My mother’s family was full of stories. If two of the group got together the tales began and a rich family history was instilled into the younger members who sat around listening. We would moan not that one again but we would listen and then they became part of us. The “courting ones took my souls and several are still part of my romantic spirit.
Aunt Lizzie was Grandma Janie’s sister whom I remember for her candy making skills. Fondant eggs, chocolate bunnies. Fudge in all flavors especially one called penuche came from her kitchen along with tons of loves for family. But that same family gave her problems when John McClellan came courting. Lizzie was never one to get dressed up unless there was a specific event coming up. So Janie and Frank used to delay telling her that John was coming over, and he would arrive to find her hair in disarray and wearing one of the oldest dresses she owned. She would get flustered and run to change while he along with my grandparents giggled. Now his courting was a big thing to her as she was as they used to say” on the shelf but well into her late twenties when he started to call.
How he stuck it out was a wonder to the entire family as he was tricked as well as Lizzie. As this was in the early 1900s most of the wooing was conducted in the parlor with family nearby, and my grandmother was neat freak so he would remove his over boots before coming into the house Often during the winter my aunts and uncles would fill his boots with water and if he stayed too long they were blocks of ice. Undeterred he kept at it until they married--- perhaps so he could have wearable boots in the winter.
Not long after that Mom’s oldest sister Mary became of age, and the boys began to call. Mary was not particularly interested in settling down as she was the oldest child of a large family and number nine had yet to arrive. Charles Doge however had set his eye on her and the young engineer was determined. He put up with taking all the little kids out to ice cream with them or bringing with him so they could eat it in the dining room as he plead his case in the parlor. He even kept at when two of the younger siblings hid behind the couch to see what Mary and Charlie were doing in the parlor only to be discovered when they missed the ice cream treat. All in all the decision to marry was made in part when J.V. sibling number was a newborn and a lady at the country store was overheard by Mary saying,” that oldest Shubert girl must have had that baby as “Jane is too old for a new little one.”
My uncles handled their courting days in different ways two. The most interesting was Tony. He had always been a little more daring in his life than his siblings style and worked away from home. One day he showed up with a young lady and spent the day. Night came on ,and it was obvious they planned on spending the night. Grandma Janie started to put Bertha up in the girl’s side when Tony said” She ‘s my wife. We have been married a year so we can sleep together.” Janie snapped “ not in my house” and marched Bertha to girls’ hall. This sleeping arrangement by the way once we cousins were old enough to understand had us guessing how nine children came about when they slept apart. Myself, I always wondered about the large linen closet.
My grandmother Janie was a neat freak The house had to be just so and the girls were her work force. Mom often talked about scrubbing and waxing the floor. Janie would stand behind the girl who was scrubbing a cast iron skillet in her hands or a wooden spoon admonishing them “ to polish it in the corner.” Mom said when it was her turn she used to whisper to herself “polly sh** in the corner.”
School tales are part of every family. I have two favorites from mom’s family. The first concerns my Aunt Mary. She was teaching school in a combine classroom. There were several grades in the room and a younger sibling in each of the classes. Mary had a fiery temper and often tossed whatever was in her hand at the unruly pupil. One winter day , it was her younger brother who disrupted class several times .She grabbed her keys and tossed them. Tony stood up, caught the keys and tossed them into the wood burning stove in the center of the room.
My favorite school tale has my mom as the star. In her day the high school domestic arts class taught knitting, crochet, tatting and of course ,sewing. The class project for one year was a pair of black nankeen bloomers decorated with yellow tatting. This was in the late 20s as Mom graduated in 1930 so bloomers were not really the bees knees. Mom was told she made them so she had to wear them—one fo the few faced with such an ultimatum. So off she went toward the school but several blocks down the street she detoured into an outhouse where she stripped off the bloomers and folded them neatly to wait for her return. She stopped in on the way home for lunch and donned the bloomers, stopped in and returned them to the bench on her way back to afternoon classes and stopped in again after school and put them on for the final trip home. Not one of siblings gave her away and an older sister lent her a more modern pair of under wear so she did not go commando to class. Family is there when you need them.
Mom stars in another semi school related tale. She was hired to cook for a teacher whose wife was ill. One day he brought home an eel for her to cook. He sketched out the process and into the pot went the eel. Only he forgot to tell her how to put the eel in so the dorsal nerve would not shrink as the eel cooked. She slid it in the wrong way and when she checked the shrinking nerve had the eel “swimming “ in the pot. She screamed so loud the neighbors came to see if she had had an accident. She never took another class from that teacher.
