A Beautiful Women

I interviewed my grandmother to find out more about how she viewed her life.

As my grandmother and I sit on the couch in her bright green living room, I began to ask her about her life. I wanted to know how her life was compared to mine. I wanted to know how she lived throughout her life. I asked her about her child hood. I also asked her about her life as an adult.

My grandma came from a family of ten children. There were five girls and then her parents had five boys. My grandma was the youngest of the girls. Her mother was a stay at home mom, while her daddy drove a truck or worked in his garage. She was named after both of her parents, Alice after her mother, and Ray after her daddy.

Her life seemed to me as carefree; all they did was play and never neglected. She seemed so innocent. In the summer they would do whatever they wanted. They had on bike so her and her brothers and sisters would take turns riding up and back down the road. She said, “We were very poor, but we didn’t know it. Everyone where we lived lived the same way we did.” When their shoes had a hole in the soles, they would use cardboard to cover the holes. They had chores when they were younger, but I imagine the chores were divided between ten children.

Her daddy was the fun one. In the summer he would take turns taking each of them with him on his truck route. He would take them to White Castle for lunch, and then take them out for ice cream as a treat. My grandma recalls a time when it was her turn to go with him on his route, and he caught her picking her nose and eating it. (She was about six years old at this time.) He would not let her go with him because she was picking her nose and eating it. As she told me about this, you could see her fighting back tears, her eyes started to get red. But she laughed and acted like it didn’t bother her.

She explained her mother was the one who did the disciplining. Her mother would tell them to go outside and cut a switch from the tree, and she would switch them on the back of the legs. Her mother had to do the punishing because she was the one who had the children all the time.

She got along with all of her brothers and sisters, but one. The sister who was the closest in age to her, was the one who she fought with, her name is Kay. When they would have to do the dishes, Kay would say that she had to poop, and my grandma would want to hurry and get them done so she could go play, so she would always end up doing them by herself.

The person who she was closest to was Thurm. Thurm is only eleven months, to the day, younger than her, so they were in the same grade. In the sixth grade they were going on a trip around Ohio. They had to raise the money themselves to go. My grandma was just a little bit short, so my uncle Thurm gave my grandma his money, and told her he did not want to go anyway, but my grandma said, “I know he really did want to go.”

My grandma’s hobbies when she was little, was in the winter her and Kay would go down to the basement and get out the clothes pins her mother had down there. They would stay down there for hours making roads and buildings. She also loved to play with paper dolls. Her and Kay would throw them away, but they would just start the collection over again.

Her favorite memory was when they took their yearly trip to her uncle’s farm. When they were there they would make homemade ice cream. She would stay with her cousin for two weeks. They would play in the house and in the fields. “When we played in the clover field my uncle didn’t even get mad at us.” My grandma said with a smile. They would spend hours in the corn field and by the time they were done, they would be covered in cuts, from the leaves on the cornstalks.

The best time in her life was when she was twenty-five to thirty-five years old. Her and my grandpa lived in Seattle, Washington. While they lived in Seattle, my grandpa went to work in Alaska for three months. In Alaska, he painted the inside of skyscrapers. He sent all of the money he made back to my grandma in Seattle to raise their family. They had many friends and went to church all the time. She felt like it was the greatest time in her life. All of this made her feel like she was worth something, like she has a reason to live. She knew that anything her and my grandpa did, they could achieve it. If they could survive with only each other to rely on, they could do anything they put their minds too.

Her favorite job she ever had was when she worked in a office for Black Clawson. Black Clawson is a paper factory in Middletown, Ohio. She loved everyone she worked with and she loved doing the work she did. Her second favorite job was when she worked at Miami University, typing for eight hours a day.

My grandma had a great life if you ask me. It would have been nice not to know I was poor, so that I could have had a simple and carefree life. I wish that I was the only person I had to worry about when I was little, but instead I had to worry about myself, my sisters and my mom. She did everything she wanted too. She had an amazing life even though they had very little to work with. I am very glad I got to know more about the great life my grandma had.