan was a veritable plethora of treasures.  Tiffany style lamps, stained glass windows, beautiful Victorian/Edwardian furniture and other goodies.  A trunk of rotted petticoats and other dainties turned up in the attic, as well as shattered tea gowns, too bad!  How much I would have loved to have them now!  One must also note:  the dozens of bags full of “pieces of string too small to save”.  Yet they were saved, definitely a string thing going on here as we’ll discover in a minute!

All these glories were sold at an estate auction, it frankly breaks my heart to think of it, but there you have it.

After the dreaded sale wrapped up, my wonderful Momma and equally lovely Uncle Jim Green ventured down to the basement to check out a retro tulip lawn chair – Great Uncle Jim, and his vices of drink and cigars, were relegated to the basement after they took the Royer children in.  So no more turn of the century man-cave with a comfy Morris chair. Just a dank basement.  Replete with a coal furnace, mangler and old time washing machine.

So, Momma and Uncle Jim braved the damp and cobwebs to check out the chair.  What did they find?

Most notably, a small white cardboard box, tucked away among the moldy detritus of almost 70 years.  And in it resided… Wait for it…

A scapula, holy cards, a white candle stub, small pieces of string and a full set of gold teeth – complete with the roots.  Teeth.  Gold.  Roots.  Gross!  OK, not actual gold teeth, but a full set of vintage teeth with a massive amount of gold dental work.  Apparently the teeth had been removed by the undertaker upon the demise of the owner.  Horrifying.

Vampire kit?  Weird religious stuff? Who knows!  Families are full of a myriad of craziness.

Both Momma and Uncle Jim were collectively intrigued and mortified, what the heck?  These HAD to belong to Uncle John.  They were not his brother’s!  No one remembered him having such an impressive array of gold dental work.

Momma took the odd parcel.  It’s unknown what happened to the cool lawn chair.

Golden Grills | The Outcome of This Strange Find

Some months later, Momma gathered the teeth, sans the religious trappings and plunked the teeth, inclusive of long roots, on the counter of a local jeweler  –  what could be made?

To that end, we’ve shared great Uncle John’s teeth.  Several interesting and beautiful pieces were created.  I still wear a lovely gold nugget pendent, graced with Momma’s engagement ring diamond (she’s been divorced for many, many years) and have a cool chain link bracelet with a heavy gold nugget charm.  Great Uncle John’s teeth.

Momma had a gorgeous necklace made – a golden disc with a stylized heart cut out of the upper right side.  She’s worn it almost every day for a good 30 years.  It’s a wonderfully creative piece.  Great Uncle John’s teeth.

We both get loads of compliments on our pieces and have an interesting and amusing tale to tell about how they came about.

It’s mind boggling to think about the amount of gold used in this dental work – and the money that went into it!  Also, they didn’t start using modern dental techniques and pain control until the early 1900’s.  Imagine the discomfort Uncle John endured to get the work done if it was performed around the time the included pictures represent.

---

To our dear readers:  What stories lurk in your family tree?  Have you re-purposed any old dental work or other oddities into something wearable and interesting?

The writer would like to thank:  Alice Dial, the memory of her Uncle Jim Green and her own somewhat dodgy memory.

---