Telephone Chat with Elizabeth

I had a nice telephone chat with Aunt Elizabeth over Memorial weekend. She, and her brother George, are the only remaining members of Mom’s family. Due to failing health Elizabeth has recently moved into a care facility. She has poor eye sight and is hard of hearing, but she can hear quite well on the phone.

Elizabeth is 91 years old, but her voice is youthful and reminds me of days long ago when my sister and I would meet Elizabeth when she got off work and walk home with her. She was a pretty, 18 year old with a sweet disposition. She worked at the bakery waiting on customers and I was very impressed with her responsibility of ringing up sales on the cash register and making correct change.

The country was in a deep depression; grown ups talked about ‘hard times’, but Dad always had a job with the phone company and received a regular paycheck. I was never aware of being deprived in any way but I saw newspaper pictures of people selling apples, or razor blades or shoe laces; wire photos of long lines of people at ‘soup kitchens’ as well as pictures of huge mounds of oranges having oil poured on them and burned in California or thrown into the ocean in order to raise prices.

For people without a car, hitch hiking was a safe way to travel and our family hitched rides when they needed to go somewhere. The summer that I, with my brothers and sisters, went to stay with Grandma W, Mom and Dad would hitch hike on weekends to come see us.

Grandma didn’t have a phone so we never knew ahead of time if Mom and Dad would be coming. If they had good luck hitching a ride, they might arrive by 8 or 9 o’clock Friday evening, but if rides were hard to get, it might be as late as 11. If it was later than midnight, we knew they wouldn’t be coming that weekend.

Grandma let Adeline and me stay up late on the nights we expected Mom and Dad. After all the others were in bed asleep, Grandma would take a chair out to the front porch to sit in while Adeline and I sat on the steps. The moon light was bright enough for us to see each other, and there was a street light at the corner so we could spot Mom and Dad when they turned onto our street.

During those summer evenings Adeline and I would ask Grandma to tell us about her wedding picture. Sometimes she would show us things from her special trunk. We always coaxed her to sing and if she wasn’t too tired, she would sing hymns and old ballads. She knew all the verses to Jessie James and that was our favorite.

Grandma’s dog, Penny, an American Spitz, kept us company as we waited on the porch, but he observed his own private and regular bed time. He slept on an old overstuffed chair in the front room. When Penny indicated it was his bedtime, one of us would open the screen door so he could go inside. We never turned on a light for him but he knew exactly where the chair was. One night after we opened the screen door for him, we heard a great plopping noise. We rushed to see what had happened. Penny had taken a great leap expecting to land in his chair but instead, landed on the floor. That day Grandma had moved the furniture around in the living room and either Penny didn’t know the chair had been moved or he forgot. He wasn’t hurt but he had a look of embarrassment on his face! Penny was a wonderful pet and we loved him dearly. He lived to be 19 years old