TUMBLEWEEDS is meant to encourage you to write your own family history “anecdotally,” — one little memory at a time. Just use my topics as a springboard.
February 8, 2011
WHEN DID YOU FIRST LEARN ABOUT MONEY?
Were you as young as four? Five? Six?
My family introduced me to pennies and nickels at a very young age, probably 3 or 4. I suppose a grandpa gave me a few. I distinctly recall sitting on the floor at 607 Grant Street, facing the back picture window, and studying the heads on the coins that I had laid out on the rug. I thought the head on the penny was that of the man speaking importantly over the radio — the news announcer. I did not know what money was for except for my own examination. The coins were no more interesting than marbles or stamps. One collected them — or lost them.
I am not sure whether it was junior kindergarten (WW II provision for mothers of four-year-olds) or senior kindergarten (five-year-olds). My best friend Ellen took me into a corner store across from Central School. We had tagged along with some other kids. She told me we could get candy there. When it was my turn, I asked for a long package of caramels, called something like “Walnettos.” The old man (probably 45) said that would be a nickel. I had no money with me. I thought the candy was free. It always had been at home. He told me, “Sorry, little girl, but you have to have money to buy candy.”
“Buy.” What a concept.
This embarrassing memory leads me to recall all the times I went into stores with adults and never realized they were exchanging money for the things they got. I was with my mother when she bought groceries at the A&P store or in the little market half a block from our house. I was too short to see what was going on as we got the items bagged. I went with my grandfather to the butcher shop in his small town — we could walk there — and heard the jolly conversation he had with the man standing behind the tall glass counter, and recall something about “rations,” but never saw money exchange hands. I was too busy studying the strange forms of meat in the display case. Pigs feet, for instance.
On the other side of the family, my grandmother never shopped because she had all her groceries delivered (and dresses, too, because department stores would let you try things on at home). This grandma called in her grocery order and it would be brought within a couple of hours by a man in a little vehicle that looked something like a station wagon without the windows. My grandfather in that household often came home with fresh produce from Heon’s. That was because Mr. Heon called my grandmother when something came in he knew she would want, and she callled Grandpa at work to pick it up. He never mentioned paying for it.
And another memory: As kinders and first graders we took dimes to school to put in a little cardboard folder, something to do with the War. Where it went I do not remember. I think it was into bonds. What were those?
So when did I learn what money really was for? When did YOU learn about it? Who took the time to explain it to you? Write it down while you can. Tell your grandchildren.
August 2, 2010
HOW DID YOU LEARN ABOUT SEX?
A letter to an advice column in a magazine or newspaper — I meant to keep it, but forgot — mentioned those books mothers slipped onto the pillows of their pre-teenagers in the 1950s. The ones I got gradually brought the idea of reproduction into the realm of human beings. They weren’t very exciting plots, and since my mother never mentioned them, I didn’t comment either.
I guess I was more of an empirical learner on thet topic of sex, although I don’t remember making any connection at all with the books and the feelings I was getting when I snuggled with my first boyfriends.
Most people under 50 probably can’t begin to imagine the degree of innocence with which we slipped onto the pillows of our husbands. Even among our closest girlfriends, we didn’t talk about menstrual cycles, and never mentioned the words Kotex or Tampax. I digress to brag that I am very proud of my idea for making a mouse out of a tampax for a Christmas scene in a school showcase. All I had to do is snip part of it off and dip the whole think in gray poster paint.
“Nice” girls didn’t talk much about sex to our nice husbands, either. Perhaps that’s one reasons so many marriages ended in divorce in the 1960s, when more liberated young women came along.
How did your parents manage to get the “facts of life” across to you? SHARE! Write to kdahood@cox.net.
July 30, 2010
Great Grandparents – More Common These Days
Five of my great-grandparents were alive when I was born. I especially remember Grandpa Henderson, my dad’s mom’s father, who spent some time in Wausau, our Wisconsin town, at the end of his life. He died of a heart attack shoveling Grandma’s sidewalk at age 81.
I can barely remember Grandpa and Grandma McKendry, but I heard my mother tell stories about their place “Up North” (even shortly before she died at 81. This was her mother’s family. My mom had happy memories of her grandpa rowing the cousins with her out to an island and leaving them to play for a couple of hours. Apparently he owned a hunting and fishing resort — very primitive — and the lake and woods shaped my mother’s way of thinking and living forever. She and dad had a place on a lake until he had a heart attack and they moved to a smaller house near my brother and emergency help. There was a rtiver nearby, and until he had cancer, my dad would walk down and watch other people fishing.
What do you remember about your great-grandparents? Write dowen the tidbits.
Funny thing, but now I am a great-grandmother to the daughter of my oldest grandson. I see Emmelie Jaxde every month or so. She is now 7. I am wondering how many other little great-grand-ones will be born before I die — now that I am 71. Do I have 10 years left? More? And my grandchildren are 26, 22, 16, 15, 11, and 5 1/2. I still think about how they will remember me. The littlest one, staying with me this summer, will undoubtedly think of me as mean. That’s what she said this morning when she didn’t get her way (to change her birthday so she has one before her dad next week). She also says that she is never going to fall in love and get married. She will live alone with her dog or dogs. At first it was just a collie, but now a collie and chocolate lab. She’s pretty loving, when it comes to animals.
June 8, 2010
Mental Illness Back When
Do you remember “insane asylums”? Our family was one that had a lurking secret about a relative who had been subjected to lobotomy when that was the latest answer to violent behavior. At my aunt’s birthday party recently, a cousin brought me closer to the truth.
Here’s what I had heard: Our grandpa had a brother, maybe even a twin, who wanted desperately to enlist to fight in the war in Europe (World War I). He was repeatedly rejected, even though he was lifting weights to reach the fitness standards for a soldier. The two brothers also were expert ice skaters. Albin won many races.
One day, just before the finish line of a championship competition, which he was certain to win, he stopped abruptly and took off his skates, walked home, went to his room, and started the thumping exercises that had become his obsession. He never came back down.
Meals were left outside his door. Perhaps there was some pleading. No one knows for sure because Grandpa refused ever to talk about his missing brother, what the violent behavior was, and why he was the one who had to authorize the operation. All we knew was that the decision had left the Albin in a vegetative state.
Grandpa and Grandma as I Knew Them
I thought Grandpa’s brother died years ago, but my cousin Beth told us last week that she met him in 1980; as a social worker, she had the knowledge and connections to find out he was still alive, and was determined to check on his condition. With a box of chocolates in hand, she went to the state mental hospital, explained who she was, and demanded to see her great uncle. There was some confusion as they had his name down as “Alvin,” but eventually he was brought into a visitor’s lounge.
Beth said the greatest shock was to see how much he resembled our grandfather, except for the fact he was a little pudgy for lack of exercise. He didn’t have much to say, but enjoyed the candy. After looking him over and asking questions of the staff, she was satisfied that he was being cared for appropriately.
No one ever changed his name on the records. No one called or wrote when he died.
Do you have a story of a relative who “went crazy”?
INTRODUCTION TO TUMBLEWEEDS: A MOVING STORY
May 15, 2010
In a few weeks you will begin to see stories in this section that are meant to jog your memories about your own stories, thus giving you a new way to record family history. It’s called “anecdotal history” by some, distinguishing it from documented history or geneaology. The premise is that your great-grandchildren are going to appreciate how you experienced life more than how some textbook authors present the past. I will throw out an idea, and you can build on it — in a comment back to this website, or in your personal journal.
A lot of my ideas come from the news. For example, I read not long ago that the record for building height was broken again when the Burj Khalifa bin Zayed was opened in Dubai, on the Persian Gulf between Saudi Arabia and Oman in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and close to Iran. The futuristic tower of multiple cylindrical parts rising to different heights was reported to be 2,717 feet tall (828 meters). The tower’s architecture and engineering was performed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill of Chicago. Get that: Of Chicago, where the previous building with the most floors (108), the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) was built. Starchitecture is truly playing out on the world stage.
About 50 years ago, controversy over building in Chicago arose with the “corn cobs” on the Chicago River, which are condominiums. They foreshadowed those cylindrical buildings going up all around the world, some of the most interesting shaped like cones. St. Mary’s Axe in London comes to mind. Look it up. It’s functional aspects are fascinating, even though it has been called “the gherkin” and worse.
I did not ever go to the top of Sears Tower, and today it seems just like one needle in the cluster of skinny skyscrapers in the Loop. The once-remarkable Tribune Tower (with its pinnacles) is similarly eclipsed. Marshall Fields is just another Macy’s.
In my Wisconsin home town of 30,000, it was thrilling to ride in an elevator. My grandfather worked on the sixth floor of a bank building, and that wasn’t even the top! Our favorite department store had an elevator to go up to the second floor, skipping the mezzanine. There was no third floor as far as I remember. Today you hardly ever think of the term mezzanine outside a theater. It has such a refined sound. It goes with peau de soie and voile.
In Tucson, I see kids riding elevators downtown in government buildings (including the library) and you can tell it is still a thrilling ride for a short person. But there are no elevator operators with white gloves.
What was the tallest building in your town? Which real skyscraper was the first you ever saw? When did you take your first elevator ride?
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