Short Stories

Grandma's House

Phoebe Lenora Dameron Williams was born at the turn of the century - that would be the last century.  Her life was hard by today's standards. Born nearly 100 years ago, she grew up in Washington State; came of age during the Roaring Twenties, fell in love, and married a handsome sailor in 1922. 

With high hopes, Phoebe and Charlie moved from Washington State to Oklahoma to farm the "Indian land" her family received during the Cherokee tribe relocation.

The 1920's were a difficult time for starting a family. Three of Phoebe's five children were born by Black Tuesday, 1929, the day the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began.  After struggling and failing to farm for profit, Charlie and Phoebe sold her land and became sharecroppers.  They moved from one farm to another, barely managing to feed their growing family. 

In 1932, they packed up their few belongings and caught a long, slow train to Washington State where Charlie found work to support the family. Phoebe and Charlie never became affluent, but they were proud of the fact that their family was rich in love and good humor.

Today, you can see hints of Phoebe's smile in the face of a grandchild, or hear Charlie's laugh coming from a roomful of cousins reminiscing about good times.  Hints of the Williams legacy live on in their children's grandchildren, but the true legacy left by Phoebe and Charlie is the love they felt for children and family.

That legacy is rooted in traditions started forty years ago.  After relocating to Washington, the Williams never ventured too far a field.  On any given weekend, our family and this or that particular set of cousins would chance to visit Grandma's house on the same weekend. 

We would pull up in front of Grandma's tiny gray house in our old American Rambler packed to the gills with three kids and a dog, windows down, yelling for grandma as we rolled into the yard. 

Grandma didn't drive, so if the driveway held any car at all, it  was a sign the other cousins were waiting inside.  We would pour out of that old '62 Rambler and scramble through the yards and woodshed looking for Retta and Robby, or sometimes even Mary Jane, Ralph and Ray.   It wouldn't be long before we would be building forts, climbing woodpiles or examining hornet's nests and starting wars.

Dares and double dares would fill the afternoon air as we egged each other on to bigger and better adventures.  There was even one memorable "double-dog dare" that involved touching the electric fence surrounding Aunt Betty's pasture.  But after Retta had grabbed it once inadvertently and found herself unable to release the direct current fence, that dare was left unchallenged.

Instead a hornet's nest awaited a poke with a stick from a curious cousin, and there was an old well in Betty's field that needed to be identified and shielded from the "little kids", though it was technically out of bounds for all the cousins.

Too soon, the sun would begin to set and our parents would stand by the car, hands cupped by their mouths, shouting random names into the evening air.  Like water draining from a tub, children would quietly slip around the side of the house, through a back door, or drop back into dark recesses of the wood shed to avoid being seen.  The penalty for being recognized was imprisonment in the back seat of the station wagon, voiding all chances to spend the night. 

And, because they lived nearby, Retta and Robby often had opportunity to spend the night, an event we other cousins viewed with envy. 

Somehow, word would always to leak out just as we were dragging ourselves dejectedly toward the car that Retta or Robby had brought their pajamas, that they were spending the night with grandma. 

Once we realized the other cousins were staying, my two siblings and I would set upon our parents unmercifully - begging and pleading to be allowed to stay.  Sometimes, if the moon was right, the stars properly aligned, and if there were enough assurances that we would wash our hands, mind our grandma and wear our cousins pj's without complaint, they would grant our wish.  Then mom and dad would leave and we would settle down for an evening at Grandma's.

Tiny by today's standards, Grandma's house had a small living room that opened onto an even smaller kitchen. Built by her husband and sons in the thirties, her home was constructed without hallways; the rooms directly adjoining one another.

 The master bedroom (she would laugh if I called it that today) opened off the back of the kitchen and a second, lean-to bedroom on the opposite side of the house was separated from the living room by a thin cotton curtain. 

Added later, the bathroom could only be reached through the utility porch and was always very cold. It always smelled a bit like wood smoke and damp boards.  Grandma heated the house with an old wood-stove, and the smell permeated the furniture, her clothes and even her old dog.

Plastic dime-store curtains hung at the window and they crinkled when touched.  They presented an irresistible enticement to sister's tiny fingers.  Despite warnings of dire consequences and assertions of innocence, a few more tiny finger holes appeared after each visit.

We older cousins were fascinated by the thick black telephone that rested on a table by the window and we came to know which unanswered rings belonged to neighbors sharing a four-party line. 

Clear plastic encased the windows (grandma called them "storm windows"), allowing frosty winter light to cover the room in a surreal glow.  Often little faces would press close, breathing frosty clouds onto the windowsill to match the light outside.

Though granddad had passed away years before, his water dipper still hung on a nail over the sink.  It was a small white enamel pan with a red handle that hung from a nail just above the sink.  If we were very good, we were allowed to use the pan to obtain a drink of water from the faucet, but only if accompanied by a child tall enough to reach (no climbing on the countertops allowed).  Water was always clearer and colder and somehow better when sipped from Granddad's dipper.

We played outside until it was too dark to see, then Grandma would bestow upon an older cousin the authority to decree the playtime had ended and order us into the house.  With much grumbling about it was that dark and we aren't cold at all, we would finally settle down in front of Grandma's old black and white Zenith to watch the Lawrence Welk show.

While Grandma loved Welk's champagne music, her favorite acts were the dancers.  I remember her exhorting us to "get up and dance like Bobby and Barbara", while four-year old cousin Robby would windmill his tiny arms around in a rather poor imitation of Arthur Duncan's tap routine.  

I believe her intent was to work us to exhaustion. Instead of falling into a sleepy pile like puppies, we often ended up wrestling and rough-housing to the point of tears and some time before Mr. Welk's final goodnight, Grandma would sternly order us all to bed.

Located on the very edge of a small rural town, Grandma's property was bounded on one side by small pastures while surrounded on three sides by mature Douglas fir trees. The state's main north-south rail line ran through these woods, and her little town was at the top of a long, steep grade.

I would listen as those old engines struggled to climb the hill, slowing almost to a walk as they reached the crest. Grandma warned us each time we visited to stay far away from those tracks.  Her boys, had often told exciting tales of jumping the slowing trains to catch a free ride into the city ten miles to the north.  And they weren't the only ones to find those trains an easy ride.

Grandma's generation found it perfectly acceptable to keep children safe by scaring the bejabbers out of them, and Grandma was no exception.  

She often referred to the "creepy, old, sneaky bums" that rode the trains and camped in the woods. These bums, Grandma claimed, would carry small children away. There were nights I lay awake, snuggled between baby Lori and cousin Mary Jane, listening for footsteps outside the bedroom window, certain that bums walked freely about during night while tasty, unsuspecting children lie just outside their grasp inside the flimsy lean-to bedroom.

The smell of wood smoke and bacon would remind me where I was as I awoke the next morning in grandma's tiny guest bed. We would scamper barefoot across the cold linoleum floor, through the utility porch to the unheated bathroom, and line up with the other morning stragglers dancing outside the bathroom door, exhorting the occupant to hurry.

Grandma would get out her biggest frying pan and start peeling spuds. Fairly soon it would be time for an "Okie breakfast".

***

An Okie Breakfast

Bacon -  quarter pound per person, browned in a cast iron skillet until done, but not crisp.

Lift the bacon from the pan and place on an oven safe plate in the oven to keep warm. Save the drippings for gravy.

Milk Gravy
Mix.  Use an oval wire whip to scoop two scoops of flour (approx. 1/3 cup) into the hot bacon drippings.
Stir vigorously over medium-high heat until the flour is entirely mixed with the drippings.
Pour milk into the mixture until well diluted (about three cups)
Thicken.  As the mixture heats, it will thicken, add more milk as necessary.  Reduce the heat when it reaches the right consistency.

Biscuits
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup milk

Mix all dry ingredients. Cut in shortening using a knife or pastry cutter until well mixed. Add milk, stir with fork

Turn out onto well-floured surface, sprinkle with flour and knead 10 times, or until dough is pliable and not sticky. Use hands to press dough out until about one inch thick. Cut with cookie cutter or the mouth of small jelly jar.

Place rounds onto ungreased pan, 13X9, sides touching.

Bake at 350o for 18 - 22 minutes, depending on size of biscuits.

Serve biscuit halves covered with Milk gravy, with bacon on the side.

Toast with homemade strawberry jam, optional.  


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