Dealing With It-5 The Pot Is Boiling

                                                  

Ella Maude Landers was programmed to always keep the pot boiling.  At 5' 4" and probably not close to 100 lbs., she was in good health and active for her 87 years. Virginia asked our mother once if it was old age that made Grandma act the way she did and Eunice replied, "No, she's been like that as long as I've known her." Over a lifetime of loading her disruptive tool kit, she had learned how to discover other people's sensitive buttons and her timing at pushing them was exquisite and creative.  Particularly on her son, John Earl. 

It's dinner time around the large round table in the dining room and Eunice lets Ella Maude know by calling into her bedroom (once Bill's bedroom). Ella Maude makes her appearance  wearing a pair of her son's long-john underwear as a pullover sweater, her head through the back flap and each arm down a leg. This leaves the rest of the garment forming an attractive cape down her back.

Let us hear from her son: "Jesus Christ !" as he kicks back out of his chair and storms outside. Another successful mission accomplished.  Or at another dinner Grandma might go into the kitchen and return with a can of Bon-Ami scrubbing compound and shake it liberally on her hamburger patty, take a bite and announce, "My, you don't know what a difference that makes."

Grandma had some classics that she would return to with satisfying effect.  One of Eunice's church friends might be visiting and Ella Maude would say to her, "I couldn't help noticing that lovely locket you're wearing.  I had one that was exactly like it right down to the color of the side stones.  One day it just came up missing."  The implication being that the lady had sneaked into Ella Maude's room and stolen it from her jewel box. And of course, it could work for clothing, purses, whatever the target might be showing. 

One of her favorites acts earned the name, "She's gone again."  To which Virginia, Mary and Bill would offer up a prayer: "Please, God, let it be true."

                                                                                (To be continued)

Dealing With It-4 Ella Maude

                                                       

The new house had three bedrooms.  John and Eunice took the front one with Bill in the middle and the two girls in the back one. John's new friend, Don McDougal, who he met at the Wonder Bur Tavern in Grants Pass and invited home for dinner, had been surfing the living room couch for a number of months.  More about Don later.  Eunice was the glue holding everything together and she had an apparently inexhaustible reservoir of tolerance for difficult circumstances.

On a sunny summer afternoon a massive addition to that reservoir occurred. John's mother, Ella Maude, had lived with John's family in La Grande until his accident on the railroad that sent him to Portland.  Then she was sent to live in Baker, Oregon with her older son, Bill Beckwith.

The big Buick came roaring into the driveway, much too fast.  A blast of the horn brought everybody in the house out the front door to see the driver, John's older half-brother Bill Beckwith, opening the trunk of his car and removing a huge suitcase which he placed next to the porch.  Without a word he opened the Buick's passenger-side door to escort Ella Maude Landers,  John's and Bill's 87-year-old mother, to join the family members. He came face-to-face with John and said, "I'm bringing her back, John. I can't take her anymore." Then he returned to the Buick and did a power back-out of the driveway and a gravel throwing exit onto the Redwood Highway as he headed back to Baker, Oregon.

The only one in the gobstruck group left standing outside the open door to the house who seemed completely at ease with the situation was Ella Maude.  There was no hugging.  Adding Ella Maude to

 the family dynamic was like putting a dollop of Ex-Lax into an omelette but that wouldn't become apparent until later.  

                                                                   (To be continued)

Dealing With It-3 Disaster

                                                     

                                                           

The master plan for the neophyte farmers was to raise chickens like Major Karl's (White Leghorns) and harvest their eggs to sell to a middle-man marketer with whom Major would connect them.  A couple of milk cows would graze in the six-acre pasture and the pig pen would be home for a couple of oinkers preparing for their date with the hired bacon and sausage maker.

Major Karl supervised construction of a large chicken house with salvage lumber from a small shut- down saw mill he knew about. He hired a couple of workers to assist him and the chicken house started to take shape.  One day Eunice took the children into town for some ice cream treats while she shopped  for a couple of items. It would be the family's last connection to anything related to fun for the next few months. On their return as they approached the house they saw the terrible sight of a smoking pile of black embers surrounded by the concrete foundation that now etched the outline of what had once been their home.  The shock of shattered lives was dealt with by John's and Eunice's concern for their children.  Hard times.  Hard times.

The chicken house construction crew had spotted smoke coming out of the roof and rushed up to the house to find the entire top of the structure in flames.  They managed to get Eunice's upright piano and a sectional book case out of the house before it collapsed.  Faulty wiring was blamed for the fire.

How John and Eunice managed to find money for insurance premiums in those Depression years is amazing but they did.  And like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of its predecessor, a grand new, three bedroom house with indoor plumbing (goodbye outdoor privy) and a kitchen with a breakfast-nook appeared a few months later.

So we have a glorious happy ending, right?  Uh, not exactly.

(To be continued)