Grandpa Pete

ORAL DAVID SHOLES

Yes, that's right. That's HIM. Oral David Sholes, alias Grandpa Pete. Say it isn't so! Pete was born in 1891. Look, I can't help what the fashions were in the 1890's. Evidently long curls and dresses for little boys. When I was a little girl and saw this picture, I was just sure it had to be one of his sisters, but " no" I was told many times, this is the real deal. Strange but true. Grandpa as a little boy. Cute though.

So I don't know how he lived this down, but he must have found a way because by the time I knew him he seemed pretty well adjusted, very mellow. Of course that was many decades later and he had lost the curls...and the dress. By then it was pants, suspenders, white sleeveless undershirt... and very straight, short white hair. And a pipe in his mouth most all of the time. The smell of the tobacco in that pipe was actually kind of compelling, reassuring. In some ways Grandpa reminded me of Santa Claus, but alas, no beard, no red suit, no black boots. But he did have an enigmatic grin on his face and a twinkle in his eyes, although that never escalated into any kind of an actual full blown Ho Ho Ho demeanor that I'm aware of. 

PETE BEING PIPE TRAINED BY LEONE, JOYCE & ERNIE

I don't know what Santa subsists on, but Pete would go to the refrigerator and help himself to cold hamburger patties that Grandma had earlier fried up for him several at a time, smothered in black pepper.  I was appalled by the waxy white layer of congealed fat that seemed to be a kind of haphazard icing on those patties. How could anyone actually eat that stuff? Then one day, after years of noticing them in the fridge and being duly repulsed, I impulsively grabbed one and took a bite. Not bad. Must have been all the pepper?

Maybe Grandpa grew up eating things like that. Or maybe they didn't have refrigerators when he was a boy. I never got around to asking him what it was like for him growing up. I think he may have gone through the 8th grade before he left school to work, probably to help more on the farm.

 Pete was the father of four children when he grew up. The house they moved to when their kids were still in school is the one my grandparents lived in the rest of their lives. And it was the house I loved to visit. I loved to visit the people there, for my Aunt Joyce never married and spent her life within those walls too, so we got megadoses of extra attention. But the house was a character on its own as well. Only six blocks from my house, 600 South Street beckoned me. The big old shade trees that lined the sidewalks provided a canopied welcome to another world, another time. The Victorian 1890's.

THE FAMILY ALL GROWN UP

It was two stories with nooks and crannies that enchanted me. At the top of the stairs, well almost, actually at the top of the second landing was a small wooden door, perhaps 18" square. We could quietly unlatch the door and look directly below into the kitchen and actually SPY on the adults who were preparing Thanksgiving dinner or cleaning up after Christmas Eve or whatever they were busied about doing. We thought we were invisible and would eavesdrop on real grown up conversation. The grownups never let on they were the least bit aware of the myriad silent little heads perched above, taking turns watching their every move. I still have no idea what purpose that littlest of doors was originally intended for, but it was the perfect peephole for some awfully nosey grandkids.

Upstairs was the only bathroom in the house. With a clawfoot bathtub, no less! To top it off, in Aunt Joyce's room was a huge record player where we listened to and fell in love with musicals. When we stopped dancing around to the music we could play in her strange closet, more of a crawl in than a walk in. The door was full sized, like the door to another room, but beyond that little area the closet shrinkydinked into a space half as tall, and we could nudge our way back under the hanging sweaters and have our own kid proportioned domain, where adults couldn't easily reach. So cool.

But it was the basement of Grandpa's house that was really alluring. The cement stairs curved and got smaller as you descended from the landing at the back door. The stairs were rough and odd sized and you couldn't just carelessly skip down them. You had to pay attention. Then there was the creaky old door, too, that had to be coaxed open to admit you to the basement. That done, you entered a large room which was surrounded by other rooms, a maze of unfamiliar musty things. In the main room was an old black water pump. It was fun to grab the handle and pump it up and down several times in order to get rain water from the cistern outside to rush into the sink.

The laundry was down there, and assorted storage rooms, one being a place where coal was stored for the furnace. It was exciting to me to have the coal truck pull up in the driveway, and stick a chute from the truck through the opened basement window, then have them shovel all that black, black sooty coal down the chute until the room was filled to the top. I was always a little bit scared in the basement, more expecting to find a skeleton or ghost in that setting, though logically it would have been a lot more realistic to find mice. From time to time, Grandma would! I never found anything at all though, which was quite a fortunate thing. The house was a wonderland to me.

So too the yard. The porch with its swing, from which we would fan out on a summer's eve to catch fireflies in the dark and do unspeakable things to them. The backyard with its small garden with chives and rhubarb, and the lilacs bordering the far end of the yard. Then a narrow secret passage hidden behind the fragrant purple, down a steep mini hill to a wide neglected path which led to the next cross street. Seemed like a foreign country, or at least tantalizingly forbidden somehow. The entire essence of the place in my mind was adventure. Maybe Grandpa didn't intend it that way, but at least that's how it worked out. He might as well have been Santa Claus in providing such a treasure.

ON THE JOB  ( PETE AT SPIESS CO. WITH FRIENDS)

And he was an ardent, diligent provider. He worked at it even when he was very old. My most indelible impression of him is his leaving in the evening to walk the miles downtown where he worked as the night watchman at Joseph Spiess Co., the large swanky department store. When I would watch from the porch his solitary figure slowly disappear in the dusk, it must have been concern that I experienced, wondering if he would be safe on his way, if he would be scared all night all alone in that big place. But he evidently was undaunted. It was his responsibility and that was a word he took seriously, so seriously. 

MARY JANE WRIGHT & ERNEST CEBA SHOLES

How seriously? Grandma died ten or so years after Grandpa and at her funeral, her family found out just how much responsibility meant to these two. Grandpa's father had been a well-to-do landowner with quite a bit of property in the area, and so when some of his son's friends needed someone to cosign on loans, Mr. E.C. Sholes was the guy who could do that. But somewhere along the line, things went awry and the loans were not repaid. I think they called that The Great Depression. And the bank came knocking. The land was lost, the father died, the accommodating son died, and still there was debt.

PETE & LUCY                MR. & MRS. ORAL SHOLES

So Grandpa Pete and Grandma Lucy spent the rest of their lives paying off this family debt, which was never theirs in any way to begin with. But I guess out of respect for his father and brother, this they did. And did it without telling anyone! Who does that? A lot of people might consider that a ridiculous thing. For the record, I am not one of those people. I hope I have just a fraction of that kind of integrity inside of me.

1 ROOM PIONEER SHOLES SCHOOL

What remains as a reminder of the better times is the Pioneer Sholes School, so named because sometime before 1860 this Great Grandpa donated some of the land on his farm in Burlington on which to build a school. A chance to walk in on some authentic history when in Illinois.

PIONEER SHOLES SCHOOL DESKS

Lucy

LUCY CAROLINE VOLKENING

Grandmas were an important part of my life. My Grandma Lucy was about as opposite as you could get from my Grandma "Lukey." Tall (5' 7 or 8") for those days and skinny, modest, religious, no make-up, no jewelry, no nonsense and a faithful baseball fan (go Cubs!). Wore sensible shoes. And just check out how long that hair there is! She kept her thick dark braids in a box when she finally had her hair cut off. Rite of passage? They seemed like a national treasure to me when she'd get the box out to show me when I was a young girl.

But she shared the good cook reputation and honors with Grandma Lukey and kept us in warm, fresh homebaked bread frequently. And she had a candy jar that was always filled and you didn't have to ask permission to take some. Like a jackpot!  What's not to love?

What I found weird was how my Grandmas would so formally refer to each other, or to their neighbors. "How is Mrs. Lucas?" Grandma Lucy would inquire. "Is Mrs. Sholes driving Mr. Sholes to the Dr. today then?" Grandma Lukey would ask.  "Who are you kidding?" I wanted to say, "you guys have known each other for a hundred years, and you can't  remember each other's first names?" But I would bite my tongue, and while I was swallowing a little blood I would stop and think a minute about how strange and charming respect and politeness and manners can be. And Mom made darn sure we grew up respecting our elders! 

THE VOLKENING GIRLS CIRCA 1911---100 YEARS AGO!

Lucy (2nd from the right in photo above) grew up in a big family with 4 sisters (Ida, Lana, Emma, and Mandy) and 3 brothers (Fred, Herman, and Edwin). Mandy is missing from all the photos because she took off for Arizona and they never saw her after that. The rest of the family stayed planted around Elgin.

THE FAMILY    MID CENTURY

Grandma Sophie, their mom, was a little bit of a thing but all those kids were tall and thin. Maybe she married a basketball player. Oh, right, they didn't have basketball yet. Or cars or phones, television or computers, airplanes or air conditioning, electricity or running water. No indoor bathrooms! These people from the last half of the 1800's grew up with the horse and buggy and lived to see all those changes...even rocket ships to the moon. Can't think of any other generation in history who would live through such mind boggling changes. What stories they could tell us!

SOPHIE THIES VOLKENING

Grandma Lucy had been a farm girl, and she and Grandpa tried farming for a spell in Wisconsin. They had four children. Ernie, my dad, was their only son, and he nearly went blind because he was born on the farm with no Dr. or nurse attending and so hadn't had the silver nitrate put in his eyes as was the custom at birth. The baby of the group, Betty, was born prematurely at about 2 pounds. She wasn't expected to live, but they put her in the ICU--- a shoebox which they then kept in a drawer of the coal stove. What? Hey, she made it!

Every summer each one of us 10 grandkids would get a week to spend at her house, our very own week, being pampered and indulged- our only fling at being an only child. Even though Grandma got up every morning well before dawn, if I came down the staircase before 9 am, she would insist I go back to bed. In the lazy afternoons, she would take me out on the porch swing and sing me to sleep in a nonchalant very off key voice I seem to have inherited. Try as I might to cling to consciousness, the seductive breeze that filtered through the painted white porch posts and  the dark green wooden slat shades she drew down would have its way with me. Zzzzzzzzz

Bedtime was a different story.  There her magic was to take you into her room and lie with you on her bed while she softly tickled you into utter relaxation. I was one of the susceptible ones, I would go limp with delicious delirious delight. Not a word was spoken during the ritual, but I learned the hard way that if my body shivered or tensed when Grandma feather touched a sensitive part of my side or arm, she would interpret that as a signal to stop somehow, much to my chagrin. So I learned to lie completely still and barely even breathe NO MATTER WHAT. Good training, had I only become a Navy Seal or international spy. At least I learned the fine art of the gentle tickle from a master. And it's still the best way to a girl's heart, at least this girl's.


To help out when raising her children,  Lucy had been a seamstress, tailoring clothes and creating wedding gowns in her home, so guess it was natural that our family of four girls took advantage of that skill. Big time.

No plug?  No problem!
Just feet, rhythmically back & forth on that treadle.

 

She made us whatever we could dream up. From fancy pastel organdy little girl dresses, to a black and white fiaco skirt for the first day of junior high school, to polished suits for Church. Barbie clothes. Even half my college wardrobe. My bridesmaids' dresses. All on an old fashioned treadle sewing machine (I borrowed my wedding dress, or she would have been on call for that too). When I was in jr. high and had to take a  sewing/homemaking class I tried to sew a blouse, but got it all backwards. The teacher exploded at me. So I hid the fabric in my notebook and stealthily took it to Grandma to get some help. She ended up so frustrated with trying to teach me that she just whipped it up herself and told me I would never be a seamstress. It's true, it's all I can do to sew on a button. But I passed the class.

Grandma had another treasure that became so very special to me. In fourth grade, she let me borrow her spinning wheel for the class play, Rumpelstilskin. Being cast as the miller's daughter made the play important to me, and so it was with great pleasure and relative disbelief that I was able to take that family heirloom to Gifford Elementary School with me. My great great grandfather, Christ Thies, handcrafted the spinning wheel as a wedding gift for his bride in 1850. Because it meant so much to me, Grandma Lucy gifted it to me a few years later and I consider it an honor to have such a precious piece of history.

When I was little, I imagined that I was the daughter of the devil and that everyone knew it and despised me and I could do no right. Everyone except Grandma Lucy, who I figured either didn't know or didn't care. So I guess I felt she was non critical and I felt pretty comfortable at her house and I could do no wrong. I think that's probably the best reason a kid should have grandparents. And should get to see them often. (Not that all kids are supremely paranoid.)

LUCY & "PETE" SHOLES

Despite often pointing out to me ever since I was very young how old she and Grandpa were and that they would soon die, she actually lived several decades past that disconcerting self report, and made it to 91. Maybe she surprised herself.  I'm not the judge, but I think she lived a good life. I hope that right after St. Peter, she got to meet Groucho Marx. Now he could make her laugh.

GROUCHO

On This Rock

My hero, my rock. My Dad. Even on those days when he would come home at the end of the day and spank us, I didn't blame him. He was without malice. Mom made him do it! She never laid a hand on us, but all day if we had misbehaved, she would insidiously threaten, "Wait till your father gets home." (I forgave her when I became a mom and was on "the other end," so to speak.) In my book, he could do no wrong. Even if he broke a ruler on my backside.

We little girls were not without our wily techniques for payback, however. On any early weekend morning, if we were very lucky and a little stealthy, we could sneak in his room if he were still asleep and carefully pull the top sheet out from under the end of the bed, and there find those tender white soles of his feet, and TICKLE TORTURE! He was helpless, and would yelp and jump straight up out of bed. Ahh, revenge, sweet, sweet, sweet revenge!!! We knew he'd fought a war, but we were the invincible foe those mornings.

ERNIE & JOYCE (SISTER)

With us, he was a lamb. Maybe he just knew his way around women, seeing as he grew up with them.  Three sisters, no brothers. Or maybe he just was born with the knack of getting along with people in general. Whatever genes he inherited, he also received the legacy of his name. His grandfather's. Ernest C. Sholes. The middle name is one he didn't like at all and so kept it this big secret, and we could never reveal it, under pain of some unspoken dire penalty. So you're just going to have to guess. How about playing Hangman? Four letters total, and you have the first.

ATTENTION!

Most days I just couldn't wait till my father got home. He was so laid back, just so easy to get along with. Just such a light touch. Totally deaf in one ear, and going gradually deaf in the other (nerve damage from the bombs when he was a soldier in Europe in WWII), he wore a hearing aid. He could make it whistle at will, and he turned it off whenever he didn't want to engage with the world for a little while. He could turn off the volume on the TV and entertain himself by making up his own dialogue or commentary. The only person I've known who never needed therapy. We thought it was pretty cool to be deaf, because he made it seem like fun and never once complained.

READY FOR ACTION!

After Pearl Harbor, like so many other red blooded young American men, Ernie couldn't wait to join the Service and defend his country. But as noble as he wanted to be, they wouldn't take him because he was too skinny. So he resorted to scarfing down bananas as a strategy to gain enough weight, and sure enough it eventually worked. He was in! Off to bases from the East Coast to the West Coast, and then on to follow Patton to war torn Europe to liberate the oppressed. He was a radar specialist.

ERNIE DETECTING ENEMY AIRCRAFT

Other than the ear damage, he came home physically unscathed. His sweetheart had given him a knife to protect himself, and happily it never got up close and personal in any of the trenches for him to have to use it.

GOOD LUCK CHARM?

Besides that knife, I have, and dearly treasure, copies of the letters he wrote his Mudgie during his absence and the service record book she kept for him. He was her hero, and forever mine as well.

Along with his Sargent stripes, another souvenir he brought back from those Army days was a bad habit.  Smoking. I used to love the smell of cigarette smoke because it meant Daddy was home. He gave it up cold turkey some 15 years later after his lungs got punctured by broken ribs, courtesy of an off duty ambulance driver who ran a stop sign and plowed into our car.

One other thing about the Army back then was that it made it pretty impossible to give a girl much notice if you got it in your mind to marry her. So one day his High School sweetheart got a telegram saying he had a brief leave from base in North Carolina so how about getting married next week.

JUST MARRIED

So they pulled it off on Sept. 21, 1943 and took a 2 day honeymoon in Lake Geneva, WI.

FOREVER SWEETHEARTS

Then he was off to Europe and war for the next two years and then some. But he kept his heart on his sleeve and that girl on a pedestal for the duration. And for the 47 more years after that. Till they played "Taps" for him that one last time.

STILL

So he was a terrific husband. But how was he as a Dad? Well in plain terms, they were just plain mean, my folks. They were a team. Even though it was the greatest injustice, my parents were adamant about putting their children to bed early. Very early, every night. So early, in fact, that we were usually in bed long before the sun even went down in the summertime. See what I mean? Long, long, long before. Talk about unfair!

But Daddy had a way of enticing us into going along with that program regardless of how woefully inconsiderate it was. His trick? Sheer fun! He played different games with us night after night. He'd get us laughing with corny jokes, and then he'd come up with all kinds of different approaches to get us exactly where he wanted us, with whatever goofy idea suited him at the time.

To get us to pick up the living room before bed, sometimes he would commission us into his "army". He would designate us “Sergeants” as we saluted him and he would then give us our orders--- like where to put away the folded clothes, or books or toys that were out of place. He'd have us marching along in cadence, all of us on the left or right foot together as we shouted along, and ending up with "Sound off, 1-2-3-4, 1-2---3-4!" We little girls thought we were promoted to being grown ups, heroic soldiers at that; practically thought we'd get Presidential Medals of Honor for a job well done. Boy, could we get into it.

Another night he might pretend to be a robber with a gun. And would gruffly tell us what to do so we wouldn't get shot. Again we'd be sent to put away clean towels and whatever we had strewn about. A little scary, a little exciting. He could just as easily choose to be the Sheriff and make us Deputies. Or a Mafia Boss who would assign us "deliveries."  Or the scenario could have been Cowboys and Indians, or whatever his imagination lent itself to that particular night. Sometimes he would pretend he had an invisible dog on a leash that would "bark" at us to get our full cooperation. It was always something---something that would make us smile or laugh, and MOVE! Nothing he couldn't get us to do.

When he got us upstairs into our shared dormitory bedroom and into our beds, Daddy would stick around for awhile to play quiet games with us or tell us stories. We learned a lot from playing those games. Games like “States” where he would call out the name of a state and we would have to respond with the name of its capital city. Or we had to somehow identify makes and models of cars; that would always end in hysterical laughter when someone would identify the mystery car they couldn't really pinpoint as “Jalopy”.

Sometimes he would make up far fetched stories or tell us about his childhood when he lived on a farm. He was strange--- the only person we had ever heard of who used to ride on a cow. Then there were the nights, not often, when we would coerce him into telling us stories from his life as a soldier in World War II. When he was in training in the Army in North Carolina, bathing in a river, he was paralyzed with fear when an extremely poisonous coral snake slithered up to him. We loved to hear him tell that because of the allure of the element of the danger.

And he lived to tell of it, so we knew there would be a happy ending, after all. He really couldn't be coaxed into telling us about the really dangerous or sad experiences he had during the war in Europe. He would only go as far as how sick he was on the Queen Mary, the ocean liner that took him across the Atlantic. He was so seasick that for Christmas dinner on that boat he had one lime lifesaver. One.

One puny lime lifesaver? That seemed pretty strange, a little quirky. We begged and begged him to tell us more stories about the War, but he would just never go there. They probably wouldn't have been very fun to hear or to end up dreaming about. Fathers know best, after all.

But there was a time I only learned about more than 75 years after it happened, that my sister Jan shared with me in 2023, when I called and asked her for a Dad memory I could share with my son, Jared, at his 50th birthday. He and Ernie shared the same birthday, April 8th, and so a special memory would be priceless to Jared. So I made that call.

And Jan proceeded to tell me of the time when she was in college, protesting against the Vietnam War and  sharing her outrage about the American soldiers there and their dirty deeds. Dad immediately stopped her in her belligerent tracks and dressed her down. "How dare you! Don't you EVER judge a soldier! You have no idea of what they have seen, of what they have gone through, what they face! You have no business presuming anything about it at all!" 

I was astonished when she shared that; it was as if they had traded personalities at that point, he, the easy going, don't-take-anything-too-seriously gentleman, in a flash transformed into his own intense counterpoint. And Jan, who was so sure of herself and often strident, grew silent and began to listen.

Then he told her of the time when he was in France, his unit had captured some German soldiers towards the end of the war and they were taking them back to a defeated Germany. Apparently there were just too many prisoners to handle on that kind of a journey, so his Commanding Officer came over to him one morning and told him to take two of them out of the way and shoot them. Instantly, Ernie refused the order. Another soldier immediately jumped up and said he would do it. I am so humbled and proud at the same time of his courage to make that choice then and there. I know they still died, but not at his hands. Whenever I think of this moment in time that was hidden from me during his lifetime, my heart and soul are warmed by this knowledge. I didn't think I could love this man anymore than I did. But I do.

He didn't bring past burdens into our young lives at home. Daddy had a way of turning everything into fun and games. A little trick he used for himself even at work. Not such a bad approach to life maybe....

Staying up late at night can be pretty cool. Guess we weren't too cool. But I wouldn't trade my early bedtimes from long ago, because I had a Dad with a twinkle in his eye and love in his heart. It doesn't get any better than that. Really.

This good man was not only a gentleman, he was a truly gentle man. Kind, soft spoken. Low key. No drama. Never a bad word left his lips. Full of corny Dad jokes. Always, always smiling.


He never let on that he might have wanted even one son to toss a ball with, seemed delighted with four daughters. Still, he was always an athlete at heart, playing in an amateur baseball league for a while. He took sports to heart. In fact his dream of all dreams was to be a sportscaster. 

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME...

We were all born Cubs fans, of course, so the DNA was basically solid. But. Once in a while he'd take us in the backyard to play a little and I would stand there as he got ready to pitch me the ball.

I was like a deer in the headlights and would drop the bat and run the other way while he was winding up for the pitch. I was terrified of being hit by a ball! (Guess who was always the last one to be chosen to play on a team when we divided up in class for any sport?) He would softly tell me to go back and try again, and he would do it all in such slo mo. I felt a little less impotent. Because he was right there in front of me, should I fail.

When we would go on hikes, say to the Forest Preserve, he would defer to shy little me as the leader as we climbed up steep trails. I felt omnipotent. Because he was right there behind me, should I fall.

Besides his silly side, there was a practical common sense part of him that steadied the ship at home. One time there was a wild electrical storm raging outside, lightning all over the place all at once. I was used to lightning and thunder with rainstorms, but this time there was no rain. Just the amplified violence of angry skies. I thought God really was done with us and it was the end of the world. My dad found me sobbing hysterically at the window upstairs. "What's wrong?" he asked. "It's THE END OF THE WORLD!" I wailed. "Oh," he said, "so what are you going do about that?" In a flash I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about it at all, it wasn't my responsibility, and I became instantly calm. Ever since I have been able to be absolutely calm whenever there's a real crisis and it has enabled me to help others who have had to deal with some heavy storms. Thanks, Daddy!

From day one I was a Daddy's girl.




And





I. ALWAYS. WILL. BE.

"Lukeys"

Not everyone gets to know their grandparents, but lucky me, I got to spend lots of time with all of mine!  In fact, I lived in my maternal grandparents' home the first year of my life. My Mom's folks were an interesting pair to me. Wilson and Agnes Lucas. Bill & Aggie. Even though they often seemed to be at odds with each other, they had raised two daughters and ran a business together by the time we were introduced. What I really loved about them was their story. It smacked a bit of the wild side.

A bit.  Bill was ten years older than Aggie, and they eloped on Halloween, 1911--- 100 years ago this year--- much to the consternation of their families. Oh, the scandal!

That's about as wild as it got though. They didn't have children for 10 years, but when they did, they doted on them, Dorothy and Marjorie. The adorables.

Mudgie & Big Sis, Dort      1923

Back then things were different. Men were men, and women, well women probably ran rings around them, just like now. At least they had their hands full with women's work. So I found it amazing when Grandma told me Grandpa would stay home anytime one of their little girls was sick to take care of her, because Grandma would be too upset to do it herself. She was high strung and easily fell apart, quite dramatically at that. Maybe he felt he could do a better job.

The Original Mr. Mom?

Wait a minute,  maybe she was just one smart cookie who seemed helpless enough to get him to pitch in....  The plot thickens. Either way, it worked out well.

But back to the beginnings. Little Aggie grew up in a big family with four brothers (Tommy, Alan, Roy, and Elmer) to tease her and one sister (Beatrice-"Poody") as a playmate. They weren't poor, but even so she had only one dress to wear to school every day (females didn't wear pants or jeans back then), so she would wear an apron over it to keep her dress clean. 

Little Miss Agnes Stanek

Aggie's family came over from Bohemia. Appropriately enough, she had a definite Bohemian flair.  Always a glint of mischief in the eye. Just a glint. Likely she was born with it.

JESSIE & JOHN J. STANEK

Not sure you can tell which one has the glint in their eye, as they're both squinting, but that's definitely a cigar in his mouth, and the way he holds that hat--- a little bravado, yes? Hmmm, now I'm suspicious.

I'm going out on a limb right now, but think the next photo may be John's mother, referred to as just "Grandma Siebert." She doesn't look like any Bohemian gypsy to me, but give a girl a tambourine and who knows what might happen? So maybe she has to remain a mystery for now, because that's more than I know.

GRANDMA SIEBERT

AGGIE STANEK

According to the story, given only a first and last name, Agnes Stanek, she wasn't content to leave it at that, and so came up with her own middle name, Thressia, or Teresa, and just went through life claiming it under her own authority. It seems to have worked, it shows up on genealogical records.

Aggie loved to play cards, go to the horse races (wearing spike heels in her 70's and 80's), and watch wrestling matches. Spunky. She played the piano by ear.  And it was all Honky Tonk. The woman had rhythm, did she ever have rhythm! We nicknamed her "Bingo" somewhere along the line. She loved to laugh and have a good time. Boy, did she love a good time!

She was an entertainer through and through. The most appealing of her charms being her ability to wrinkle her nose like a bunny while the rest of her face stayed completely still. Fascinating!

Grandma was not of an imposing stature, maybe just a bit over 5 feet, but she towered over her sister Poody, who probably couldn't get on some of the rides at Disneyland even as an adult, had she ever gone.  I'm assuming that means the whole family may have been vertically challenged, but this picture of Grandma's mother, Jessie, looks like she would look you in the eye and stand her ground, never mind if she had to gaze at your belly button first and move on from there.

 

JESSIE HOYT STANEK

John Stanek, her Dad, had a Packard automobile that was his pride and joy, and he would take granddaughter, Mudgie, and assorted family members in it up to the top of a hill and coast down pell mell like he was never going to stop. Of the teasing persuasion, he convinced the kids that he lived on merely air and water.

1914 - Auburn car (pre Packard days) John Stanek on front fender, Poody standing to the side 

Had that truly been the case all his life, then perhaps his parents, Theresa & Thomas Stanek, instead of feeding him could have saved their pennies and, who knows, they may have been able to afford a twin rocking chair for the Mrs. So there you go... here's the evidence- no chair for her. So John must have eaten, probably his fair share of bologna.     

THERESA CLAP & THOMAS STANEK

Could be maybe some of the wink, wink proclivities may have been DNA that Aggie inherited, but she may have come by some significant compassion strands along the way as well. In Mudgie's kindergarten class there was a little girl with a brain tumor, who eventually succumbed to the disease. But Aggie, who at the time was very active in the classroom and PTA, became aware of the situation early on and was relentless in being a support to the girl's family. So much so that they came to Aggie's funeral fifty years later, still immersed in gratitude for all the kindnesses she had extended them. Maybe she was living out this poem written and sent to her by her Aunt Emma for Christmas, 1904:

                                "A kindly act is a kernel sown

                                             That will grow to a goodly tree                                         

                           Shedding its fruit when time has flown

                                              Down the gulf of eternity."

So she may have been in sync with The Golden Rule on the only relevant scale. However.  When I was 16, Bingo ended up shocking me when I sent over the Mormon missionaries I was meeting with to see if she'd be interested. As soon as they were out the door, she called up my Mom and said, "Do you know how crazy these people are? They actually believe Jesus was born of a virgin! As if that could happen."  (Yeah, Grandma, that was a secret hoarded by billions of Christians over the last 2000 years.) So religion wasn't her strong suit, I guess. And yet this was a woman who, whenever she was in certain situations would joke with a twinkle in her eye, ''Well, this is certainly no place for a minister's daughter!"  (Which she certainly was NOT!)

After the War, my grandparents had a little grocery store on Villa St. in Elgin, Il. They would bring over groceries to us from time to time. Along the way, they retired and downsized moving into a tiny house on Kramer St. Still somehow about 15 of us fit in every Christmas Day. Where we would happily feast because Grandma Lukey was one terrific cook. Her homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles must have been the world's best. Baking was in her repertoire as well and she got sufficient practice by baking an angel food cake for each one of her 10 grandkids' birthdays every year. 

But one year she really went above and beyond and nailed it for my birthday, and it wasn't the cake.  Because my birthday was close to Halloween, I had a costume party. Mom made the guests enter by climbing through a basement window and we partied down there. The highlight of the whole shebang was a flamboyant gypsy who materialized and read fortunes for us 8 year olds. Guess who? Now that's what I call one authentic fortune teller!!

I think of Grandma as more hmmm, creative and resourceful than demented... or demure. A problem solver. One time she was pulled over for speeding and when the cop approached the car, she swooned, "Oh Officer, I have terrible diarrhea and I must get home right away!"  She not only got out of the ticket, she had a police escort to her house! Maybe that's what she meant one day when she looked at me and confessed, "Oh yes, I'm crazy." Then winked, "crazy like a fox!" 

I think my favorite thing about Grandma, other than her sense of humor and fabulous homemade noodles, was her storytelling. She had a way of going on and on and on about this person and then that person, jumping from one tangent to the next, and then a half hour later or more, bringing it all back to the original thread. No idea how she could remember so much and skillfully tie it all together. Mesmerizing! I loved to listen to her. ( I can't remember the beginning of a sentence by the time I'm halfway to the end of it.)

WILSON E. LUCAS

 
Grandpa, on the other hand, seemed to me like the stern no nonsense type. His family was English, perhaps more reserved. At least they look semi serious. Or maybe they just didn't have teeth... just kidding. Actually this was taken back when you weren't supposed to smile when having your picture taken. They look pretty good, right? Alonzo's line has been traced back to the early Welsh Kings (go back 50 generations from me to Cunedda, King of Wales around 400 A.D.)  By the time some of the descendants hit America in the early 1600's, the kingdom diminished, although Alonzo and Mary did alright, ending up with a large farm and the biggest house in Crystal Lake, IL in the late 1800's. Besides farming, Alonzo found time to dabble in poetry and do a little songwriting in his spare moments and authored several hymns.

MARY MIRANDA DAVIS & ALONZO BERNARD LUCAS

With that farming background, Bill (Will to his parents and 2 sisters) was known to be really good with horses. And maybe that carried over because Grandpa Lukey was really good with his girls, even when they were grown with families of their own. He used to come over and wash mom's hair in the sink and massage her scalp. Tender heart. So guess he was a marshmallow with a little graham cracker crust exterior by the time I knew him.

Once a good dad, always a good Dad

Though I don't think he ever really spoke to me, and I maybe was a little intimidated by that distance. I have no memory of ever seeing him smile, so it was fun to find this shot of him feeling a little exuberant.

Oh Happy Day!

As a foreman and a lineman, he worked for the electric company and fell from the pole one day when he was up working on the wires, but lived to tell about it.

It may have cut into his dancing, which he loved, but life goes on. He walked with a limp after that for quite awhile, but was one of the few who was able to hang on to his job throughout the Great Depression.  Even so, my grandparents couldn't buy their first home until my Grandma inherited a small amount from her folks. That was when their daughters were in High School.

707 S. Liberty St.

I remember how Grandpa Lukey's hair was never out of place and how well he took care of his blue and white 1953 Chevy. I only wish they had taken such good care of him in the miserable old nursing home where he spent his last few months. He got sick after they had been married for 50 years, and it was not an easy way to go. Grandma was beside herself at the funeral.

BILL & AGGIE LUCAS

I moved in with Grandma for a week or two following his death so she wouldn't be alone. She couldn't stand being alone. I was 14 or so, and there was little I could do as she spent every waking moment hysterically sobbing to friends on the phone.

So how does one in their 70's, so undone by death and so fearful of being alone, end up taking a job as a cleaning lady at a casket factory... on the graveyard shift? All by her lonesome there, one single, solitary soul. Unless you count the coffins as company. This one managed to pull it off. And liked it. Spunky.  Funky. 

But life goes on, and grief subsides. Eventually Grandma lived with a man younger than her daughters.  Raised eyebrows! But it ended up that Charlie was a good companion and friend to her until the very end.

On Saturday nights I sometimes would spend the night with my Grandparents at their house and they would watch The Lawrence Welk Show and then wrestling, interesting combination. They liked the Lennon Sisters, but they were really into Gorgeous George!

My favorite memory with my Grandparents though was a date they had arranged to take me on one early June evening. We drove out to Camp Big Timber, and Grandpa was miserable with a bout of neuralgia or lumbago or something I had no idea what, but he was obviously suffering. As we took our seats in front of the small lake surrounded by huge boulders and tree laden bluffs, I was so afraid we'd have to turn around and go home. But on with the show, Grandpa was a trooper! As the Indians were silhouetted against the sunset while they slowly rode their horses across the far ridge, my heart leaped with excitement as the extraordinary Hiawatha Pageant unfolded. Then the drama escalated with the colorful costumes, incredible Indian dancing, haunting drums, birchbark canoes across the water--- Longfellow's epic poem come to life outlined against the darkness of the night. Another world. Old Nokomis, Minnehaha, Gitche Manito and all the wigwams. I wanted never to leave. Unforgettable! I became a life long lover of all things Native American. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa, for the best night ever! 

I have my Grandma's old hope chest now. But the real legacy is the priceless memories. I'm so glad I had the chance to know my grandparents. And I look forward to that grand reunion someday.... But how fantastic would it be if we could find a way to actually go back in time for a moment and meet some of these "old people" when they were young? Time travel, if you will, might hold some amazing surprises!