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Groundhog Day and Other Important Holidays

~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

It’s an odd holiday, really. No one takes the day off work; there are no special foods associated with the day; though a movie was made in its honor and the news media usually covers it to some degree, it doesn’t really rank up there as one of our favorite celebrations. No gifts are exchanged to mark the occasion and when all is said and done, it’s just sort of lame. Except in my family.

February 2 was always a big day in the Fletcher family. My parents were married on Groundhog Day. At the time, no one really made a big to-do of the wedding. They simply got in a car and drove to the next county to a justice of the peace and said their vows. My mother’s sister Violet went with them as did my dad’s brother Buck. Buck and Vie later married each other, but that’s another story and one which I do not know much about. I don’t think my parents “eloped” . . .  they just didn’t make much of a fuss about the wedding part of it. As Anna from Downton Abbey says, “I’d rather have the right man than the right wedding.” I can so imagine those words coming from my mother’s mouth. So on February 2, 1924, they were married. 

wedding announcement
I wonder about the story behind this wedding announcement sent by mother’s parents to their friends and family. Were they disappointed not to have been included in their daughter’s wedding or had they agreed with her “no-nonsense” approach to such things?
Ray & Hazel Fletcher – married Feb. 2, 1924. We know this picture was taken in 1924 because that year was written on the back. We assume it was taken on their wedding day because Dad is wearing a suit and no one remembers ever seeing him in a suit – ever.

However, an anniversary, though important to the couple, does not usually become a “family holiday”. But wait. . . there’s more. The winter of 1925 was a very stormy one with several big blizzards. The young couple were 30 miles from the nearest doctor and had only a wagon and horses for transportation. When a break in the weather came, Dad loaded his pregnant wife in the wagon and took her to her parents who lived near the doctor, and she stayed with them until Don was born. And  on their first wedding anniversary, Feb. 2, 1925,  my mother gave birth to their first child: it was Groundhog Day.

 The next 25 years would bring the Great Depression, a World War, and many other hardships to this farm family. They would lose their farm and livelihood and struggle to feed their five children and, along with their neighbors and friends, fight to keep body and soul together. They would send that first born son off to fight in Germany and agonize through the days and months when he was listed as Missing in Action and then finally begin to put their lives back together again when he was liberated from a German POW camp and eventually sent home. Life began to return to “normal” and they dared to once again believe in a future. Don married a local girl, their oldest daughter Lila Rae completed nursing school in the big city, married a “foreigner” as my father labeled him (a Democrat and a Catholic), but all in all, things were looking up!  They were even expecting their first grandchild.

Jolene was born on a bleak winter’s day and became the first of the next generation of Fletchers. She was born on her grandparent’s Silver Wedding Anniversary and her father’s 24th birthday. The date was February 2, 1949:  Groundhog Day.

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Hazel Fletcher with her son Don, granddaughter Jolene and father, Charles Barnes

And that’s how Groundhog day became a holiday in the Fletcher family: with special foods, special traditions, and special significance. And if anyone outside the family ever wondered why the Fletchers made so much of a non-holiday that centered around a rodent named Punxsutawney  Phil, they never said. 

Epilogue:
After I wrote this piece I learned that this Groundhog celebration has continued in the Fletcher family into succeeding generations.  Jolene’s granddaughter was also born on Feb.  2 … in 2007.  Long live Punxsutawney Phil.

                                            

The Taste of Memories

~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

When Paul and I traveled home to see my mother it didn’t matter if we were to be there overnight or a week. Sitting on her kitchen counter we would always find three chocolate cream pies. “If these are not gone by the time you leave,” she would threaten “I’m never making you another one.” Not to worry. All of us, but especially Paul, loved Hazel’s chocolate pie.

My mother was an extraordinary cook and she made the best cream pie in the world. As a child my favorite was Banana Cream and I always requested it for my birthday. I remember she made a peanut butter pie that was so good and so rich that I made myself sick on it one time and could never stand the thought of it again. But as I grew up, I too preferred the chocolate. For some reason that I cannot fathom I never got her recipe. I learned to make a pretty good pie from the Better Homes and Garden cookbook with the plaid cover, but it never matched Hazel’s.

When we were home for my sister Lila’s memorial service a few weeks ago, the conversation
turned, as it inevitably does, to food and our memories of it. My niece Shirely happened to mention that she had her grandmother Fletcher’s recipe for chocolate pie. Seriously??!! How had I not known this? And so she sent the recipe and I vowed to try it and see if it was as perfect as I remembered it or as it had grown in my memory to mythical proportions of goodness.

Today is as close to a snow day as we have come here in Maryland for a couple of years. Not much snow is expected, but the ground is so cold that whatever falls will stick to the roads and make driving hazardous and so they are closing schools early and people are settling in to pretend that we are snowed in. When the kids were little, snow days consisted of cooking and baking and movies and hanging out in front of the fireplace. They were like a holiday. I miss those days. Now there is no one here to eat the the goodies, but I have decided to use it as an excuse to cook something yummy, to watch episode after episode of Downton Abbey, sit by the fire and bake my mother’s chocolate pie.

From the Big Chief Tablet

~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

When they were going through her papers, Lila’s kids found Big Chief tablets, spiral notebooks, and loose pages of paper containing  notes and stories about her childhood. What a treasure!  Many of these read like a chapter of Little House on the Prairie and though they are stories about a time and place of which I have no memory, when I read them I feel connected – this is where I come from.  One of the stories is called “My Happiest Memory.”

MY HAPPIEST MEMORY – by Lila Gradisar

Sadness and deprivation precede my happiest memory.

At the age of 10, I understood very little of what it meant to be in the midst of the great depression. I did understand however that whatever this “thing” was, it had changed our family’s life tremendously.

The draught with the accompanying dark dust bowl days had forced my Dad to have a farm sale and move the family to town. We lived in a rented house at the edge of Palisade, Nebraska. The house had three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room.

“No luck today”,  my dad would say as he returned from looking for work all day in early December.

Unemployment was not acceptable to this energetic farmer. As jobs were available, he worked on WPA some, but even that hadn’t been available lately.  Most of his unemployed time was spent with his brother, my Uncle Bill, in finding trees to cut down and saw up to keep our wood pile high.

My mother spent most of her days working for the only Dr. in town and his wife:  She cleaned their house and in return brought home a little cash and medical treatment for our family.

Christmas was approaching and naïve as we were, we children were making our wish lists and the younger ones were getting ready for Santa’s arrival. The more excited we became the quieter and more worried our parents became.  “Can we get our Christmas tree tomorrow?” I asked one evening as we were all gathered in the kitchen. A silence followed which was so long I thought both parents had gone deaf and hadn’t heard me. Finally with tears in her eyes and a trembling voice my mother replied, “Things are different this year. Dad doesn’t have a job. We have no money and we won’t be getting a tree. There also is no money for presents.”  We all sat quietly trying to understand what this meant.  My dad said, “Next year will be better.”  I went to bed thinking, “Next year is a long way off.”

Two days before Christmas, I was sitting at the window watching for my mother to walk up the road from work as I did each evening. To my surprise a car drove up. Few people we knew had a car.  All five kids ran out the door to greet whoever it might be. My mother got out the passenger side and Mrs. Kauer out the driver side. In the back seat with its branches sticking out through the window was a Christmas tree. The car was piled full of presents and boxes of groceries.  Mrs. Kauer said, “Come help us unload the car.”  I couldn’t believe it. All this was for us. We children jumped with glee, shrieked and chattered as we carried all the things into the middle of the kitchen floor. Mrs. Kauer was gone in a flash as soon as the car was empty, leaving my Mother to explain. Mrs. Kauer had begun to quiz my Mother about our family’s Christmas plans and finally my mother had confessed that due to the circumstances, we didn’t have many plans. Much to Mother’s surprise, the kind lady she worked for had taken it upon herself to change the plan. And change it she did. Mother was all smiles.

Finally it was time to put up the tree! The excitement was electrifying. We began to rapidly open up all the boxes. “Real electric Christmas lights” I yelled and I opened a box. This was indeed a first. There were balls and tinsel to put on the tree. The tree was decorated and Dad plugged in the lights. We stood in awe – mouths agape. It was the most beautiful Christmas tree I had ever seen. Everyone had a brightly wrapped package which was placed under the tree before Mother scooted us off to bed way past our bed time. When I awakened on Christmas Eve morning the house was already filled with the wonderful aroma of my mother’s baking. She had been up before daybreak preparing our favorite holiday foods. In the boxes of groceries she had found everything to make a feast.  We helped her bake sugar cookies; she made a batch of fudge and divinity and pumpkin pies. Again the excitement lasted all day. On Christmas Eve, Dad again started the fire in the living room. We turned the tree lights on and sat around the fire before finally going to bed.

On Christmas morning at 4:00 a.m. the fist child was awake asking “When can we get up?”  Dad said, “Not until I build a fire and it gets warm. Go back to sleep for awhile.”  My sisters and I giggled and squirmed and there was no more sleep. Dad gave the signal and all five of us were up. Such a clatter.  As I held my present trying to guess what was in it, my heart was pounding.  I received the most wonderful brown wool pants which gave me Christmas warmth every day as I walked to school.  After the excitement of opening the presents, Mother fixed breakfast. We played in the living room all day.  Mother made Christmas dinner with turkey and all the trimmings. As we gathered around that Christmas dinner table, we thanked God for those who were willing to share with us.

In my memory I can still feel the warmth of the fire and the glow of the Christmas tree lights as we sat in the living room that Christmas night dozing off in our childhood contentment – making it my happiest memory.

Fellowship of the Ring

~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

“But what happened to the diamond? “ I asked my mother. I was ten years old and in her treasure box I  had discovered a ring with a missing stone, and she was explaining that it was the ring my dad had given to her as an engagement ring. She had lost the stone from the setting many years before . . . before I was even born . . . but had kept the setting because…. well, because my dad had given it to her.

When he had asked about a ring she had scoffed, “I don’t want a ring – I want a new cookstove.”  And so my father had purchased a cookstove for his new bride and whether he couldn’t afford a diamond or he preferred rubies, I never knew. But, she explained, it was a ruby that she had worn in the beautiful gold setting that he had also given to her as an engagement ring. Over the years of rolling biscuit dough and washing clothes in a wash tub, she had lost the ruby but held on to the setting. And after my father died it was one of the few things she had that he had given to her and it was that setting that I loved to look as a little girl and hoped that I, too, might someday have such a beautiful ring.

Many, many years later my sister Minnie asked her if she could have the setting. I was grown by then and my mother explained that while she had not really wanted to part with the ring, she had given it to her because she did not foresee a time when she would have the money to replace the stone and someone might as well enjoy it. Minnie took the ring, replaced the stone and returned it to my mother who treasured it as though it were a 12 carat diamond.

 Before she died Mom asked each of us if there was something special of hers that we wanted. I responded immediately, “Your ruby ring,” Her response was just as  quick: “ No you can’t have that. It belongs to Minnie.”  Fair  enough. I don’t remember what I chose in its place.

Many, many years pass and my older sister Lila and I travel to Texas to see Minnie. We all know the purpose of this visit is to say goodbye to her. She is dying of cancer. We are there fewer than 10 minutes when Minnie takes us to her room:  “Come in here, girls, I have something to give you. “ She opened a jewelry box where she kept my mother’s solid gold wedding band and her ruby engagement ring. “Lila, you take the wedding band. And Sherry, you should have the ruby.”

 I have worn that ruby ring every day since, and every day it reminds me of my mother, my father who gave it to her, and their love for one another.

Last week I sat in an upstairs room going through a chest of Lila’s things with her daughters.

“We think you should have Grandma’s wedding, band, Sherry”. And so I took this very generous gift and placed it on my finger next to the ruby our father had chosen for her ….. and we all agreed that that was the how the set should be worn.

And now on my right hand I wear the ruby engagement ring purchased by my father for his young bride of 20 and the band with which he sealed his vow to her till death parted them. And I think of my parents, but also of my two amazing sisters who held these treasures in protective custody for awhile and of my generous nieces who left them with me. And I am reminded that a love story does not end with the passing of the loved one – it is just passed on.