Lightning

The first American family that Grandmother worked for were cruel. They beat her for the slightest infraction. My grandfather stopped that, but Grandmother was soon hired out again. Somewhere in this time period, some records say that my Grandmother’s mother and sister also arrived, but the little girl remained at the home shared by my Grandfather and his parents.

The second home where she worked was out in the country on a large farm, but her work was confined to the house, cooking, and laundry. You do not want a long dissertation on the amount of work and drudgery in keeping a large farm house clean, cooking, and the washing and ironing for a large family without the use of modern machines. The making of soap for the washing, the canning, preserving, and huge meals served three times a day, plus there would be sandwiches, cookies, pastries, or pie in the afternoon. There was also the task of bringing in wood, coal, and/or dried cobs for heating and cooking.

One winter morning, Grandmother was dusting the living room furniture. While dusting a small table near the window, she looked outside. Her blonde, blue eyed, beautiful, three-year-old daughter was running toward the farmhouse across the snow dressed in nothing but her Sunday dress.

Grandmother collapsed. She knew the child could not know the way to this house. When she came too enough she managed to walk to the stairs before almost fainting again. She was sitting on the stairs when a knock came at the door. It was my grandfather with the sad news that the little girl was dead. Tuberculosis was the cause.

Grandpa insisted she pack her clothes and come home with him. They would be married after the funeral. My grandfather attended to everything, including arranging the burial in the family plot he and his father purchased in the town cemetery. They could not afford the large marble tombstone fashionable in that era, but Grandfather planted a tree at the head of the grave. Mother claimed he said, “That will mark her spot and our love forever. It is a far better monument.” (I’d love to believe it, but cannot. I think it is one of Mama’s embellishments.)

They were married shortly after in the year of 1887. They had ten children and eight lived. When they were in their seventies, they moved in with their youngest daughter and her husband as Grandfather’s hands were too crippled to even put the firewood or coal into their stove and Grandmother was losing her sight.

My grandfather died in August of 1938 and the local paper hailed him as a pioneer and home builder for those moving into town. My mother had taken me the two hundred miles to my Aunt’s place to help care for her father. That took courage as she was eight months pregnant with my youngest brother, but railroads were considered a safe way to travel for all.

Children, of course, were not allowed in the sick room. As death drew nearer, Grandfather insisted on seeing the baby. My Aunt and Uncle (by marriage) assumed he meant their daughter who was three years old.

“No, no, the baby,” my grandfather insisted. They then took in their eight-year-old son who had spent many hours with him.

Once again it was, “No, no the baby.”

That left me. I was almost one-year-old and so was deposited on the bed beside my grandfather. I do not remember the incident. Mama insisted he smiled and called me by his nickname for me: Little Fiddlesticks.

Did he somehow know that I was the one who would marry a carpenter? I've often wondered. Grandfather passed away that night and summer Iowa storm of rain and lightning swept through the area. One bolt took out the tree in the graveyard. The tree was not replanted. Years later their grandchildren would install a huge marble headstone honoring the two.

I hope all will permit a small digression or two. Grandmother hated the nationality of the couple that beat her and later passed some of that animosity down to her children and grandchildren. It must have been a shock when the Hitler regime wrote my maternal family asking where certain relatives were as it was suspected that they had “tainted” blood by virtue of their surname.

My Grandmother and Great-grandmother read tea leaves. They did not accept payment, but would read for family and friends. This led to certain members of the Lutheran congregation demanding an apology. Grandfather managed to apologize in such a manner that the pastor accepted the apology and pronounced his forgiveness. Certain members of the congregation remained upset. I used a paraphrasing of Grandfather’s apology in Before We Leave http://www.amazon.com/Before-We-Leave... when Lorenz and Martin have to apologize to the Pastor and congregation before they can be served communion again.