"If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother then listen carefully." "The more a daughter knows the details of her mother's life---without flinching or whining---the stronger the daughter." The Red Tent, Anita Diament.
Momma hated her father. When I was little I only heard from Momma how wonderful he was. He had been a conductor on trolley cars in Washington, D. C. and took her for rides when she was little. He had worked as a guard at Lorton Reformatory, the prison in Virginia for the District of Columbia. He had boxed when he was in the Army in WWI. When a big dirigible came to Washington he took his family to see it. Fred had big clear blue eyes. He was well liked and had lots of friends and for some reason the guys at the trolley barn called him "Pork Chop".
Momma's parents, Fred and Virginia, were married when Virginia was sixteen. She had quit school in the seventh grade because she had been crippled for a year by a terrible pain and swelling in her legs and when that went away she never went back to school. Virginia was born in 1910 so this was the 1920's in rural Fairfax County, Virginia. She had been a beautiful child with long black finger curls and was a handsome woman with Cherokee genes inherited from her mother my Great Grandmother Rose who was a quarter Cherokee. In her late twenties she was steel grey and people would stop her on the street and wonder how she had colored her hair that way because it couldn't be real, she was too young.
Fred's parents had held a respectable position in their tiny village of Clifton, a little town built on the railroad line rather than a highway as many little towns and villages were in those days. Great Grandfather was an engineer on the railroad responsible for the laying and repairing of the tracks. He could cipher but couldn't read and his father had been a school teacher who wrote "with a fine Spencerian hand". He employed a local lady to keep his books. When he retired from the railroad Momma said they used to come for advice on how to lay curves. Great Grandfather got paid once a month when he retired. He called payday his "sugar day" and he'd sit on the porch at Buckley Brothers Store and drink with his cronies till Momma came home from school. She'd take him by the hand and lead him home. Momma loved him very much and she was the only one he'd let trim his handlebar mustache. She said she would always tease him that she was going to cut it off and they'd laugh.
Great Grandmother used to throw parties where cocktails were served. Virginia didn't drink and was made to feel uncomfortable and unsophisticated by her mother-in-law so she didn't go. Fred went without her. Great Grandmother had a friend from Washington, D. C. who came for visits and who talked to dead people at night and would tell Momma about these conversations. Her Grandparents house was built on the side of a hill and was three levels with a porch on each level. The cellar was built into the side of the hill on the middle level and Momma would rush past it's door because she was afraid she'd see a ghost. Great Grandmother was "society"....a big fish in a little pond. When she had her first stroke she wanted her wheel chair hooked up to a pony so she could drive around. I know she wanted this but I don't think it was ever actually done.
Fred and Virginia married before the Great Depression and when it came their family numbered five with Momma the oldest and two younger brothers. To earn money they moved into Washington, D. C. and left Momma and her two brothers in the country to live with Great Grandmother Rose and Aunt Margui who were Virginia's widowed mother and younger sister on Popes Head Road. Aunt Margui was about ten years older than Momma and was sometimes as much of a mother to her as her own mother. The bond they made then would last their whole lives. Momma said that on Friday's she would leave school telling everyone she was going to live with her parents in Washington and every Monday she had to go back to her same school. This was The Great Depression. They had gardens and chickens and cows in the country so you had food. There just wasn't any money to be had.
Momma was a skinny, skinny little girl with fine brown hair that was her cross to bear all her life. Her hair was just like her father's fine hair and she said he shaved his head once because someone told him if he did it would come in thicker. It never did and after that was even thinner. He also said Momma was skinny because she ate so much it made her "poor" to carry it.
Momma's brother Charlie was next to her in age and was a sickly boy who had been carried full term but only weighed three pounds when he was born and a man's handkerchief was too big for a diaper. Virginia had had measles when she was carrying him. He had a problem with his eyesight and when he was five there was a discussion about teaching him braille because they thought he would soon be blind. They even took him to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore about his sight. When he was in his 40's he was diagnosed with glaucoma and his records were pulled from Johns Hopkins and it was discovered his glaucoma was congenital, he was born with it. I remember when the doctors limited his liquid intake to three glasses a day. When you're denied something you want it even more and I wonder whether that's a treatment for glaucoma today because to Uncle Charlie that was torture. He didn't actually go blind until he was in his sixties. Poor Charlie. He was also sent to a preventorium when he was little because he was at risk of getting TB.
Momma adored her baby brother. Carroll had her father's blue eyes. Fred and Virginia took him to live with them in Washington before he started school and that made my Momma jealous although she said she hadn't been. Momma talked her parents into naming him Carroll O'Neil after a little boy from school she liked. All his cousins called him "Corny". Uncle Carroll spent three years in the first grade and Momma herself finally went to his teacher and asked her if she was going to pass her brother to second grade. He was finally promoted. My own opinion is Uncle Carroll probably was dyslexic as I am to a certain degree. I know he quit high school and joined the Marines during the Korean War. As a young working man his mother took care of his finances for him. He earned a good living driving a milk truck for the Alexandria Dairy. He was a handsome man.
Momma and her family lived in Clifton when she was a teenager. WWII was raging while she was in high school and while her parents worked she was in charge of the house and cooking. She said she once made a duck and was so proud of it she wouldn't let anyone touch it even though her parents were very late coming home from work and by the time they did it was really greasy. She graduated from Fairfax High School at sixteen in 1944 and her first job was at the Pentagon but she ended up working for the Internal Revenue Service. Momma grew up to be a pretty young woman with light brown hair and hazel eyes that she described derisively as yellow.
When World War II began Fred and Virginia got jobs at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia. Gas rationing made getting to work very difficult so they applied and moved into housing built for people who came to Washington to work for the war effort. They lived on Ellsworth Street in Cameron Valley, Alexandria, in a downstairs apartment. Fred's parents eventually came to live with them when they were unable to take care of themselves anymore and that's where they passed away. First Great Grandmother had a terrible stroke. A neighbor watched after her during the day and Uncle Carroll, a young teen himself, used to come home at lunchtime to feed her. Great Grandfather passed away just as the war had ended. Uncle Bubby, Fred's brother Redmond, didn't get back for his father's funeral because he had stayed behind in Germany to play baseball for the Army after the war.
Momma met Daddy through her first cousin Mae who was her best friend. Both girls had graduated together and worked in Washington, D. C. during the war. Mae had pen pals who were in the service. Momma was supposed to be waiting for Bobby T. who was in the European theater and had given her a heart locket and a picture of himself in uniform inscribed "Love, Bob". Daddy was writing to Mae and when he visited her found out she was tall and buxom but Momma was petite and just his size. Daddy was short and bowlegged and Momma used to say if his legs were straight he'd be a tall man. He was a Marine who had been in the Pacific stationed at Honolulu and the Solomon Islands. He was an airplane mechanic, a trade he learned in the Marine Air Corps. He also got stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was okay with Mae if Momma and Daddy became a couple. Daddy introduced Mae to his friend Warren and they became a couple and married. Momma and Daddy were married August 25, 1945 and Daddy moved into the Ellsworth Street apartment with Momma and her family when he was on leave..
Daddy was still in the Marine Corps when they married and told the Corps he was going to re up in order to get another aeronautics class for a certfication that he needed to get a job with Republic Airlines. He did the class, didn't re up, and got the job with Republic. Republic was out of Pennsylvania and became Capital Airlines and my Dad was an airplane mechanic. In August 1946 Dad got out of the service and started his career. In 1960 Capital Airlines merged with United Airlines.
I was born on November 30, l946. I was much loved by my Grandaddy Fred and he used to steal me out of my crib and put me in the bed with him and Grandma Virginia. By this time in his life Momma's father had become pretty much an alcoholic even though he still worked every day. Momma said while she was growing up he didn't drink every day but was a binge drinker. He would disappear a couple of times a year for a couple of weeks at a time. He could drink beer and whisky and be okay but if he drank wine he'd get mean The drinking was now getting pretty bad and was an everyday thing. Momma told me he wanted to show me off to his buddies at the bar he frequented and she wouldn't let him,
On June 26, 1948 Grandaddy Fred had been missing for a couple of days. When they found him they brought him home and called a doctor who checked him over and made arrangements for him to be admitted to Walter Reed Army Hospital the next day as he was a WWI veteran. The Doctor gave him a shot of something and he laid down on the couch and put his head in Grandma Virginia's lap. His heart gave out and he never woke up. Uncle Charlie never played the song he'd been playing on the record player again. It was Grandma Virginia's birthday.
Momma was two weeks away from giving birth to my little sister Linda. My Momma was hysterical. They kept her sedated and she sat in the car at the graveside ceremony at the cemetary in Fairfax. The funeral service for her Father was attended by a huge crowd of mourners.
Grandma Virginia ended up following her boss from the Torpedo Factory to a brand new government agency called the Veteran's Administration where she worked until she retired. Grandma Virginia was just in her thirties and never remarried.
I never learned of my Grandaddy Fred's alcoholism until I was an adult. Momma often said she wished she'd allowed her father to show me off to his buddies at the bar. She could have gone with him and made sure I was alright. Momma loved her father.
.JPG)