Grandma Florence and Grandpa Teddy

I have lot of special memories of my grandma and grandpa while growing up in Milwaukee. These are some of those childhood memories. At age 7, my family moved to another home in Milwaukee. We had lived on 39th st. for my early childhood years ,of infant to age 6. On 39th st. we lived in a typical Milwaukee two flat house, with my grandma and grandpa living upstairs from us. I thought everybody lived like this when i was young , but now i know what a treasure this was to have my grandparents so very close. It was probably an affordable way to live in a house back then, as i believe my my parents rented it or maybe my grandparents owned it? When we moved to 54th st, my parents bought their own house, and my grandparents bought a house right down the block from us. Families just stayed together back then, and it was no surprise that grandma and Teddy( my step grandfather) would move too. The new block on 54th street was a mostly German neighborhood, I realized as I grew up . Everyone took pride in their yard and always shoveled their walks of snow in the winter for the sake of their neighbors.( I still can't believe our neighbors in Illinois who perhaps did not have this upbringing , because I seem to be one of the only neighbors who is out there right after a snowstorm, shoveling our front sidewalk!)

When we lived on 39th st , my grandma told me that I used to crawl up the stairs "to see if Teddy was home" ,and if he was, i would pull myself into his big arm chair and just sit with him while he read his Milwaukee Journal newspaper( no real conversation occurred). Perhaps this was just a safe haven for a little girl who just wanted a cozy place to sit with someone, as Teddy was almost always available when the rest of my family was busy. My grandma said that if she told me that Teddy was not there, I would simply crawl back down stairs!( Sorry grandma!)This must have been like a daddy- daughter connection for me that made this special. I still have two little wall statues of a Dutch boy and girl on my kitchen wall today, just like the ones my grandma had over her kitchen sink upstairs in that flat, that i would see when getting to the top of those stairs to visit.

Teddy was a very quiet man who grew up on a farm. He had a very tough life.When he was a child he saw his father killed in a farm "thrashing" machine, and his first marriage ended with his wife taking all of his money and running away. Teddy married my grandma at age 50 . It was a second marriage for both of them. My grandma left her first , french background, husband who was so often jobless and moving their family of 5 from town to town to town, and one day my grandma just said she was not going to move the family again! What a brave or foolish decision for a woman in the 30's. Perhaps it was the steadiness of their relationship in this second marriage for Florence and Teddy that they both treasured and that was missing in both of their first marriages.

Grandma Florence was a very strong woman. She survived a difficult childhood and later a difficult young marriage. Her mother was a traveling nurse who worked on horseback, doing her nursing in the countryside. Her mom had been called to her sister's house to care for her, nursing her at bedside until her death. She then ,after years of living in that house and after her sister's death, developed a relationship with her sister's husband and had my grandmother out of wedlock.She was a single parent and back then, as this was unheard of, she made the decision to give my grandma to an orphanage to spend her childhood years , so she could also keep her job as a traveling nurse.I am sure this was terribly hard. So my grandma spent her childhood years in an orphanage although she indeed had a mother living close by. This was perhaps a mothers sacrifice, but I felt so badly for my grandma when i heard this story from my mom . I don't know any other details but it must have been a very emotionally sad situation for everybody. My grandma however survived childhood , marrying quite young and having 5 children of her own and even marrying for a second time. She was a survivor!

Grandma also called my mom ,Alice, her "ROCK". This was an affectionate name she gave her oldest child who financially supported their entire family in the years between her first and second marriages. Mom bought her household appliances, furniture and paid all the bills by working full time as an accountant, a job she learned while working at the Fox Theatre offices. Years later, my mom would remain the main financial support for our family as well ,as my dad was a truck driver for Railway Express Agency( since age 17) and mom's income always surpassed his( another very strong woman!-- see girls, this is the strong female legacy you have from my side of the family!!).

This second marriage for Teddy and Florence was a marriage of companionship. Grandma often talked of the "steadiness" that Teddy supplied in her life and how she never took that for granted, considering it a great blessing in her life that gave her a lot of peace in her later years in life.

Teddy loved to play cards, mostly Rummy and he could do fun card tricks( their playing cards were so well used that the numbers were almost rubbed off of them!). He also like to read the newspaper and watch the "Wheel of Fortune" game show , "World Wide Wrestling"WWW on tv( he thought it was real wresting!) and Lawrence Welk( a musical entertainment show of the 50-60's) . He had a precise time to eat, shave and watch tv. In fact years later, when i was an adult living in Illinois and i would call him to tell him that i wanted to come to visit, he would give me the time perimeters he was busy with shaving or watching a game show,that i had to work around! But as he lived to be 94, perhaps there is something stabilizing about such a controlled life routine. He was in a secure "rhythm of life" with my grandma, spending his mornings in the garden or garage and afternoons in his workshop in his basement( he was very handy and creative with tools), late afternoon and early evening reading his paper and watching regular tv programs, and he was in bed by 9pm every night.

My brother Dale would often go over to play cards with Grandma and Teddy. He was a quiet, gentle soul that had trouble fitting in with kids, but loved to spend time with my grandparents. I think he like their simple, quiet lives, when life as a kid for Dale, was stressful and anxious. I think about this often and how it served them all well to have Dale visit and spend time with them, and for Dale to have a comfortable, relaxed place to be. Years later Grandma and Teddy helped Dale financially buy a small piece of land to farm in the Kickapoo area of Wisconsin. They could see Dale struggling to fit in life as an adult as well. And although this lovely spot in Wisconsin was one of Dale's favorites, the organic farm of his dreams did not come to fulfillment, as he had to sell it years later and died at the age of 29. I am so thankful to God that Dale had this loving relationship with my grandparents .

My grandma did not like to cook and just hated the holiday meals she was expected to cook for everybody, so mom would often do most of the cooking and bring it over to her house. (This is something she did her whole life even while caring for her parents in their own home until their death many years later.) But holidays were fun at their house. Grandma would send us kids with my young cousins into the bedrooms where pillow fights were allowed, or we would play board games ,or she would banish us outside a bit to wear ourselves out before the holiday meals playing ball games, jumping rope on her driveway, or just chasing each other around the yard. Great cousin fun!!

Teddy and Grandma Florence had a huge vegetable,fruit and flower garden in their backyard. The yards/lots on 54th street ,were long and narrow, just right for a big garden.Many people in our neighborhood had large gardens, perhaps that is why they bought their houses on this block. This is what most of the neighbors had in common so it was easy to talk about their gardens. I would often see neighbors talking over their backyard fences while riding my bike down the block . I learned how to ride my 20 inch bike on 54th st. and would often ride down the block to visit my grandparents.Grandma loved to can fruits and vegetables from her garden and oh how i wished i had been old enough to learn those skills from her. My favorites were her strawberry rhubarb sauce , applesauce,jams and jellies, and homemade grape juice. She also grew lovely little yellow plum tomatoes that tasted like candy to me- i could not get enough of them!! And of course her strawberries and raspberries were great too. They also had a large wood recycling bin they used to compost for the garden. It was a little bit smelly as i remember but i loved it too, as every Spring i could view a new nest of baby bunnies in it !!Grandma Florence also what she called her "surprise garden" where she would place her cooking scraps from her garden veggies. Each year different items would grow in this garden. It may be one stalk of corn , next to some green beans and a watermelon. I think she like waiting to see what would grow in this less predictable part of her garden.It was a fun surprise!

She also had a lovely flower garden in front of her vegetable garden, full of tall Gladiola flowers of many colors (an old fashioned flower you don't see too often these days, except for funeral bouquets). She often sat under the tree near those flowers when resting in her yard a bit. I think this was grandma's way to "pretty up" that big dirt garden that took up 3/4ths of their back yard. She was also a perfectionist about her yard , picking each piece of crab grass out by hand on her knees in her front yard and constantly sweeping the seeds from her neighbor's trees off her cement driveway. My dad was quite a green thumb too and they had gardening in common. He had lots of berry bushes, roses of every color and fruit trees- mostly plum and apple.

She also used to hang clothes to dry on clotheslines over her driveway in the backyard. I still have her clothes pole that held up the lines and her clothespin bag at Washington Island, that I now use to hang out clothes to dry in my yard as well. Grandma Florence sewed very well on her Singer sewing machine( i have this at the island as well). She even made quilts out of her old dresses- as little was ever thrown away back then, and everything was recycled for other uses .We have one of grandma's quilts at Washington Island, a lovely pink trimmed one with little squares of every kind of fabric design- so pretty, a family treasure( my mom recognized her mothers dresses in some of them). She also sewed a sail out of real parachute for my brother Gary's homemade "Sunfish" sailboat he had made in wood working class in high school. She had a cycle of using things- for instance, when her bedsheets or towels got too old to sew up any tears or holes , she would cut them into dish towels, then dust cloths then dish rags then garage rags and only THEN would she throw them way!! WOW!! Think of how easily we discard of everything with tiny imperfections or wear these days!

Grandma also loved to write poetry and philosophical interpretations of the Bible verses. She believed in God but actually felt the Bible was just a set of stories to help us know how to live rather than actual history, and only attended church on holidays. Perhaps her whole life had been so difficult she found it very hard to rely on anything else but common sense and God to service her life and thus would not fully trust the Bible to be a book of truths. Perhaps she was hardened by her life so could not be fully open to believing in Jesus, but her poetry was her creative outlet and she often wrote poems about real people and experiences. I still have her hand written poems, all signed with her pen name she gave herself "Universe Sol". Grandma also belonged to a peace organization in the 30's and had strong political views.She also loved talking with young people. My mom said that when she was a young women her friends would often spend time talking with her mom and even after she broke up with a boyfriend ,he would return to spend time to talk with Grandma Florence!!

Grandma and Teddy had a small "Airstream" travel trailer that they took a two week vacation with every year to some place close in Wisconsin once a year. For the rest of the year it sat in their backyard near their garden. This was truly their only luxury ,as they grew up in the depression era and only had a minimum of belongings and almost all were totally practical. Anyway,I loved her little trailer, as Grandma Florence would let me invite friends over to have tea parties or play house in this trailer and this was great fun for a little girl of 7. We would pretend we were on a trip or that I was the mother of the house serving dinner. Sometimes she would join us to have a few of her own graham crackers and some grape juice that she provided for us. I think she liked the fact that the trailer was being used and also perhaps that I came to visit. Maybe it reminded her of some easier childhood days of playing house at the orphanage or perhaps days she wished she had had as a little girl not living in a real home. Anyway it was great fun and a great generosity ,as grandma was not frivolous this way, and took very special care of all of her things, most of which we were not allowed to play with!!

Sometimes I also got to sleep over in her fold out mohair couch/hide- a- bed at her house. That was great fun too- a little get away for me alone.We still have this couch at our Washington Island house, along with other personal things like small pieces of furniture, lamps, china,silver, paintings, books , old ice box ( we keep our canned goods in now)etc... so it feels as if she is still there with me a bit in her things. I even used this couch/hide a bed for my elderly mom when i brought her to the island for a visit ,as it is on the first floor and was easy to use with her wheelchair . I just thought of that now- how connected is that for a bit of family legacy- my grandma's couch was a comfort for my aging mom, as well as for me as a child!

Grandma Florence, fell in her home while answering a late phone call one night, breaking her hip at age 90, and she spent her last two years in a nursing home with dementia. Although she had a lovely form of dementia where she seemed carefree and happy and told everybody she loved them, so was well liked by the staff at the nursing home. Although after we would bring Teddy to visit with her, she would say (after he left the room) "who is that nice man that comes to visit me?" Teddy had no idea she did not recognize him thank goodness! There was also an elderly man that would wheel past her room in his wheelchair once a day with a big smile on his face- i thought he had a crush on grandma or else he thought she was somebody else?! I remember taking the girls to visit with her in the nursing home when they were very young, and how they would actually crawl into bed with her and snuggle, she loved that so! Teddy really missed her for that last few years of his life and even shared how "he didn't understand why he was still here"? I think he died out of loneliness for my grandma. But my Grandpa Teddy, lived a full life till his death at age 94 and still in his own house on 54th st, thanks to my faithful mom.

Teddy was oh so quiet, but years after his death I met a young man at my husband's work Christmas party and as we got talking about our childhoods of both growing up in Milwaukee. We realized we had both lived on 54th st and he knew Teddy!! He said Teddy used to repair his bike!! I kind of remember a family of young boys who lived across the street and a few houses over from us but they were much younger than I was- that must have been his family!! I didn't even know Teddy talked with neighbors, as he was so quiet ,but maybe it was like me as a child cuddling up with him in his chair at age 3, a quiet non threatening kind of togetherness . Perhaps he loved the innocence of children and had hoped he had had some of his own and was fulfilling this through being the "neighborhood grandparent"! Or perhaps this little boy was much like him as a child growing up on a farm, a quiet sweet child. How unbelievably connecting is this?

I find there is something about the Midwest and Milwaukee in particular, where people growing up there often keep roots there and live close to family. Maybe because it is such a good place to grow up and some neighborhoods have not changed that much. Some areas , however, are now a completely different culture. Years after my grandparents passed away, we finally convinced my parents to move from the then unsafe 54th st neighborhood. There had been a "drive by shooting" at a drug house just two doors away from my parents!! The neighborhood looked the same, but the culture had been transformed to something far different!!

Grandma and Teddy were an important part of my childhood memories and experiences and i will always be grateful that i had them so close for so many years.