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AM I THE ONLY ONE. . . . who had a mean grandfather?

Donna Chandler

MY GRANDFATHERS
By Donna Hale Chandler

I don’t know very much about my grandfathers’ history.  I do know how each of them made me feel when I was a little girl and I remember stories that I heard about each.  One grandfather had long passed away before I had my first child.  The other left this earth when my first born was quite small.  So, if there ever comes a time when either of my children would like to know about their great-grandfathers on their mother’s side of the family, maybe this will be a teaser that will cause them to investigate further.

Both of my grandfathers were interesting men even though they were complete opposites.  One was a good man, devoted to his family and community while the other was a womanizer who would most likely have been struck by lightning if he’d ever entered the church where my grandmother faithfully attended every Sunday morning.  One made me feel safe and loved.  The other terrified me with his loud laugh and jaw full of chewing tobacco.

The scary grandfather was Oscar Diamond and my grandmother divorced him in 1953 when I was just 4 years old.  You would have thought that after 41 years of marriage and 6 children that my grandmother would have been used to his wandering ways and would have taken the easy route by ‘looking the other way’, but bringing home an STD was perhaps the final straw.  Even though at the time the word divorce was almost a dirty word, my grandmother forged ahead.  Within a year of the divorce my grandfather married the Other Woman and moved into a house within sight of my grandmother’s home.

There are two stories that stick out the most in my memories of my scary grandfather.  One was a story of when Oscar and his wife, Rebecca were newlyweds.  Rebecca went to church faithfully every Sunday.  The distance was too far to walk so she would ride bare-back on one of the two plow horses that the couple owned.  Oscar wouldn’t dare darken the door of the church but he would climb on the other horse and ride along with Rebecca to visit with his buddies at the general store until church services ended.  As soon as he saw the first person start down the church steps, he would high tail it over there so he could see if there were any pretty ladies to flirt with while he waited for his wife.

This particular Sunday when Rebecca came out into the sun light, she spied her new husband laughing and teasing a pretty young lady.  Rebecca, incensed, held her head high, and walked quickly past the giggling couple to her horse.  However, her anger evidently increased her strength because when she grabbed the horse’s mane and attempted to jump on his back, she kept right on going, falling in a heap in the dirt on the other side of the horse.  To his credit Oscar ran to his young wife’s aid, helping her up and onto her horse.  I don’t know whether there was shouting or silence as they made their way home.  Either way, I’m sure Oscar got the message.  It’s too bad that he had such a short memory because his attraction to the opposite sex finally landed him in Divorce Court.

The second story I remember so well about Oscar happened when I was eight years old.  My younger sister was born on July 9th, which was Oscar’s birthday.  After my sister’s one year birthday family get together, my mother decided to take us both to see our grandfather to give him a pair of house slippers for his birthday.  We walked along a dusty road from my grandmother’s house to his in the hot July sun, with my mother holding my hand and my sister on her hip.

When we arrived, Oscar was sitting in a rocking chair on his front porch chewing tobacco and spitting in an old rusty can.  I don’t remember the conversation he had with my mother but I do remember that she never went up the three or four stairs to where he was sitting.  She wished him happy birthday and laid the shoe box on the first step.  He ignored the gift and spit tobacco at my new patent leather shoes making me jump just like in the old westerns when the bad guy shoots his gun at another’s feet making them ‘dance’.  My mother’s grip on my hand increased as we turned and walked away with Oscar’s loud laughter vibrating in our ears.  I don’t remember ever going back to see him again.

Some years later as Oscar lay very sick in the hospital, his home burned to the ground.  As he was not trusting of the bank, not only did he lose his home, all his worldly possessions, but he also lost every dollar he had hidden in glass canning jars in the home’s cellar.  I don’t know if anyone mourned his passing or if those who knew him best decided that ‘Karma’ had done its duty.

(I also had a ‘good’ grandfather that I loved dearly. He will be the subject of a future story)

Humorous

AM I THE ONLY ONE. . . . . . . . . . . . who remembers their first experience with alcohol

Donna Chandler

By: Donna Hale Chandler

I was just 17 years old when I married my high school sweetheart and a year later saw him off to Vietnam.  We grew up in a small town in Kentucky where we were expected to go to church twice on Sunday and every evening if there happened to be a revival in town.  The entire county where we lived was ‘dry’, meaning no alcohol was sold or served anywhere.  Beer and cocktails were not part of my life and as my personal world was so small, I had no idea that this way of life was not the norm.

When my husband was discharged from the Army and returned to the states, we immediately moved to Michigan where he had a job waiting.  We were excited to start our new married life and once our meager furnishings that consisted of a bed purchased from the Salvation Army store, a small Montgomery Ward’s TV and 2 lawn chairs were set up in our tiny three-room upstairs apartment, I ventured out to the grocery store to stock our shelves with the staples.

Much to my surprise as I explored each aisle, I found beer – all kinds and brands of beer – right out there on the grocery shelf for everyone to see and anyone to purchase.  I was amazed and rushed home to spout all the details of what I had found to my husband.  Surprisingly to me, he was not astounded by this discovery at all.

I’ve always been a quick study and it didn’t take long for me to learn that drinking beer or having a cocktail did not cause the heavens to open up and lightning come down to strike me dead, to suffer in hell for all eternity.  The opportunity for me to personally indulge came at Christmas, 1968, at a party that Ford Motor Company had for their hourly employees.  I was so excited to see how this part of the world ‘partied’ and I knew there would be ALCOHOL there.

We went with another couple, Carol and Gary, both native Michiganders and both thought my naivety quite humorous.  I remember distinctly that Carol and I both ordered a Sloe Gin Fizz.  It was a pretty red drink and went down like Kool-aide.   Soon we were both giggling like 10-year-olds and having a magnificent time.  Everything was wonderful and everything was funny.

As the evening went on and the gaiety continued, we strolled off, rather unsteadily to find the lady’s room.  As soon as we walked in, we heard a voice calling out, “I need some help.  Please.”  At first, we were frozen in our tracks.  Did we really hear someone calling for help or was this just another bit of proof that perhaps we’d better switch to drinking water?  But no, we heard the voice call out to us again.  The sound was coming from one of the bathroom stalls.  We peeked under the stall door and sure enough there were feet, although something didn’t seem quite right.

Carol was the brave one who pushed the stall door open to find a very large, very drunk young woman stuck between the toilet and the stall wall, and of course with her underwear around her knees.  She had managed to miss the toilet seat and plop down into the air, wedging herself securely.  We were both far from sober ourselves and decided that this was absolutely the funniest thing we had seen all night.  In between our bursts of laughter and trying to pull the woman up, she asked us to please go find her husband, James.

Holding our splitting sides we laughed our way back to our table, having forgotten all about the purpose of our visit to the bathroom and told our husbands what we had found.  They were evidently more sober that either of us and seemed not to see the humor in the poor woman’s situation.  They left us with Coke’s to drink and went in search of the Husband James.  When we saw our guys plus another strange man heading for the woman’s bathroom, we were quick to follow.  We wanted to see how they were going to dislodge the unfortunate woman.

There was much grunting and groaning from James and lots of crying from the young woman.  At last James dislodged is wife and much to the disappointment of Carol and me, there was no loud ‘pop’ like a cork from a champagne bottle.  Our little group turned to leave James and his wife when she suddenly passed out cold, proving that the drama of the evening was not yet over.  To his credit James laid his lady as gently as possible onto the floor, arranged her clothing more modestly, left us to guard the bathroom door and went in search of his friends.

In the blink of an eye, two more men were there to help James with his dilemma.  The three of them got her up, placed an arm over the shoulder of the two helpers and out of the bathroom they came, heading toward the entrance as James called to them that he’d run ahead and bring his car to the front door.  Sounds pretty easy, right?  Not so.

Carol and I had maintained a reasonable amount of decorum and were beginning to feel a bit ashamed at how much we had laughed at the poor woman.  That is until we saw the men start down the stairs with her.  They each had a right grip on their burden and as they began their decent the woman’s feet and shins were dragging down the stairs behind them – bump, bump, bump, with each step they took.  This sent us into another fit of laughter erasing all feeling of shame that almost invaded out conscience.

As a side note, I was the only one of our groups that had to go to work the next morning.  I awoke with a blinding headache (duh), put on the very same clothes and I wore to the party and somehow made it through the day, hoping that karma was not paying attention to my behavior the night before.