Some of you may have arrived here because you are Betsy-Tacy fans. If so, there are more comprehensive sites you might want to visit. In particular, you'll want to check out the Betsy-Tacy Society.

http://www.betsy-tacysociety.org/

Still, I am a fan: I did, after all, buy the name betsytacy.com (without the hyphen). I have to justify it somehow. So I'll tell a little Betsy-Tacy story and leave it at that.

I find it funny that people always say "I thought I was the only one!" when they find out there is a whole Betsy-Tacy cottage industry catering to fans. These books were pretty widespread, especially when they were first published.

Still, Betsy-Tacy fans often read in isolation and, if you were like me, you might have been the only person you knew (other than an older cousin) who read the books. Maybe you were the only one to check the boosk out of the library...again, and again and again. Maybe the pressed clematis you left between the pages one year was still there the next. Maybe you knew that it was impossible to find the books in any store. Maybe your friends who (when they read at all) were devoted to books about forensics or veterinarians. So it seemed like you were alone.

Then you realize that Judy Blume (who wrote those bad-girl books that could get you in trouble) and Anna Quindlan (who, later, wrote those pert little articles in Newsweek) read them as kids and you realize that there is absolutely nothing unique about your experience. Hundreds and thousands of girls (and a boy or two) all over the country read these books. For a moment, you are disappointed.

But you think: So what? Nobody could really like them like you do. How could they? Could they really want to go to Vassar as much as you did after reading about Carney? Could they know what kind of perfume Mrs. Poppy prefers? Could they get excited when Chauncey Olcott came to town?

Yes and yes and yes.
But still.

For those of you who also answered yes, here is a little bit of true Betsy-Tacy minutia. Some years back, I lived in Buffalo, the home of Bick Kenney Kirch (Tacy). I knew from the beginning that she was buried there, but it took me six years to get out and see her grave. It's pretty weird to be hiking around a cemetery looking for someone you are not related to, but I'm glad I did it. I always felt a particular kinship with Tacy.

The Trek
As Sharla Scannell Whalen writes, "Bick and Charley Kirch (Tacy and Harry Kerr) were transferred from Minneapolis to Buffalo, New York in 1922 by the Muningswear Company" (480). A year after Maud and Bick's trip to Europe in 1968, Bick "passed away suddenly of cardiac arrest, on December 14, 1969. She was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Tonawanda, New York" (496)

Mount Olivet one of those mass-market sort of cemeteries that tries to show that it has panache by coming up with little names for everything. It caters to a very particular audience, primarily Catholics, and it conjured up a wealth of Catholic school memories for me. Bick is buried in the "Glorious Mysteries" section--you can locate below on the map, which doesn't exactly have a professional feel. The other "desirable" locations (as anybody who ever had to recite a decade of the rosary on those cheap plastic beads EVERY morning in October knows) are the Joyful Mysteries and the Sorrowful Mysteries. Glorious Mysteries were clearly the best--lucky Bick! Other people get stuck in the Joyful or Sorrowful or (even worse) lots K, A, M, T or the like. These lettered plots appear to be in a random order and certain letters are missing. What do they stand for? That too is a mystery. If I had to pick a plot, I'd like to be in the Angels Ext., which I presume is an extension of the Gdn. of Angels. It must include second or even third rate angels who didn't make it to the Gdn.

Once you have made it (with some difficulty) to the little highlighted patch of the Glorious Mysteries, you go to the close-up map that, even when it is full size, is nearly impossible to read. From there you wander over the flat ground until you find the graves you're looking for.

Here is Bick's grave:

Her husband has also been buried there:

The cemetery certainly isn't the prettiest in Buffalo, but at least it has a few trees and such. It was a nice day when I visited, a Buffalo spring, and there were lots of flowers out, although too many of them were tacky artificials.

That was my first Tacy trip. I'm glad I went.

Whalen also makes note of Tacy's Buffalo address: "Their home in Buffalo was at 103 Larchmont Road" (480) and, of course, I wanted to go there as well. I think this is it, since it is 103 Larchmont. It's a nice little neighborhood, very Buffalo.

And that's the end of it (until I make it to Mankato).