2001-07-17 - 11:29 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Grandma

Lost in the mists of time, biographical facts are sometimes an unknown thing. Not to be recovered as anyone who knew is long gone.

My Grandmother was 65 years old in 1948 or 1949 when she died which would have her born in 1883 or 1884. Her daughter, my Mother was as old as the year dying in 1943 at the age of 43. Her brother was several years younger than her.

So, at the age of 16 or 17 Grandma a West Virginia girl married a refugee from Ireland, supposedly a political one, but who knows. Seems like my Mother came at the appropriate time after the marriage.

Last known of my grandfather by blood was when he took my Mom out of her carriage, set her on the sidewalk and proceeded to sell the carriage and leave town. Leaving grandmother with two kids to raise on her own.

Things are dim here, I know they lived in Shreveport, Louisiana and then later in Texas, Houston I think. From what Mom said, she worked at the Rice Hotel in her teens.

Not much was ever said about the privations of that time other than it was hard for Grandma to feed the kids and clothe them and that when Mom went to work it helped a lot.

Somewhere in that time Grandma took the correspondance course from Lewis and passed her tests. Lewis was a school dealing with hotelling. I think Grandma and the kids moved to Denver for the job opportunity at the hotels here. She became the housekeeper at one of the old line Denver hotels. Her wages were apparently the kind of wages paid women at that time, low. She told me once that she had trouble sheltering, clothing and feeding two kids on her wages. She said that at one time the two cheapest edibles available were bananas and ice cream, and that she had two happy kids for that period of time.

Reading between the lines in a way, it seems to me that my Mom didn't find work here until just before she married my Dad.

Looking back, thinking about what little I know about her, then about the conditions of that time, I marvel at this lady's fortitude and chutzpah to accomplish what she did.

By the time I became fully aware she had obtained a housekeeper job at the Franciscan Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico and a considerable raise in wages.

Eventually Mom's papers came to me and after Grandma's death her papers also came to me. Over the years since Grandma went to New Mexico, she and my Mom kept up a correspondence, a thing of mutual love and support. Greeting cards back and forth. I remember her greeting cards to me, as well as presents at the usual times.

Grandma had a complicated life, deserted by her first husband, made a widow by her second, she met at the hotel a hard rock miner and a prospector. A respectable and gentle man, they married and he took a job at a Molybdenum mine as the assayer and comissary keeper. Prospecting in his spare time.

They had a good life, living in a little town near his work. Grandma helped him build their adobe house, a non-traditional one, framing, chicken wire on the innersides of the joists and the adobe mud with straw stuffed in between the outer and inner stretches of chicken wire. They put a peaked roof on the house.

Then Grandma planted a garden, got a goat and proceeded to house keep on an individual level. Her water came from a creek running past her house, her light, heat and cooking was done using kerosene. Most of her fine work was done during the day in dribs and drabs while resting from her physical work outside. Too dark in the evening for sewing and things like that.

When I arrived at the age where it was deemed that I could behave and take care of myself when out alone, my summers were spent at her place. Amongst other things, she had to cope with this smart ass, rebellious kid.

War came and sometime during that my Step Grandpa died. Grandma sold their place in New Mexico and moved to Denver. She took out a loan to buy a big old house and proceeded to live in a small portion of it and rented the rest to roomers. For the rest of her years she lived a spartan life.

She sold her equity in that house and proceeded to buy into another one in a better part of town where she operated the same way.

Taking what few facts are available, writ in the results of her life are the few things in existence that can attest to how kind, loving and gentle she truly was. Her love was quietly demonstrated by the things she did. A rather gruff manner and stern appearance, her heart throbbed with love and concern for others.

She bought a house, in a poorer part of town for Heather and I. It was a decent and livable place in a respectable neighborhood. We settled in and like her, we rented the upstairs to a woman whose husband was in the military and off somewhere in the world that he couldn't have his family with him.

We settled in there, life proceeded on its merry way.

On a visit to Grandma she asked me to talk with Heather and see if we could make room for her there in our house, so that she could sell out and more or less retire. Heather and I decided that there was room there on the ground floor for her and moved her in. We didn't know at that time that she was a sick lady. She never complained or listed her aches and problems. Finally on one of her independant visits to her doctor he told her she should go to the hospital for an exploratory operation to see if it could be discovered what was wrong with her innards. Looking back now it is obvious to me what pain she must have been suffering for all those years and still maintained her independence, riding the streetcar to her doctor, doing groceries etc.

The doctor opened her, and closed her without doing anything. He told us that she was in an incurable and terminal stage of cancer, that she probably wouldn't live much longer and went into great detail about her care when we brought her home. I don't really know if she decided that it was time for her to go or what, she died peacefully in hospital with a diagnosis of heart failure.

It was plain to see that one of her beloved possessions was a leather bound bible, pages worn with age and use, places marked with ribbons, a pressed leaf or two contained therein, discovered as we sorted her things. I never knew that she had faith, but it was shown in her life and attested by her bible. I also inherited her little trinket box that had been such a fascination for me from an early age. A chest of quilt pieces saved over the years as well as several almost finished quilts. One of the quilts was composed of pieces cut from neckties - most I could remember were ties of my Dad's. There was a considerable amount of cards and letters from her many associates and friends and all the notes and letters from Mom to her in there as well as a bit of jewelry that my Mom had sent her.

There is a bare bones account of her being that says little about who and what she was. Not known is the heart break of a teenager with babies deserted by a rat of a husband. Very little is known of the effort it was to raise her kids on a woman's wage. One thing I do know is in my early memories she was using psyllium seed regularly in her attempt to help her condition. I will never know what brought her cancer about, whether sacrifices for her kids kept her from eating right or some other cause. She lived a great part of her adult life with health problems she really wouldn't talk about to us. Not even in her letters to Mom did she ever mention anything.

She is buried next to her daughter, my Mom. She was a great lady and a true survivalist lost in the mists of time, my Grandmother . . . .

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