I usually do these posts in third person, but this one is a special post, so please forgive the apparent eccentricity. This is my GG, the way she looked when I knew her. She is sitting outside my grandparents' motel, and that's my grandpa in the distance with his head cut off. BTW, behind him is the famous pop machine. But I digress. This was the GG I knew: endlessly kind and patient, she was always either holding me in her lap, reading me a book, listening to me chatter away, or letting me bake her a cherry cake, stirring it up in my grandma's red bowl (red was my favorite color - hence the cherry cake - there was no actual batter used or harmed in the making of said cherry cake). She wrote my name in red ink in all of my Little Golden Books. She let me paint my fingernails with her red polish, and when I made a mess and my mom got mad, she defended me. She was my best friend.
This is my GG on the right, and her older sister, Nida, on the left. My GG was a very stylish lady. I think Nida was, also. My GG could make a dress for herself without a pattern. She could crochet, embroider and quilt, and wring a chicken's neck, pluck all the feathers, and cook it for dinner. She was a wonderful baker, and famous for her Divinity and her fudge. I don't know what she is looking at here, maybe she is just posing - I don't think she was married yet. Maybe Elmer is the one with the camera - or maybe her brother in law, Nida's husband Jim, is taking the picture. Maybe Edith (GG) is dressed up to go on a trip somewhere, or going to some event - maybe a date with Elmer. Did she have other boyfriends before Elmer? I was too little to ask, and she died when I was 4. I wish I could know these things.
Here are the three sisters together: Lulu, the second oldest, on the left, GG (Edith) in the middle, and Nida on the right. I love their skirts, and I think my GG is the prettiest of the three. They have two older half sisters, one of whom died when 2 or 3, along with the mother. There is a brother older than Nida, and four other brothers - two between Lulu and Edith, and two after Edith. Their mother dies in childbirth with the last boy, and their father dies when Edith is 10. The oldest half sister has married and moved away by then, so I'm pretty sure Nida sort of raises the younger kids. Nida and her husband have only one child, Katherine - but I'm not sure they really are sad about that, given all Nida's younger siblings.
Here are Edith and Bert again, and she has her book with her - probably the same one I would so like to know about. She never sat for a portrait, so this is the best picture I have of her face when she was young. She looks a lot like her mother, whose name was Phebe Catherine Fisher Shutt. And my grandpa and my mother both look a lot like Edith. I wish we could see this in color, because the yard really looks dead, doesn't it? And I wonder why my grandpa is sitting there - is he having a time out, or did he just want to sit with his mommy for a minute or two?
Here are Elmer and Edith and their unknown furry companion during WWII, when they are living in Washington State, and Elmer is working on an army base as an airplane mechanic instructor. Apparently they like it here, only - "it rains too GD much!", to quote my GG. So they move back home to Nebraska after the war.
This is taken right before Grandpa Elmer dies, in 1961. At this time, they are living in their own house, although earlier they had been sharing their house with my grandparents and their children - my aunt, my mom, and my uncle. GG is the kind of grandma who sits on the floor and lets the girls brush her long, long hair, and makes toast that is so toasted it is almost burnt, and all the kids in the neighborhood come around asking for a piece. She makes everything from scratch - probably the reason her arms still look so taut - she is in the kitchen, stirring and beating and lifting things, all day long. She does all this and more with love, and all of us who knew her miss her very much.
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