Harry went to the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota, graduating when Sue was a baby, around 1955.  He was smart, hardworking, and had a keen sense of space.  He became a very fine architect.  Somewhere along the way he picked up some pretty refined carpentry skills.  Around this time, too, he became a fanatic for golf, a fanaticism he'd retain till the end of his days.

 

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You know the story about the "Schroeder" character in the "Peanuts" cartoons, the pianist who loves Beethoven.  Well, if you tell your friends, or someone you meet in a bar someday, that your grandfather Harold Frederick Schroeder, Jr. was the boy from whom Charles Schultz, the famous cartoonist and creator of "Peanuts," got the name for his character "Schroeder," they probably will not believe you.  If you keep insisting it's true, especially if you've been drinking, the barkeep might even kick you out. 

But it is true.  As a boy, from about ages 8-12, Harry caddied for the golfers on Highland Golf Course in St. Paul, adjacent to his uncle Raymond George's house at 1515 Highland Parkway.  Charles Schulz, a year or two older than Harry, grew up a few blocks away, near Randolph and Hamline Streets ("Ran-Ham" it was called). 

Historic photograph of 1515 Highland Parkway soon after it was built in 1940, with oodles of people (on a Saturday no doubt) enjoying the famous Highland Sledding Hill comprising the sixth fairway of Highland Golf Course.

 

Charles Schulz sometimes caddied on Highland Golf Course, too, in the same time period as Harry (ca. 1934-1938).  In an introduction to one of his books (A Peanuts Jubilee, 1975), Charles Schulz recalled that growing up in St. Paul in the '30s he knew a kid named Schroeder, a caddy at Highland, whose first name he never learned, and that that was the kid he named his character "Schroeder" after.  Just the name, he said, not really the character.  Just the name.

It sounds outlandish, I know.  But it's absolutely true. 

 

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Harry was always crazy for golf.  At his funeral his passion for golf was one of the main topics of the ceremony, and of conversations before and after.  That passion blossomed in the years after the war, as he and his golfing buddies would get up at 4:30 a.m. to get the course by 5:00, because if they did maybe they could get 36 holes in before noon, then have lunch and play another 36 before dark.  It got to be an obsession, or at the very least a consuming passion, and so it remained for years and years.  Sometimes all the golf drove my mom crazy, and I can sort of see why.  That's a lot of time and energy spent playing a game.  Still, to each their own.

 

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My earliest conscious memory is of me standing in a long, dimly-lit wood-paneled corridor with a big black telephone on the wall high over my head.  A large person hands me the big round long black part with the twisted-up black cord attached to it, and I hold it up against my ear, and I hear my mom's scratchy voice saying she's in the hospital and she loves and misses me so much and she'll be home soon with my brand-new baby brother.

Mendota House on Lone Oak Road after completion of its landscaping, 1958

 

Mendota house on Lone Oak Road before its landscaping, also 1958; Mom (holding Michael, Sue & Grandma)

 

It was Mark, I'm sure, born while we still lived at the Mendota house on Lone Oak Road.  The details are pretty sketchy, but I know around 1961-62 we moved from Mendota to a house in Fridley, where we lived for a year or so. 

Then, around 1962-63 we moved into another really big wonderful house in Fridley that my dad and his architecture-school buddies had built from scratch.  I remember that house at 8066 Ruth Street, and the life we lived there, like it was yesterday.  It feels like we lived there for at least a dozen years, but when I do the math, it was only five or six.  I could've sworn it was at least ten.

Michael, age 9, holding garter snake on back patio at 8066 Ruth Street in Fridley; from left Grandma, Tom, Mark, & Uncle Ed.   Yessir lots o' fond memories o' Fridley!

 

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If you're ever in Fridley, Minnesota, and you feel like driving past 8066 Ruth Street, you'll see a Frank Lloyd Wright-style house tucked in amidst all the other vinyl-sided, manicured-lawn, upscale suburban homes stretching up and down both sides of the block.  Forty-some odd years ago, when our family first moved to Ruth Street, there were no other houses anywhere nearby.  It was all woods and fields.  Right across the street was Ruth Circle, shaped more like a square despite its name, a freshly-laid ribbon of asphalt enclosing a grassy field of about an acre.

 

Sketch of 8066 Ruth Street Neighborhood, circa 1965

 

Beyond Ruth Circle were more grassy fields, with thick copses of small weedy trees, till about a quarter mile further on, when you got to the railroad tracks.  On the other side of the tracks were thick tall woods that stretched far in all directions.  If you crossed the tracks and kept walking straight, you'd walk through woods for maybe half an hour, until the woods ended at a big highway. 

Out the back door, in the opposite direction, was a creek at the bottom of the hill in the backyard.  If you followed the creek, you'd pass through a giant concrete culvert under East River Road, then through a bunch of thick woods until the creek emptied into the Mississippi River about a mile downstream.  If you went out the back door and straight across the creek, and up the steep hill on the other side, and walked for a couple minutes, you'd be at East River Road, a 4-lane highway.  You had to be seven years old to cross East River Road by yourself.  That was the rule.  (Tons o' Photographs of the house & environs on the MN Photo Pages, starting in earnest in 1964, here.)

 

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In between the time when the glaciers retreated around 10,000 years ago, and 1962-63 when we moved in, the creek had carved a little valley that dropped 40 or 50 feet from the upper rim to the creek bottom.  Both sides of the little valley were thick with trees – alder, ash, oak, birch, beech, hazelnut, elm, with lots of undergrowth.  Some parts were too steep to climb without grabbing onto roots or tree trunks to pull yourself up. 

We spent a lot of time out-of-doors, my brothers and sister and I.  Building stone dams in the creek.  Swimming and wading.  Catching minnows and turtles and frogs and salamanders.  Swinging on a giant rope my dad lashed to the top of a big tree that swung right over the "big part" of the creek, where it widened and deepened, straight down the hill from the house.  Climbing trees.  Building forts.  Exploring.  Playing with spiders and water-bugs.  Pouring sand onto ants and seeing how long it took for them to crawl out.  Poking sticks into anthills to see what kind of rooms they lived in down there.  Gathering wild rhubarb that grew on a small hill west along the railroad tracks.  Slapping honeybees peaceably buzzing amidst the goldenrod in Ruth Circle (that was Tom and Mark's dirty trick).  Walking along the railroad tracks down to the A&W Root Beer stand, about a mile east, collecting armfuls of loosened railroad spikes along the way, too heavy to carry home all but two or three.  Sledding down the hills in the winter (with Matt chasing us and pulling our boots off).  Lots of sledding.  Ice skating on the "big part." 

My mom had a big brass triangle dangling from a leather strap, and at dinnertime she'd take an iron bar and ding! ding! ding! and we'd all come running in from the four winds, with muddy legs and filthy hands and carrying some treasure, a flower or frog or stick.  "Look what I found, mom!"  "That's wonderful, dear, now go wash up, and make sure to scrub those hands good!" 

I loved our house in Fridley.  We all did. 

 

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The most amazing thing about 8066 Ruth Street, at least forty-some odd years ago, was the gigantic cottonwood tree that grew right out of the middle of the house.  In fact it was a clever architectural illusion, as the house was built on one side of the tree, the garage on the other side, with a breezeway connecting the two.  A big hole in the breezeway roof let the trunk of the cottonwood tree pass through.  It was an absolutely enormous tree, and an arrestingly beautiful sight to see this massive tree apparently growing right out of the house. 

 

8066 Ruth St. before garage and breezeway were built, looking toward Ruth Circle from across creek, c. 1964

 

8066 Ruth Street with Cottonwood Tree, c. 1965

 

It was a really creative idea.  It was also really stupid, sorry to say, or at least very impractical, because cottonwood trees grow really fast and get really huge and in a few short years die and fall over.  Also, while they're alive they're incredibly messy, with branches and twigs constantly falling and littering the roof and yard and driveway, along with millions of little cotton seeds that waft off their branches every spring, a substantial fraction of which inevitably get stuck in the screens.  My mom was not happy about having to pick all the cottonwood seeds out of those screens two or three times a year. 

Harry also crafted a beautifully landscaped back yard, one that lasted the five or six years we were there, but not much longer.  The next owners had to rip it all out and start over.  It had raised flower beds that my mom adored, and patios and stairways made of timbers and crushed rock, and, for a while, a pond with a fountain.  As kids we all carted and shoveled lots of crushed rock, on which we all ran around barefoot, to the astonishment of visiting guests.

Today, all the woods and fields are gone.  A few years after we moved out, they bulldozed and flattened the little valley on both sides of the creek to put in more houses with lawns gently sloping down to a gurgling little brook.  Inside Ruth Circle they built four big houses, one on each corner, each with a big lawn.  The gigantic cottonwood tree died soon after we left.  The new owners took it down, at considerable expense, to prevent it from falling and crushing the house.

 

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We had a dog named Matt.  Matt Dillon, after the strapping lawman on the TV show, "Gunsmoke."  A big white German Shepherd, I'd swear part wolf.  One time we took him to Como Park Zoo in St. Paul.  We got to the wolf cages and Matt started howling, and the wolves started howling back, and they all howled back and forth for quite some time.  With very elaborate pitches and cadences.  I could've sworn they were talking to each other.  People passing by with kids in their strollers looked at us funny.

The day we got him, he was a tiny little bundle of fluffy white fur skittering around the floor.  Eight months later he weighed in at about 110 pounds, with front canines almost two inches long.  Standing on his hind legs he towered way over every one of us kids.  For a time he and I stood about eyeball to eyeball.

 

Matt had some peculiar habits.  When he saw another dog, which was pretty often, he was gripped by an irresistible desire to sniff their butt.  If the signs said "female," he'd wag his tail and prance and play.  If the signs said "male," he'd snarl and suddenly attack, trying to dig his teeth into the other dog's throat, if he could, to rip out its neck and kill it on the spot.  Matt was not very good with other male dogs.  Breaking up a dogfight can be very scary, with all those whirling gnashing teeth, especially big dogs, especially for a kid.  Sometimes my mom had to run and hit him with a rake or a shovel before he'd let the other dog go.

Matt never turned on any of us, though.  Not a single time.  Never even hinted that the possibility existed, even though he was a lot bigger than we were.  When as small children we'd smack him on the nozzle for misbehaving, which was fairly often, he'd just cower and slink away.  Never growled at any of us, ever, no matter how hard we hit him.  He was smart, too, lifting with his nose the little latch on the door my dad had built under the stairs, nuzzling open the door, and staying inside his "box" till we said it was alright, he could come out now.

 

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Matt had a girlfriend named Lucy.  Lucy was a big Irish Setter who lived a few blocks away, down among the cluster of smaller, working-class houses on Liberty Street, just off East River Road.  In the morning, Matt would be dozing on the linoleum floor when suddenly he'd leap up and skitter and slide to the big front window and start barking wildly.  You'd look out, and there was Lucy, sitting attentively, quietly, her eyes glued on the window.

Matt would run around in circles, barking and going crazy, until you let him out the side door by the big cottonwood tree.  Then he'd race up to Lucy and smash right into her, and they'd both roll around on the ground growling and snapping and biting like mad.  Then one of them would dash off and the other would race after them, and they'd disappear for the rest of the day.

Toward sunset, the two of them would come staggering through the weeds on Ruth Circle, fur caked with mud, covered with sticks and burrs and leaves and ticks, their tongues nearly touching the ground.  Matt would come to the side door and let out a feeble bark.  You'd open the door and he'd amble inside, go to his water dish, slurp for about five or ten minutes, gobble down three or four pounds of dry dog food, go inside his "box" under the stairs and lay still till morning.

Where would they go?  What would they do all day?  Who knows.  All I know is, when people talk about "a dog's life," they're really talking about Matt and Lucy.

 

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Years later, after we'd moved to Highland Park, I used to take Matt on my morning paper route.  He was getting old, but he was always eager to go.  It was early enough in the morning that I could take him without a leash.  He'd trot through the yards, sniffing and exploring and chasing rabbits and peeing on every tree and bush in the neighborhood.  I never had to keep an eye on him, never had to call him.  Not once.  Sometimes he'd disappear, I'd walk a few blocks, and there he'd be, peeing on a bush.

One winter day, with snow thick on the ground, he took off after a rabbit and suddenly came up short, limping.  His hip had fractured.  German Shepherds are beautiful dogs but have notoriously bad hip joints.  He healed some, but was never the same.  In his last year, his joints creaked and moaned something terrible.  He never complained much, though.  Just slept a lot, and slowly limped in about a hundred circles before he'd finally lay down. 

As a very old man of a dog, he'd be dozing on his favorite spot on the rug near the heat vent, and you'd go up and start stroking him gently, and say, "Matt!  Where's Lucy, Matt?  Where's Lucy?"  He'd jerk up his head and look around with a fierce, passionate gaze in his eye, which quickly faded as it dawned on him that there was no Lucy.  Then he'd plop his head back down onto the rug, let out a big sigh, his eyes would glaze over, and he'd go back to sleep.

 

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Grandma had her own room downstairs, with a bed, a small black-and-white TV on a stand, a modest oak dresser, and a comfy chair she'd sit in to do her mending and watch the "picture box."  Wrestling was her favorite, though she liked some of the game shows, too, like Concentration.  She never did much care for that fellow on Jeopardy, too much the smart-aleck, but she liked guessing at all the questions.  Sometimes her sister Grace and brother Ed would come for visits, as I've described, and she'd go visiting Grace, and Maime, before Maime died.

She kept her hat boxes on the top shelf in her closet.  She had maybe a dozen hat boxes, some with brass clasps and covered in soft velvety fabric, others made of smooth white cardboard.  On special occasions, like going to Church, or downtown for a milkshake with Grace, she'd pull down several boxes and lay them on the bed.  Inside were hats of all colors and shapes and sizes, some rounded and tall, others more square and flat, some with big fake pearls on a string, others with feathers and shells glued to a ribbon.  Sometimes she'd open up all the boxes on the bed before she decided which one to wear.

 

 

I wonder what it felt like, with the extraordinary poverty and suffering and illness and death she'd seen and lived through, to be living in postwar upper-middle class suburban Fridley, surrounded by five little grandchildren, all healthy and strong, who got plenty of milk and meat and potatoes, and regular visits to the doctor, and a happy daughter who was also a hell of a good mother, married to a decent man and a good provider.  Not to mention the endless wonders of electricity, and so many nice hats to choose from. 

I imagine, after all she'd been through, that she was in heaven.  Sometimes it must have seemed unreal to her that things could turn out so well.  Part of her probably missed her family and friends and the old neighborhood.  Sometimes it probably felt downright peculiar to be living as she did – almost like living in another universe, another galaxy – though if it did she never let on, besides which I doubt if she knew what a galaxy was.  To me she was just grandma, the happiest, funniest, warmest, most contented person in all the world.

 

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            It must have been 1967 when grandma had her first "spell."  She was puttering around in her room one day when she passed out and collapsed onto the floor.  My mom just happened to walk by and see her there, sprawled out and unconscious.  Horrified, she called the paramedics, who came racing to the house to take grandma to the hospital.  She was alright, more or less, just a couple of pretty bad bumps and bruises.

            The doctors said it was arteriosclerosis – "hardening of the arteries" – especially in her head.  Basically her blood vessels had grown narrower with age, letting less blood circulate through.  Without enough blood and oxygen getting  to her brain, she had passed out.  They also said she'd likely suffer the same kind of episode again, and there wasn't a lot they could do.  By now she was 76 – fairly old, but an age I considered entirely natural and proper for her to be.

            My mom was at wit's end.  She couldn't watch her mother every second – she had groceries to buy, errands to run, dinners to cook, a houseful of kids to keep track of – and she couldn't well hire a live-in nurse to keep an eye on her, either.  So grandma came back home, a bit shakier and spooked by the whole episode herself, and life resumed, only now with a tension in the air and my mom watching her like a hawk.

 

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            It was also around this time that Uncle Ed was visiting when he had a heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital.  That was very scary, too, with all the flashing red lights and men in white uniforms rushing into the house with all their equipment with its lights and wires and switches and crackling radios, putting Uncle Ed onto a gurney and carrying him out the door, into the ambulance, and racing away down Ruth Street with the sirens blaring. 

It ended up being a pretty mild heart attack, and he, too, resumed his normal routines in his cramped little hotel room in downtown Minneapolis, with the same phone call every morning from my mom – "Ed Sullivan please" – to check up on him.

 

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To 14 year-old Sue it was absolutely the worst day of her life, way worse than Pearl Harbor Day in the sheer magnitude of its infamy, and she could not imagine how life could ever go on afterward, but on June 15, 1968 we picked up stakes and moved to R.G.'s house in Highland Park.  Out the door went all of R.G.'s dusty old chairs and tables and stacks of newspapers from the 1920s and 30s and junk in the basement piled up to the ceiling, and in tumbled five loudmouthed kids, a big white dog, an old lady, and two middle-aged parents, one of whom was his nephew Harry.  As I said, it must have been pretty hard on him, unaccustomed as he was to living in the company of other human beings.

As we carted in all our stuff from the moving trucks – the big round white Formica table with the "whirlybird" in the middle (no one dared call it a "lazy Susan"), the shiny modern chairs, the sectional sofa, all my mom's plants, boxes and bags filled with clothes and plates and bowls and toys and lord knows what – R.G. was probably beside himself with the tumult of it all.  What had he gotten himself into?  All the things he'd been looking at and living with for the past 40 or 50 years being shoved into the corners or pitched out the door. 

Some things, though, were simply too valuable to be thrown away.  So, one by one he took the old birch logs that had been gathering dust in the fireplace since the 1930s or so and carried them upstairs to his bedroom.  There he carefully piled them into the corner of his crawlspace, where they sat for the next 15 or so years.  He had looked at those logs for a long, long time, and he wasn't about to see them dumped in the trash, along with all the memories they had absorbed and accumulated over all those many years.

 

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The thing about R.G. was, he really did live in the past, at least in his mind.  He'd be sitting in his favorite chair in the corner of the living room, as far away from the traffic as he could get without being in his room, and I'd pass by, and he'd bark, "Say, Mike!  Get down the M encyclopedia for me, willya?  M, that's M."  So I'd get the M encyclopedia down and he'd say, "now, look up the state of Maine for me, willya?  That's Maine.  Maine."  So I'd find the state of Maine and he'd say, "now, look for a town by the name of Milford, that's Milford.  Milford"  So I'd look in the index of town names and find the right grid and find Milford.  "I found Milford, R.G." 

"Lemme see that there, gimme that book there, lemme see that."  And I'd point to the town of Milford on the page.  He'd look at it intently for a few seconds, putting his finger on the spot on the map, then sink back into his chair.  "Yep, I was there alright, back in ought-nine, ought-nine it was, bought a sandwich in a diner there for 15 cents, 15 cents, a good sandwich, too."  Then he'd resume his sitting, his legs crossed, his head tilted back, gazing at the ceiling.

 

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Tom reminded me of this story.  On a particular day, I forget which one, R.G. would shuffle downstairs from his bedroom, stand in the middle of the living room, and announce to no one in particular, "Yep, it was 56 years ago today that my mother died, 56 years ago today."  Then he'd turn around, shuffle back up the stairs, go back into his bedroom, and close the door.  He was very, very fond of his mother, Bertha.

 

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I'm sure my dad had planned it all along, but he never told any of us kids, till one fine spring day in 1970 a couple of giant bulldozers rolled into the side yard, belching smoke and fumes, knocked down the big old crabapple trees, and started digging a huge hole in the ground.  By now Highland Parkway was prime real estate, especially with an empty side lot, and we needed more space.  We actually did, what with the four small drywall cubicles my dad had built in the basement for the four boys, Sue upstairs in her bedroom – she was the only girl and a teenager, lord knows the least she deserved was her own bedroom – my grandma downstairs in what used to be a kind of sitting room, Betty and Harry upstairs in their bedroom, and R.G. in his. 

So the addition commenced.  It was a brilliant idea, really, and a pretty brilliant design (though not one with heating bills in mind), and it utterly consumed our family life for the next couple of years.  It ended up being an absolutely massive thing, completely enveloping the old colonial-style house in redwood and cedar, with an enormous vaulted ceiling in the new part that shot 25 feet up into the air.  It took at least two years to build, with dust and tools and piles of boards and debris everywhere, and Paul and I spending every Saturday and every Sunday for about 100 weeks straight sawing and hammering and doing whatever our dad told us to do on that particular day.  I was 12, by my dad's reckoning old enough to operate a radial arm saw, and he was very good about teaching me how to use it so as not to cut my fingers or hand off.

 

Matt, Mike, Tom, and R.G. at Highland, circa 1972

It was actually a wonderful experience, learning all those carpentry skills and being an active participant in such an amazing transformation.  By about the spring of 1972, two years after we started, the addition was more or less complete, though there were always details here and there that needed finishing.  It was all but impossible to imagine what it had looked like before.  Our friends said it looked like a giant wooden envelope on the outside, and in fact it did.  The golfers were doubtless amazed, too.  There was no thought of making it fit in with the neighboring houses.  It was a one-of-a-kind, a stand-alone, singular, unique.   Everything was completely transformed, except for a couple of rooms furthest away from the new part, including R.G.'s room.  His room stayed exactly the same.  Otherwise, walls and floors and ceilings throughout the house were reshaped, reconfigured, redone to conform to the new master plan.

 

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It was while we were busy building the addition that my grandma suffered another one of her spells.  This time she fell down pretty hard, cracking her head and face.  My mom was beside herself.  She didn't know what to do.  She started going crazy, staying up all hours of the night, drinking coffee and smoking cigarette after cigarette at the kitchen counter and staring silently into space, padding slowly through the big, dirty, dusty house while everyone else was asleep, wending her way around the piles of tools and boards, stopping, taking another long drag on her cigarette, and watching as the smoke whorled up toward the ceiling, wracking her brains trying to figure out what in God's name she was going to do.

In the end, the only solution that made any sense was to take her mother to live in a nursing home.  She looked and looked and finally found one that seemed suitable.  It wasn't far, only a couple of miles down Hamline Avenue to I-94, then another block to Lexington Avenue – about 10 minutes by car.  It seemed clean, the staff seemed competent and professional, and while Genevieve was not happy about it, she knew that she just couldn't keep on as before.  She was too much trouble, and her time had come.  So, after 44 years, after living every day of her life under the same roof as her mother, Betty packed the trunk with a few bags and boxes, got into the car, and drove Genevieve to the nursing home.

 

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            It was a heart-wrenching decision, and one my mom always felt terrible about.  In fact it broke her heart, but she just didn't see any other way.  It was a horrible solution, but every other option was even worse.  We couldn't afford a full-time nurse, besides which they'd be spending all of their time twiddling their thumbs, since grandma's spells were so infrequent and unpredictable.  What were they going to do, walk around behind her all day and wait for her to fall so they could catch her?  My mom couldn't stay home all day, what with five kids to raise, the two eldest of which were now difficult teenagers and a real handful, errands to run, not to mention a life of her own to lead.  It was horrible, horrible, horrible, and there was nothing else to be done.

Grandma came to hate it, too.  She hated being cooped up in that nursing home surrounded by all those old people she didn't know and didn't much care for, puttering around in wheelchairs and walkers with one foot already in the grave, being doted on like she was some kind of ninny, being told to do this and that – "take your medicine, Genevieve" – "it's arts and crafts time, Genevieve" – surrounded by strangers, torn away from her daughter and grandchildren and plopped down in a smelly old building with nothing to do all day but watch T.V., mend, read magazines, eat, sleep, and wait to die.

 

♣

 

I used to ride my bicycle down Hamline Avenue to see her in the nursing home, once a week on Saturdays.  It only took about 20 minutes each way, and my dad let me take a break from working on the addition, as long as I'd be back in a couple of hours. 

I'd get to the building and park my bike, and go through the big glass doors and walk down the wide hallway with its shiny linoleum floors and antiseptic smell, passing old people with walkers and canes and in wheelchairs, and I'd come to her room, and I'd walk in and see her there, sitting in her chair waiting for me, and her eyes would light up so, and she'd stand up and we'd hug, and she'd reach into her purse and hand me a crisp ten dollar bill, and I'd quick peddle over to the Burger King and get us each a milkshake and a hamburger and some fries, and I'd come back and we'd sit and visit.  I don't know what we talked about, probably all the things I was up to, my football, my friends, school, Sue and Paul, Mark and Tom, I don't know.  All I know is that right now, as I remember those times sitting on the edge of the bed having hamburgers and milkshakes with grandma in the nursing home, I can barely see the computer screen through the tears.

 

♣

 

The Lexington Ave. nursing home, now shuttered; photo taken during trip to Minnesota in June 2008.  Grandma's was the fourth window from the left on the first floor.

 

            As time passed, she came to hate it more and more.  Several times she got all dressed up in her best dress and stockings and hat and shoes, took her purse, walked out of her room, down the hallway, out the big glass front doors, across the parking lot, over to a little grassy spot alongside the entrance ramp to the freeway, and laid down flat on her back in the middle of the grass and weeds, next to the sun-faded hamburger wrappers and rusty old pop cans, with the cars whizzing by and the sun shining brightly, and just lay there, looking up at the sky.  I can hear her now, praying for the Lord to take her, please, just take me here and now and be done with it.  Please.  Then the staff would notice she was missing, or a passing motorist would see this old woman all dressed up lying in the grass next to the freeway entrance, and people would rush out and get her to stand up, and walk her back into the building.

            Whenever that happened, which was two or three times, my mom went absolutely crazy with grief and rage.

 

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            One day, Genevieve picked up the phone and called Grace.  She said, goodbye Grace, because today is the day I'm going to die.  Then she hung up the phone and laid down in the bed.  The staff brought her lunch and set it on the bedside stand.  She didn't look at it.  No more eating, she said.  I'm done.  Grace tried frantically to call Betty but couldn't get a hold of her.  She was here, she was there, she wasn't at home or answering the phone.  Later that evening, Betty was at a PTA meeting when Genevieve died.  When she found out later, it absolutely ripped her heart out by the roots.  It tore her up so bad inside, she never got over it.  She regretted that day for the rest of her life.  She was too damn busy to be with her mother the day she died.

Grandma's nursing home  (photo by Mike, June 2008)

 

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My mom was a very kind person.  She was so very patient with people, so very kind, it's hard to describe.

My grandfather Harold F. Schroeder, Sr. remarried after he and Hazel divorced.  His second wife's name was Margaret – I forget her last name, but we called her Grandma Margaret.  Grandma Margaret outlived Harold Sr. by many years.  A short, squat woman who wore tons of makeup and thick red lipstick, she used to come visiting to our house.  Betty would sit there at the kitchen table and talk and talk with grandma Margaret, bringing her coffee and cookies and such until grandma Margaret got tired and went home.

Grandma Margaret on the far left, with the five kids, Grandma, Mom & R.G., Fridley, Christmas 1962.

 

Grandma Margaret loved to talk.  She talked really fast, too, her mouth moving up and down a thousand times a minute, with millions of words spilling out everywhere, all over the place, nothing but words, words, words.  I don't think I've ever known anyone who loved to talk as much as grandma Margaret did.  She really, really loved to talk.

Grandma Margaret loved to talk, but in the end she really didn't have very much to say.  I bet if you wrote it all down on a piece of paper, you'd find half the words were sort of like conversation fillers, like "oh yah, well now, you know," and "my goodness, oh yah, oh my, goodness gracious yes," stuff like that.  The other half of the words, those that actually conveyed some information, had to do with topics that no one was especially interested in except grandma Margaret.  The kinds of pills her sister in Iowa was taking to help her sleep, or what her neighbor said about the other neighbor's cat, the one that kept getting into the garbage cans behind the other neighbor's house.  Stuff like that.  Totally uninteresting stuff, little tidbits of information about this and that and the other thing, all pouring out of her mouth at a million miles a minute.

And Betty would sit there at the kitchen table with Margaret for hours, and look her in the eye with keen interest, and nod her head, and say at regular intervals, "oh, now isn't that something?" or "oh, my, now ain't that rare?" and listen to grandma Margaret talk and talk and talk.  And finally grandma Margaret would get tired, get up, and go home.  After she'd leave, Betty would let out a big sigh, laugh to herself about what a talker that Margaret was, and maybe go for a walk to wake herself up, or go take a little nap, exhausted as she was from so much listening.

My mom never said an unkind word about Margaret, unless calling someone a real talker is unkind, and she never made Margaret feel that she was wasting her time in any way.  She never got up and started fussing around in the kitchen, or lost interest in what Margaret was saying, or hinted that maybe it was time for Margaret to go.  She knew that Margaret was a lonely old woman, and she just needed someone to talk to.  So she just sat there with her, looking her in the eye, smoking cigarette after cigarette, laughing on cue, listening in rapt attention to everything Margaret had to say, listening to her talk and talk and talk about the neighbor's cat and her sister's pills and what the fellow down the block said about the other fellow down the block, the one whose dog was always peeing on the other neighbor's flowerbeds.

And every so often my mom would say something meant to make Margaret feel that what she was saying was very interesting and important, or tell a little story herself to make Margaret feel that she wasn't doing all the talking, until Margaret herself decided it was time for her to go home.

 

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            Another person my mom would sit and visit with was Don.  Don was some kind of relation to R.G., I think the son of R.G.'s nephew Harry Schwabel.  He was a portly, balding man in his mid-60s or so, with a kind of glaze over his pale blue eyes, who lived by himself a few blocks away, and he was very lonely.  So every Sunday morning after church, Don would come to our house to visit with Betty.  He'd knock on the door and Betty would be so glad to see him, so glad he could come, and she'd invite him in and bring him a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies and sit and talk with him.  They'd talk about the same kinds of things Betty and Margaret would talk about – how his heartburn was keeping him up at night, how a few nights ago he had to get up three times and take Milk of Magnesia, how that fellow on The Price is Right was so funny, what with all his one-liners and quick come-backs, for instance the other day he said  . . . . 

And Betty would sit and listen, and whenever it seemed like Don might start feeling that he was the one doing all the talking, she'd pipe in and tell a funny story or two.  Don didn't talk nearly as fast as Margaret did – she easily could have won the Olympic Gold Medal for endurance speed-talking, no question about that – but he was just as lonely.  Betty knew he was lonely, that his whole being had "lonely old man" written all over it, she knew he just needed to be in the company of another human being for a while, needed to feel that someone cared about what he had to say, cared enough to look him in the eye and sit and visit with him for a while.  So she did visit with him, for an hour or so every Sunday morning for several years, until Don died.

My mom was a very kind person.

 

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          Tom just reminded me of this story.  One time R.G. lost a quarter.  Mom had taken him somewhere in the car - probably to the bank - and when they got home he realized he was missing a quarter.  He looked everywhere for that quarter.  An old man, blind as a bat, on his hands and knees on the small strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street (the "boulevard") looking for that quarter.  He had to find it, frantically turning everything inside out.  But the quarter was simply not to be found. 

          So R.G. suggested to my mom that she pull out the back seat because the quarter probably slipped out of his pocket and slid down behind the seat.  Well, that was about all my Mom was going to take.  So, with R.G. looking the other way, she reached into her purse, pulled out a quarter, and threw it on the grass.  When he turned to look at her, she exclaimed, "Oh!  Look!  The quarter!" and reached down and picked it up.

          R.G. gazed at the quarter Betty had just placed in his outstretched hand.  "Yep," he declared, and he shuffled happily back into the house.

         

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          It was around this time that both Uncle Ed and Aunt Grace took ill.  They were getting old, and my mom was the one person they counted on to take them to the doctor, bring them their medicines, take them food and candies, visit with them, or later, when they got really sick, visit them in the hospital where they lay with oxygen tubes in their noses and i.v.'s poked into their arms, dripping medicine into their veins.  She'd sit in the hospital for hours, talking about who knows what.

I don't remember many details, only that my mom was beside herself with grief and anxiety as both Grace and Ed both went downhill, as old people inevitably do if they live long enough, eventually following Genevieve into the grave.  It's always very hard, watching people you love die.  The 1970s were very difficult years for my mom.

 

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 [  Stuff that's excised deleted taken out & otherwise not here.  ]

 

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            Well, there was a good few pages more in the original version I gave you guys for Christmas but I don't want to post those stories on the Web so  guess we'll have to share those stories offline!  Thus in clunky and wholly inelegant fashion abruptly ends the online version of Book IV.

           

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