Family

The only period of my life when we lived near family was when we lived in Louisville in the 1950s and my parents took advantage of that to park me with my grandparents (on my mother’s side. ) My grandmother was a wonderful cook and baker. She was able to do something magical to scrambled eggs that none of us cousins have ever been able to work out.

My mother was a terrible cook and the aunt I saw most, F__, was a better cook and baker, but a challenging personality -- she’s still alive and just as challenging at 93. One summer we visited them in St Louis and F__ made a cherry pie, one of my favorites. Unfortunately, it didn’t come out of the oven until late, after my bedtime, but I begged to be able to have a slice of the way-too-hot pie -- which burned the hell out of my mouth -- but was so delicious. I suspect my mother’s feelings were hurt.

My mother could not make meringue to save her life and we finally convinced her to give up and just leave her lemon pies bare. I was always eager to eat F__’s meringue pies as they were so soft and fluffy where my mother’s meringue was like taffy. Fortunately, chess pie -- probably my favorite -- doesn’t require meringue so my mother could make it with no problem.

My mother’s diet

I might as well explain my mother’s diet, and its consequences now. For reasons that, according to family tradition, go back to something or other that happened to my grandmother while she was pregnant with my mother, my mother’s diet consisted of: Milk, Coca Cola, orange juice, saltine (and similar) crackers, Cheez Its, and Hershey Bars. She would occasionally drink a beer (draft) or Ginger Ale or bullion (when ill) or eat yellow cake (but not the chocolate icing that went with it.) Over time she would somehow add something new like Goldfish snack crackers but that was highly unusual. When she was over 80 she added a nutritional drink called Boost. That was her diet. As far as I know, she never consumed anything green in her life. The interesting thing about this diet is that, while it isn’t really good, there’s nothing really bad in it either. And she did live to be 86.

The consequence of this diet for my dad and I, besides making eating out tricky, was that, while she would cook for us following recipes, she never tasted what she prepared. “Season to taste” was a meaningless phrase for her. Some of her dishes were actually great but most tended to be rather bland.

My grandfather was a bitter man worn out by life in the restaurant business and the understandable burden of having raised three daughters. My grandmother’s father lived with them until he died. 

The three sisters -- my mother in the middle and F__ on the right. Their father behind and their grandfather to his left.

My great grandfather was always referred to as Grandaddy while my grandfather was Papa. Grandaddy was much more interesting than Papa having worked his whole life on Ohio River boats between Louisville and Cincinnati. He made his own beer during Prohibition and belonged to multiple men’s social groups/secret societies like the Red Men.

The IORM and similar groups were very popular in the early 20th century. They were really into badges and ribbons, many of which I have to this day.

Some strange artifacts of that period.

But my great grandfather was really old by the time I knew him and then he died. My grandfather mostly smoked cherry tobacco in a pipe and kept a pile of rocks next to his chair on the front porch so he could throw rocks at any neighborhood dogs that came into his yard. Since nearly the whole family were animal lovers this didn’t make him too popular.

So mostly I was parked with my grandmother which meant I had to do chores with her. She grew grapes so she could make her own preserves, which we cousins helped her cook and put up into paraffin sealed bottles. But mostly I helped her with the laundry which she did on the same day every week in this ancient, tub style, washer with a ringer.

The ringer was famous in our family because my aunt F__ had gotten her arm caught in it when she was a child. (She also got polio just when she was having her own children and managed to get both glaucoma and macular degeneration in her old age -- the woman is a survivor if nothing else).

After ringing the clothes out, we carted the wet clothes and sheets out to the garage and hung them up on clothes lines that ran between the garage and the house with the kind of clothespins without moving parts or metal springs. It was a lot of work. But at least I was eating well which in more than I could say at home. The down side was having to watch soap operas. My grandmother was addicted to her soap operas. Guiding Light and As the World Turns were her favorites, as I recall.

Me with my grandparents in front and my Alabama cousins in back.

Cousins

We never spent much time with family on my dad’s side. His mother was dead by this time and his father had left when my dad was still a child and was now living in California. I never met either one of  them.

At this time my mother was working at the real estate office of my dad’s cousin, N__.  My dad had a half brother but I don’t ever recall meeting him, though I did meet his kids and widow a couple times years later. But mostly we associated with my mother’s kin, most of whom had already moved away from Louisville. 

The three sisters: My mother on the right and F__ on the left.

My aunt F__ would end up in Minnesota so I think of that family as the Minnesota Cousins and the others as the Alabama Cousins. I spent much more time with the Minnesota Cousins, especially after the family Civil War -- during the mid-’60s the pro-civil rights Northerners and Westerners (us) pretty much stopped speaking to the anti-civil rights Southerners -- but back in the '50s I was really fond of the Alabama Cousins because they were older and Southern and both pretty girls when I first knew them. They would swoop in with their mother -- the oldest and favorite of the three sisters -- and their larger than life-size father. The photographs I’ve inherited from my parents confirm that C__, the younger cousin, was usually in the skimpiest of outfits while her older, and probably prettier, sister was usually looking fine. As the baby, I got plenty of attention and was entirely smitten.

My Minnesota cousins were older than me but closer to my age. B__ was closest to me and seemed to be jealous of the excessive number of presents I, as an only child, received at Christmas, while I thought having an older sister must be the best thing ever. Their mother was the baby of that generation and was often the odd-girl-out. Their father was also larger-than-life but in an out-of-control and slightly disconcerting way. He was a 8mm film enthusiast and was always pestering everyone to pose for these silent recordings. B__ put a bunch of these films on tape and it’s amusing how the kids appear more and more sullen in front of the camera as they progress into their teenage years.

Dothan

When my oldest cousin, J__, got married in Dothan, Alabama in 1959, the whole family traveled down for the event. We flew by jet to New Orleans and then by Convair CV-240 to Panama City...

The whole nuclear family ready to board.

A better shot of the aircraft type.

... stopping at every little town in between. The cabin was tiny and the engines roared and the takeoffs and landings were near vertical, but it is still my favorite flight ever. Visiting the Alabama cousins always involved a tour of my uncle’s International Harvester dealership and a ride in his pink, Lincoln Continental to go deep sea fishing off Panama Beach. His car was the only one I knew at that time with power windows and his air conditioning had this peculiar smell, some combination of mildew and fish perhaps. I think this was the last time the entire family was together.

My Alabama aunt, the eldest, was always referred to in the family as Sis. She died of Lupus in 1965. The family as a whole was held together by Sis and my grandmother, when they both died (same time as Civil Rights) things were never the same again.

Bloomington

In 1999, after my dad died, I moved my mother to Bloomington, Minnesota where she lived in an apartment directly above my aunt at Gideon Pond, an independent living facility run by Presbyterian Homes. Besides the phone, they could communicate by pounding on the floor/ceiling. My cousins and their kids all lived in the area and could check in on the two of them. I visited periodically and stayed for weeks when my mother's health started failing in 2003 prior to her death. These years were actually pretty great for me because it was the first time I'd really had an extended family since I was a child.

On the other hand, we cousins also learned at this time that my aunt had been holding a grudge against my mother dating all the way back to my parent's wedding. Something to do with the lack of an invitation or something. As the Mormons say, "Family, it can be really fucked up at times."