Granny's Memories (Part I)

She was born in 1912, the same year the Titanic went down, and if she'd have lived, she would have been 100 this November. She was the ninth child (and eighth daughter) of John Paul and Christina. With so many older sisters, how could she have been anything but indulged? She described her childhood as a happy one, living in the house that her father,(a carpenter) built on Sangamon Street in the south-side Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, which was then a thriving community. 

The House on Sangamon Street

The family was doing well.  There was a player piano in the parlor and a Tiffany-style light with a stained-glass fruit design over the dining room table.  Her mother kept a beautiful flower garden and a chicken coop in the backyard - but let's have her tell the story from a letter she wrote to me in 1978 for my eldest daughter Melissa's first Christmas:

Ethel in the Chicken Coop

"Mother had chickens she kept in the backyard in a chicken coop my father built (which later was given up for a garage Father built for his brand new, shiny, black Model T ford) so we always had very fresh eggs for breakfast. Milk would be delivered to our doorstep in glass bottles by the milkman and, in the winter, if it wasn't brought in the house soon enough, it would freeze and pop up out of the bottle with the cap sitting on the top. It was not homogenized in those days so the cream would always be on top, and we would either shake it up to mix the cream with the milk or pour the cream off the top for our coffee, which my mother usually did. There was always butter on the table, too. No one knew about cholesterol in those days, so our diet was rich in eggs, meat, cream and butter."

Father's Model T

"I remember every Saturday night, the familiar smell of home-baked goodies would fill the house. Mother would make a big batch of yeast dough. Sometimes she would make bread and coffee cake: one with cinnamon and sugar and one with apples, cinnamon and sugar on top, and sometimes she would make bread and doughnuts rolled in granulated sugar. They were the best raised doughnuts I ever tasted. On Sunday morning, we would have a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs and homemade bread dipped in hot bacon grease (mmmm, was that ever good) and homemade coffee cake or doughnuts."

Mother & Ethel

"I remember when we would gather around our player piano and sing songs. I always got to pump the pedals and sometimes I would pretend I was playing the piano myself by running my fingers up and down the keyboard. I did take piano lessons for about six years and could play pretty well. My father would love to sit back in his easy chair, smoke his corn cob pipe and have me play all my pieces for him. I also played marches in school for the kids to march to: in the morning, at recess, and going home."

 "These are the memories that stand out in my mind of when I was a little girl. I also have wonderful memories of when our three little girls were little, but that's a whole other story . . ."

Ethel's Family

Remembrances for My Daughters

Over the past few weeks, I've attempted to create a blog. I've had more than my share of false starts. I created a page, a title, chose color and graphics, only to realize that I had nothing unique to impart, nothing to say that hadn't already been said before. Our world has been inundated by people with opinions and clever points-of-view. We've reached a saturation point. That's my opinion, at least. I decided that I don't want to waste what's left of my life on repetitious musing. The fact is that the people who love me are likely the only ones who will genuinely care to hear about life from my perspective, and so I've decided to write a memory blog for my children . . . and for their children, too.
 

Near the end of her life, it occurred to me that I didn't know nearly enough about my grandmother. When someone is so much a part of your life, you don't realize how much you don't know about them. She was living in Arizona, and when she came to visit for the summer, I would ask her questions about her past. What was her childhood like? How did her family celebrate the holidays? What kind of house did she grow up in?

We pored over old family photographs, and I asked her to identify the faces. On some days, she couldn't remember at all, but then a day or two later, she'd give a name without hesitation. That's how it is with memories. They're not like photograph albums that you can just pull off the shelf whenever you like. Sometimes they're there. Sometimes they're not. That's why they call them "fleeting".


I didn't learn nearly enough from her, and then it was too late. What I wouldn't give to have her back again to share more of her stories and to tell her what I've been able to discover about the history of her family, things that she never knew but that I was able to piece together using the memories she shared with me and the genealogical information available now on the Internet.

In our busy lives, the important things like memories often get lost. So documenting our family stories for my girls seems a worthwhile use of blog space.  I can't promise that there will always be timely posts because sometimes life intrudes upon the best-laid plans, and I can't promise that there will be total recall because my brain doesn't seem to work that way.  What I can promise is that I will do my best to eventually document all the stories and pictures and memories that I've managed to collect and every now and again send you these postcards from the past.