Would My Grandparents Be Happy?

Laura and Arminius

Would My Grandparents Be Happy?
Yesterday Dave and I were talking at breakfast, eating some of our wonderful eggs and an English muffin. I mentioned that my Grandmother Marguerite always told me to either use butter or jam, but not both, on my toast. I think she thought that was wasteful. I only grew up knowing one set of Grandparents, my Dad's, because the others passed away when I was very young. My Mom's parents met me after I was born, but I was very young when they died. I don't have any direct memories of them.

My mom had told me a lot about them, including the stories of the wonderful gardens they grew out in Nebraska. How grandma Laura raised Rhode Island Red chickens and preserved foods. They had their root cellar and they survived the depression. She also told me how they escaped tornado's by going into the wet, cellar full of toads. She told me about what a hard worker her mother was and that my grandmother was always a tough, but caring woman. I have two wonderful quilts of hers and think about what it must have been like for her to sit there and make those out in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, in the dark. I'm not sure when electricity went into the rural areas of Nebraska, in the 1930s? I visualize her using kerosene lamps or candles to sew by.

My grandfather Arminius was a mechanic who worked on trucks, tractors and cars and they would barter his repair services for things they didn't have. They would get roasting chickens, bread, fresh milk, etc., in exchange for his services. My mom said during the depression that she drank coffee instead of milk as a kid because they didn't always have that. I have great photos in my head of my grandparents and their girls in Nebraska in this house-

Nebraska home, I'd love to go there someday

Pete and Marguerite

The grandparents on my Dad's side I spent lots of time with. They also raised two children during the depression and my grandmother Marguerite was a wonderful cook, baker, seamstress, knitter, crocheter and made tatting. She sewed me wonderful clothes and knitted me lovely sweaters. When I was young they were living in southern California and that was a great climate to grow things in. While living in the city of Pomona, named after the goddess of plenty, they grew quite a bit of things on their city lot. Ironically they had a Little Homestead in Pomona of sorts. I remember the three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath house very well. Lawn in the front, in back lots more! They had an avocado tree, a lemon and a lime tree, plum tree, a kumquat tree, trellises with concord grapes, and strawberries. I don't remember them ever growing any vegetables however. I remember my grandmother making homemade grape pies, canning home-grown grape juice, grape jam, and I think she made plum and Kumquat jams. I'm not quite sure whose idea it was to have all of the fruit trees because I don't know if those were there before they bought the house. I suspect on some level having fruit trees in the backyard was a nod to wanting to be more self-sufficient, having surviving the depression, but that is just a guess.

I know my grandfather Pete was an avid gardener and loved working in the yard. I think some of that may have been to avoid my grandmother, who is not the nicest person. As an adult I would jokingly call her the iron fist in the velvet glove without the glove!My grandfather Alva (he went by Pete) was the opposite, really a sweetheart. He jokingly used to call me microbe or peanut!

So... I think that they would be proud of me with what we're doing here, and if they were alive they would probably be doing something similar. I can see them having chickens, preserving foods, and fixing lots of things themselves. I hope they would be proud of me for the lifestyle I have. While I didn't do it for them I think that they would appreciate it. I hope so.