Category: Stories

Ruby’s Mom & Dad – March 23, 1909

Meet Ruby’s Mom and Dad. This photo was taken on their wedding day. It took a lot of begging, but Ruby finally let me take the picture home, frame and all, to scan it.

It kind of looks as though Ruby’s Mom has her hands in her pockets but Ruby says, no, her mother always held her arms a certain way, in photos, or when talking to people, to make it less noticeable that she had

No.

Forearms.

She would fold her hands at the knuckles, just behind her hips. Her grandchildren used to walk around doing that, pretending to be Gramma, Ruby said with a laugh, as I was packing up the picture to take home. I was trying to get the hell out of her house with it before she changed her mind, but then she started talking about her mother during the Great Depression, and I sat right back down again.

We used to call them the ”Dirty Thirties”, you know. All those people out of work – it was just awful.

We did alright – my Dad worked for the railroad, and we had a little farm, so we didn’t have to worry about starving to death, even with all us kids. I think my mother always felt a little guilty about all those people with next to nothing, because she was always giving food to perfect strangers, whenever they’d ask for it.

There were always hobos on the train in them days. There’d be men leaving their families behind to hop a train out West, hoping there’d be work out there. Us kids used to run down to the tracks whenever we heard a train coming, just so we could count the hobos and wave at them. We wasn’t making fun of them, mind you, but we used to wonder at the things those men saw. Some days there’d be up to a dozen hobos waving back at us. They always waved back.

Sometimes, when we’d get back home there’d be a hobo in our house! The odd one would get off the train, or maybe he’d get caught and thrown off, I’m not sure, and our house was right there, wasn’t it? So, sure enough, he’d be bound to knock on the door, and ask my mother if she’d give him something to eat.

One day, a hobo knocked, and my mother was alone in the house. She didn’t like the idea of letting a strange man in, but she didn’t have the heart to run him off, either, so she said, “You go round back and chop me some firewood, and I’ll make you a lunch.”

So, off this man went behind the house to the wood pile, and he chopped wood for an hour, while my mother cooked him up something to eat, and packed it all up for him to take away with him. He sure earned his lunch that day, I guess!

For some reason, my mother followed behind him when he left with his lunch – maybe she was going to haul water, I’m not sure, but she happened to see him meet up with four other hobos off the last train. She felt awful, too, when she saw he was splitting up that lunch between the bunch of them, after she’d made him chop all that wood… She wasn’t mean with a meal, but she’d only packed enough up for one man.

There were times, too, that a man would need a place to settle in for the night, and my mother never turned anybody away. She’d bed him down on the living room floor and give him supper. In the morning, he’d have a hot breakfast, and she’d send him off with a lunch for later, too.

Then she’d spend the whole day washing all those bedclothes twice over, just in case the fella was lousy, or had fleas.

One day, she got a great big box off the train, addressed to the “Section Foreman’s Mrs.” Inside that box was a whole set of “Knowledge Books” – encyclopedias, they were. And the note said “Thank you for taking me in, and for the nice meals on such-and-such-a-date….” It was from some hobo off a train, who’d maybe got himself a job selling Knowledge Books in Toronto or some such. Imagine that! My mother had those Knowledge Books ‘til she died. I wish I knew who had them now….

Before I left, Ruby showed me this little thing in her china cabinet. She’d bought it for her mother to hold her glasses on, and it sat on her mom’s night-stand, doing just, that for years.

And, yes, those are Ruby’s Mom’s specs still sitting on it.

”Tell that Mushy-Fella
that this is me…”
(Laugh, laugh, laugh….)

So, there, Mushy-Fella… I think we might be wearing her down. Maybe. 😉

* * *

*After a back-and-forth email conversation with a relative who found my blog, and was concerned I might be “taking advantage” of an old woman, Ruby has requested that I remove her parents’ wedding photo, just in case it might bother her son (he’s NOT the relative) that it’s posted online. I still win, though – she says I can leave everything else up, and continue to blog her stories. “I may be old, but I’m hardly incompetent.” So sayeth Ruby.

Random Song for the Day: ”Scar Tissue” – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Cardiogirl said that in her comments yesterday, and I’ve adopted it as my new “creed” of sorts. It just works for pretty much everything, wouldn’t you say?

Crap piling up? “Be One with the Shovel.” Live in Canuckia? “Be One with the Shovel.” Gotta get rid of that pesky bill collector? Yeah, it works for that, too.

It also reminds me of yet another Ruby story. This one came from this particular little one liner from Ruby, awhile back…. Yeah, the one at the top, there. Or just under these words you’re reading right now, to save you a little bother…

“She’s still mad at me for that time I hit her over the head with a shovel.”

 

“She” is Ruby’s little sister, Joycie. Joycie had a hard life with Ruby, as a kid, apparently. They laugh now about it (rather hysterically, at times), and Joycie forgives all. In fact, she’s can’t remember for the life of her why Ruby hit her in the head with the shovel in the first place.

“She musta been mad at something I said, I guess,” is what Joycie says. “She was always mad at me for something.”

And Joycie was always getting hurt as a kid, anyway…. What difference is a knock on the head with a shovel gonna make? Joycie remembers worse “accidents”.

Like the time her brother was running down a hill ahead of her, rolling a barrel-hoop. For reasons unknown, he decided to pick up the hoop halfway down the hill and pitch it up over his head behind him. Of course, it struck Joycie right on the forehead and she’s still got the scar to prove it.

Then there was the time all the kids were sliding on the ice with their boots – they didn’t all have skates, but boots worked alright – and Joycie wiped out and cracked her head a good one on the ice. Her mother (yeah, the lady with no. forearms.) taped her up good – so good, that she managed to tape Joycie’s eyelid open. And it stayed taped open for a week. I think those people had it in for poor little Joycie. It’s a wonder she survived childhood.

I got the chance to sit and talk with Joycie’s all-grown-up daughter, “Lucy”, a while back, and tried to get a few stories out of her. She immediately looked at Joycie and Ruby and said, “Do you remember the time Donah picked all the blueberries?” They started laughing (hysterically), and they stayed laughing for about ten minutes, not a one of them able to spit out a coherent word. I felt very left out of the joke.

”Who the hell is Donah?!” I finally yelled.

“Donah, is my ex-husband, the cheap bastard,” replied Lucy, and they all promptly went into hysterics again.

“Remember the wine-glasses on my anniversary?” said Lucy. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh….

Finally, she tells the story about the three lead crystal wine glasses she got for a wedding gift. Why three instead of four, was beyond her, but she always wanted that fourth glass, so she could offer wine in matching glasses when another couple came over.

One summer, Lucy and Donah were camping in a trailer on the week their wedding anniversary fell. Donah very mysteriously disappeared into town on the happy day, returning at night-fall with a bottle of wine and a box wrapped in pretty paper, which he handed to Lucy.

When she opened it, she was moved to tears to discover not one, but three more lead crystal wine glasses to match the ones she had in her china cabinet.

“Oh, Donah… now I have a set of six! Thank you!” Donah grinned and opened the wine.

It wasn’t until they returned home, and Lucy set about putting the new glasses into the cabinet that she noticed the first three were gone… When she confronted Donah, he admitted that the bottle of wine was the actual anniversary gift.

“I told you he’s my ex, right?” laughed Lucy.

“Okay, but what about the blueberries?” I demanded, which set them all off again for another ten minutes, but I finally got that story, too. Poor Donah. It wasn’t really his fault, but the poor bugger sure had some stupid luck…

He was out fishing one summer day, and on his way home he decided to visit Lucy’s aunt and uncle, who were “trailering” for the summer. He found the trailer, alright, but no one was there. He decided to wait for them.

He waited.

And waited.

He noticed there were blueberry bushes all over the area, laden with thousands of the biggest berries he’d ever seen, and, noticing a half-gallon plastic bucket sitting by the trailer, he decided to pick Aunt and Uncle some blueberries while he waited for them to return. It wasn’t long before the bucket was brimming with berries, but there was still no sign of Aunt and Uncle, and finally, he put the bucket next to the trailer door, where he knew they’d see it, and drove home.

He went back again a few days later, and there they were, so in he went. After a bit of conversation, he asked them if they’d found the blueberries. Uncle quickly turned the conversation to the fish he’d caught that morning.

After a bit, Donah asked again about the blueberries, and Auntie showed him the new curtains she’d made for the trailer.

Finally, when Donah asked again about the berries, Auntie said to Uncle, “We’re gonna have to tell him, I guess,” and turned to Donah.

“Donah, that was our pee pail.”

* * *

PS – Check it out! Another “new” word!! I clipped this from “My Thermos”. You should check that out, too.

AND….. This is right cool. ElitALICE found it first.

Random Song for the Day: ”The Last Resort” – The Eagles

Elle, from Maxwell the Tattooed Boy and Other Astounding Joys, wrote about her grandmother in a post yesterday. Her Grandma was a Flapper in the Roaring Twenties, a time that fascinates me (I’m in – okay, mostly out of, lately – the midst of a novelish-type project about those days). Suzi wondered in Elle’s comments what Ruby’s take on flappers might be. I have to say, I wondered, myself, once Suzi put the bug in my ear.

I didn’t even get the chance to ask, though, before Ruby started on about her Mom again…
Continue reading “Work Boots ‘n Dancin’ Shoes”

January 15, 2008

How cool is that?! I think it’s the cat’s ass, myself.

Okay, onto the original subject, for which I have no pic, which is why I had to post the groovy-cool gizmo link… I’ve been harangued about this subject since I first brought it up, by all the Ruby fans (okay, mostly by Cardiogirl), and I can’t go another day with all the betch, betch, betching…

Ruby’s Mom was born with her arms drawn up so that her teeny-tiny little hands were pretty much touching her teeny-tiny little shoulders. It was all they (and by “they”, I must assume Ruby means her mom’s parents with the help of a midwife, considering her mom must have been born close to a hundred and twenty-five years ago, if not over…) could do to draw her little arms down into a normal-looking position, and it took days to a week to do it. She never was quite able to straighten her arms right out and lock her elbows, either.

Afterward, it became rather painfully apparent that this otherwise normal and most beautiful infant had been born… with….

No.

Forearms. (cred to Cardiogirl, who won’t type it any.

Other.

Way).

Yes, folks, the poor kid’s hands were growin’ out her elbows.

I know that sounds a little mean-spirited, but that’s how Ruby said it to me, so that’s how I’m saying it to you. From Ruby’s mouth to your ears (eyes, ahem…*).

ANYway….

Ruby’s Mom (whose name I never did remember to ask, but I’d only have to come up with a pseudonym anyway, so I will stick with “Ruby’s Mom”, I guess) never let the fact that she had.

No.

Forearms.

get in the way of anything. She grew up, went to school, taught school, got married, had eight kids (EIGHT!!!! KIDS!!!!), and ran her house like clockwork back in the days when most women had their share of overwhelming days.

She lived in the middle of the Northern Ontario “bush”, in a little, wee berg called “Northland”, where the only way in was by train. They eventually got a road built in; Ruby was old enough to remember it being built, but even then… Wow!

There was no electricity. No running water. And it’s not like Ruby’s Mom could run to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread, either. Nope. She made her own. Enough to feed EIGHT!!!! KIDS!!!!, remember?! Washed her family’s clothes by hand. Sewed most of them herself, too, with the exception of their “dress-up” clothes, the ones they wore to church, funerals, and dances. On top of all of this, she ran a small farm, growing vegetables, raising pigs and chickens, and chopping kindling… with.

No.

Forearms.

Ruby remembers that she never wore short sleeves, although she’d push her sleeves up past her elbows when she was working at home. If there was a knock on the door, though, first thing she’d do was yank her sleeves down over her wrists, so Ruby thinks that in some ways, it did bother her a little.

But, here’s the real kicker… it wasn’t until one of Ruby’s older sisters went to school for the first time and came home afterward crying, that Ruby even knew that her mother had.

No.

Forearms.

Seems that in the one-room school house that the kids all went to, that they liked to trade their lunches with each other (some things never change, huh?). It was during her first lunch hour at school, that Ruby’s older sister found out in that mean and nasty way that only kids have of treating each other, that she wasn’t able to join in on the lunch trade with the other girls.

Why? Well, that’s what Ruby’s sister wanted to know, wasn’t it? Well, it was because, they said, “Your mother works her bread with her elbows!” And they laughed until Ruby’s sister cried.

And then some.

When her sister came home with this story, Ruby was first puzzled. Then hurt. Then steaming mad. Ruby’s Mom, on the other hand, set about making a chocolate cake. In the middle of the week.

Un.

Heard.

Of.

And the next day, Ruby’s sister was most certainly the STAR player in the school house lunch circle, seeing as how she had a coveted piece of the Blue-Ribbon-Winning-Chocolate-Cake-of-Which-the-Recipe-was-
Never-Shared-and-Everybody-Else’s-Mother-was-Green-with-Envy-Over in her lunch pail.

Not bad for having

No.

Forearms.

Boo-Yah, Ruby’s Mom!

As a bit of a PS… watch this space tomorrow (or the next night, at the latest) for evidence of dead people. Damn, Suzi and her Dumb Dares.

Random Song for the Day: “Me and My Shadow” – Frank Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr.