This little vignette will make no sense unless you remember a time when most houses had just one or two phones, tethered firmly to a wall. When calls occurred more for arrangements than chats. When long distance calls cost serious cash, though the relative charges depended on day of the week and hour of the day.
Yes, virtually the dark ages.
I was likely ten. The phone rang. And though I often did not answer it, I did that time. And a man said, “Want to meet me for a movie, little girl?” I hung up. Scared; grossed out. Like I’d done something wrong. My childhood had been laced with admonitions against talking to strange men. And I had an uncle who made that training seem wise.
So when the phone rang again, I let my mother answer it.
I had just hung up on Grandpa Pyle calling from Geneva, Iowa. My mother’s father.
Grandpa and Grandma Pyle—Milton and Myrtle—were, in fact, the approachable grandparents. They raised their eight children on a farm—in the early days–rented. My mother Esther was the third oldest and the smallest and scrappiest of the bunch. When Norma Jean—the surprise baby—came along in 1933, I think their circumstances had improved. And by the time I knew Grandpa and Grandma, they’d moved into the tiny town of Geneva with a lot large enough to raise an enormous garden.
Geneva was a hot steamy nine hours or so from McPherson—in those years. We’d usually visit in August. Which meant that their garden was at its most exuberant. We feasted on corn on the cob and green beans, squash and tomatoes. Fat black and red raspberries topped our bowls of Cheerios for breakfast. Wonderful except for the hefty seeds buried in berries before hybrids tamed that annoyance.
We’d make afternoon trips to visit other relatives or my mother’s school friends. Play with cousins. Pick the vegetables we were approved to harvest. Read Grandpa and Grandma’s Grit newspaper and farm magazines. At night, Sonja and I were given the back bedroom/sewing room/storage space. The room’s most distinctive furnishing was a black and white cowhide rug. I spent a good deal of emotional energy puzzling over the cow and her life and her sacrifice. The rug seemed pretty superfluous to me—and a questionable kind of feature.
Of course the house wasn’t air conditioned. And Iowa’s humidity exceeded that of our Kansas home by several degrees of misery. So we went to bed and lay spread eagled with no top sheet. Hoping for a slight breeze.
Grandpa and Grandma’s pictures match my memories. Word had it that Grandpa had had a temper and he still rather expected the world to accommodate his whims. But he was also the tease. The twinkle in his eyes real. Grandma Pyle was less jolly, but had her own wry wit and wisdom. And no illusions about Grandpa. Her voice was scratchy, always on the edge of giving out. Which seemed reasonable for a farm wife who’d raised eight children and superintended gardening and housekeeping and cooking and farmyard chores without any of what we consider modern conveniences. Who wouldn’t have worn through their vocal chords!
In 1952, Grandpa and Grandma celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Milton had been 22 and Myrtle 17 when they married. To the best of my memory, all their children, most of the spouses and grandchildren gathered in Geneva. And in a custom which seems just as antiquated as that early phone call, grandchildren put on a kind of talent show. My sister gave a dramatic reading—memorized with nuanced voices and gestures. I fought through sheer terror to play a very simple version of “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” on the piano. Sonja may have sung along too.
Rather like my contemplation of that cowhide, I loved to picture those teddy bears. And their picnic in some magical cool forest that in no way resembled Kansas or Iowa. Why wouldn’t we attend?
If you go down in the woods today, you’d better not go alone.
It’s lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home.
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because
Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.*
I spent today with the youngest four of my grandchildren, Izzy and Ella and David and Charlie Ann. And drove the 100 miles home wondering now how they would remember me. I’m Grandmom to them. Probably too serious for their tastes. Maybe recollected for weird gifts, for asking irrelevant questions, for needing their help to pull me out of their squishy sofa, for hearing only about a third of what they say. But really, I haven’t a clue whether or how I’ll live in their memories. What quirks will sift through their lives and this century? My life being as antiquated to them as a Bakelite phone seems to me now. ©
*“The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” melody is by American composer John Walter Bratton, written in 1907; lyrics were added by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy in 1932.
