More Memories of Grandma Brubaker

Until this week, I don’t think I had seen a picture of Grandma as a young woman.  The only images I conjure up, put her at Mom and Dad’s wedding in the mid-1950s.  By that time, Grandma was in her sixties.  Well thanks to my dear cousins, Barbra Scott and Debi Ragsdale, I now have some new information and new images of a remarkable lady. 

Barbra described Grandma as “vibrant, sociable, fun, kind and patient.”  Physically, “she had very long black hair and wore it braided, with the braids wrapped up and around, circling her head.  She suffered with headaches and those went away after her hair cut.  Aunt Becky and Uncle Bill paid for her to take the train and visit them in Fort Knox, Kentucky.  It was on the trip that Aunt Becky took her to a salon and had her hair cut and permed.”

Mom used to remember Grandma with all of her pets.  Grandma loved cats and dogs, always seemed to have them around the house.  Mom also thought she remembered a bird or two, but couldn’t be sure.

Debi sent me a couple of photographs of Grandma.  Here she is with a couple of her pets in Wyoming.  so this dates the photo at the early 1930s.  I would never have imagined her with long black hair.  But this photo, along with these memories, brings Grandma closer.

Memories of Grandma Brubaker

A few months ago I wrote about a few memories of Grandma Brubaker.  Well, I realized I really don’t know a great deal about Grandma’s personality.  So, I’m trying to collect and remember more about Ruth Harmon Brubaker—Grandma.

Grandma Brubaker died in 1970, when I was about ten years old.  So memories of her are not all that great.  My memories of her start and stop in a hospital.  Whenever we would visit, she was sick.

 

1969 we traveled to Idaho to the funeral of Uncle Bill Brown.  Grandma was in the hospital, possibly in a care facility.  When we went to visit her, we were not allowed to speak of the death of Bill Brown.  It may have been the visit in 1969, or it may have been another time: I remember visiting her, the family gathered around her hospital bed.  Dad is as close as he can get, so that he will hear and understand her mumbled conversation.  I am on the other side of the bed looking at this frail woman.  For some reason, I think my cousin Butch was in the room, standing behind Dad.  He started to make faces at me and I started to laugh.  It was not a nice ride back to Uncle Pat’s house when the visit ended.  I took the heat for that indiscretion.  How could I explain that Butch was making me laugh?  I couldn’t, so I was in trouble. 

A little more than a year later, we were traveling from Salt Lake to Caldwell, Idaho to her funeral.  And the memories are at an end.

I distantly remember her house.  I think we once visited there.  I remember the bathroom because there were no windows and no light switch.  To turn on the lights in the bathroom you had to walk to the center of the room, reach up, find the pull chain and turn on the lights.  That bathroom remains forever burned into my brain, like a traumatic life threatening disaster.

 

Imagine the difficulties of an undersized, most people say short, young man that has to pee.  He knows he can’t reach the pull chain in order to do his business in peace!  At a certain age, no boy should have to ask an older sister for help in using the bathroom.  Let your bladder burst or ask for help, these were the only two choices.  Pride went out the window when first one sister refused to help.  The other helped only when I started to cry in pain.

That bathroom and the trauma it created are both indelibly burned into my brain.

Unfortunately, I don’t much remember Grandma Brubaker.  I have stories from Dad, but otherwise I don’t know her.  If anyone would like to share some stories about Grandma Brubaker, I would really like to visit.  

Change For The Sake of Change: A Rant of Frustration

There is a comedy routine, a group of engineers are helping a young business woman improve her assembly line and enhance sales of her product.  She manufactures up-scale hair barrettes.  The engineers insist that they need to add blue tooth wireless technology to the barrettes because everything is better with blue tooth. 

The routine is a ridiculous example of technology geeks advocating change for the sake of change.  Yet, this pattern of changing technology simply because we can change technology is reaching these ridiculous extremes. 

I will admit that I have been called a Luddite.  And, I may be.  But do we really need so much change, so quickly?  I used to own a flip phone.  I now have a smart phone, only because people around me were embarrassed whenever I would answer the telephone with my antiquated contraption.  The only advantage to my smart phone is the numbers are larger than my flip phone.  It is now easier for me to see the numbers when I dial.

I am trying to muster as much sarcasm as possible as I write: I can’t wait for the next installment of windows or Microsoft office.  I am so excited with the new procedures for writing documents that require me to change the type font to Times Roman because some mental giant has decided that Calibri is more appropriate as a default font and 11 point type is better than the larger and more legible 12 point.  And, I so enjoy changing the spacing from “normal” to “no spacing” every time I create a document.  Thank you to all of the Microsoft and windows engineers and programmers for allowing me to determine the page layout every time I create a new document and forcing me to utilize too much of my time to reset pages that should be default standards.

While I am at it, thank you to every telephone manufacturer in the world for determining my telephone needs to be something more than just a telephone.  I don’t remember how I managed to live without a camera in my telephone, along with text messaging and wireless technology.  Special thanks goes out to the singular “genius” that determined my telephone needed to be so much more than just a telephone.

Today is one of those days when the standard of change for the sake of change is overwhelming.  This morning I had to work with a new index for genealogy research.  Some “genius” decided to combine several indices to make research more of a muddled mess.  It appears to be change for the sake of change.  Honestly, I don’t need any more new and improved “whatevers” in my life.  Is it too much to expect the technology in life to simply function in the manner that it is expected? 

A second cliché keeps running through my brain: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  To all of those techno-geeks, engineers and computer programmers out there, stop fixing it, it ain’t broke.

Memories of the Summer Canning season

I recently realized harvesting fruits and vegetables and preserving food generate strong memories about growing up in Salt Lake City.  Each summer certain activities took place that, to this day, give me a sense of home and security. 

Visiting the farmers of Salt Lake and the “pick your own” farm lots to buy cherries and peaches, tomatoes and cucumbers remind me of the innocence of a distant era.  All of these fruits and vegetables purchased would be taken home and prepared for the canning jars.  There is a certain satisfaction to the plop and squeak sound of the cherry pit machine as you removed the seed from each cherry.  Put a cherry under the trigger, pull the spring loaded trigger.  The seed would fall down into a jar of seeds, and then throw the seeded cherry into the bowl for canning.  Each cherry pitted required payment of a cherry to eat.  As many fruit passed my lips as did through the cherry pitter.  The peaches witnessed a similar preparation process: blanch the peaches, peel the peaches, cut them in half and remove the pit.  Peaches are larger, so fewer are eaten.  Yet, the sticky juice running down your arms as you sliced the peaches made the process memorable.

            Preparing tomatoes for canning required a bit more care.  The boiling water, and processing the tomatoes usually disqualified me from working the tomato canning process.  The cucumber were perhaps the most memorable and time consuming.  Cucumbers soaked in brine for two weeks, preparing them for the pickle jars.  Packing the jars and the smell of hot vinegar and dill told everyone that in a few weeks the dill pickles would be ready for eating.  And later, the sweet and sour pickles and the relish would also find their way onto the dinner table.

            Today the tomato plants are in the ground in my own backyard.  We have added lettuce and onions to the garden.  In a few months the harvest will begin.  In my kitchen, I will cook up salsa and the satisfaction of preparing my own food will generate memories of a great childhood, helping Mom and Dad can food.  And, the memories will continue.

Henry Hislop's Teeth

I thought I had posted this, but no.  So, here we go … 

A story Mom liked to tell about her Dad, Henry Hislop, concerned his health.

Just after Mom was born, in the mid-1930s, Grandpa Hislop got sick.  He seemed very lethargic, absolutely no energy at all.  Being in a small town in the middle of the Depression, there wasn’t a whole lot of money for doctor bills.  So, Henry talked around with friends and neighbors to self-diagnose.  Well somehow, with the help of his neighbors, he concluded that there must be something wrong in his mouth.  Someone convinced him he needed to remove all of his teeth.  Well Grandpa went to the dentist and had all of his teeth pulled out.  I hope he got dentures, but Mom never mentions this detail in the story.

Well, the trip to the dentist didn’t cure what ailed him.  He was still lethargic, always tired and no desire to really do anything.  Keep in mind, this condition was very odd for Henry Hislop.  In all of the stories I have read and heard, this was a man that enjoyed hard work.  This was a man that when he was nearing 60 years old helped build the local church.  He got down in the trench to dig.  He worked in the cold to lay brick and mortar into place.  He enjoyed manual labor.  For him to feel lethargic was a sign of something serious.

Unfortunately the diagnosis of pulling his teeth didn’t work.  He seemed forever tired.  Finally, the family persuaded him to travel the fifteen miles down the canyon from the small town of Huntsville, to a doctor in the larger town of Ogden, Utah.  A simple visit to the doctor and he diagnosed with anemia.  He was given pills to add to his diet and his energy quickly returned.  He was back to enjoying his work in a very short time.

After this episode with his teeth, Henry Hislop lived another 20 more years.  Forever working hard and seemingly enjoying it all.