In touch with the Old Ones
The family genealogy collection resting on the cabinet flopped on the floor. Within minutes my mind began drifting through the lives of some of the old ones. As a youngster, a few of these aged ancestors had passed through my life and as a result I was exposed to an interesting smorgasbord of stories, experiences, and personalities, all still lingering in my memory.
It is true these remembrances go back awhile because it would appear I am now age challenged myself. Unfortunately, when one, that would be me, makes references to events and folks during the Eisenhower Administration, or Truman, OK, even the Roosevelt administration it might be a bit of a tip off of duffer tendencies, coot possibilities or codger inclinations.
Never the less, in the momentary fog of two fingers of Mr. Jamison, there are some reflections that still bring a cringe over my face, and in another instant a devious smile.
It seems that as a youngster I had a grandmother. It had nothing to do with me, but with my father, who for reasons I don’t understand, chose this woman Dorothy to be his mother. Or as my father said, “I was born in New York. My mother was there and I felt I should be with her.” My father was young then, there in New York, but from my point of view, this mother choice of his was a mistake.
Dorothy, while being well-educated, particularly in those years when women were still considered domestics, ultimately worked as a writer for the Chicago Tribune. She was not stupid. As children, our experience with grandma Dorothy was limited because my father had no desire to ever again go to Chicago and she had no interest in the back waters of Wisconsin. As a result of this estrangement, she is not a memory in my real early years.
One day my father said, “Son, we are going to be driving to Chicago to visit your grandmother.” There was a pause, and he continued, “Now here is the deal. You are going to hear things coming out of her mouth I don’t ever want you to repeat. I mean, if you ever repeat these words, I’ll smack you to the ground. Do you understand?”
I am sure at the age of six or seven, I stood there not knowing what this was about. “Son, she has a name for everybody who is not just like her and her snooty background. They are bad names, wrong names. She thinks she is from the chosen people.” From today’s point of view, I suspect she thought she was in the the top two percent---certainly not part of the “47%” who I am sure she despised.
Clearly, Chicago was a place not even slightly similar to the our home on banks of the Wisconsin River in Sauk City. It also turned out, I had never heard people called those names. I didn’t even know what kind of people they were, but she had some names, and “mackerel snappers” was the least offensive. Every non Anglo Saxon Protestant was targeted with venom. I am sure my mouth was agape as she pillaged every race, religion, and nationality on the globe. There was also a known statement in my family that my father on more than one occasion had said she had served him well by providing a living example how he never wanted to be.
Throughout the years, Dorothy would occasionally visit our homes in Central Wisconsin. On numerous occasions she, always grumbling, would walk, almost jack-boot style, through the house pummeling with her feet, everything we constructed, from blanket tents, Lincoln log houses and model airplanes. As a result of this demeanor, we three grandsons called her Grandma Grunt. We tolerated her visits and each time she arrived, the turf wars started and “The Grunter” would lay plunder to our holdings.
Within a few years we brothers, had told the stories around town of the ravages she had caused, always refering to her as “Grandma Grunt” or “The Grunter” until one day a local matriarch approached and was about to introduce herself by saying, “My name is Maude and you are, Mrs. Grunt.” The insulting name was missed as Dorothy corrected her and went about her day untouched by our blunder.
She was not a good person as we knew her. Born in 1888, a lone child, her father left while she was a baby. She lived with her grandparents who both died before she was thirteen. Dorothy went to a boarding school and then to a college. At nineteen she married an older man of 34. She had one child who died as did that husband in 2 years. She married another older man who bore her two children, one died at the age of four and my father survived. Her new husband died two years later.
She married another man who was a financier. They lost all their money in the crash and were divorced, all before I was born. Her life of chaos, and no doubt suffering, was not widely talked about in our family because Dorothy and her antics ruled the day. There was loose talk wondering if this same personality had not done in all the husbands----did she drive them nuts, or did her life make the personality? Such lessons to ponder from the book that flopped on the floor.
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