My grandma Stella and an old child’s game

A Column by John Estridge

Donna Jobe Cronk came to the Brookville Library recently and gave a presentation.

Donna writes columns I publish on the blog and is a very talented writer. I love her columns, and she has published three books. I like her books although they are a little feminine for me. I tend to like books like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series and John Sanford’s Lucas Davenport series and Virgil “That f-ing Flowers” series. I am now going through the Joe Pickett series written by C.J. Box. With these books, there is a bunch of masculine action, and one does not have to think too much other than thinking about who done it.

Donna and I are both Union County High School grads. She was behind me in high school; I don’t know if she has passed me yet. I did not ask her when she was at the library.

Both Donna and I had a common friend. For me, Cheryl was more than a friend. She was my long-time girlfriend in high school. Truth be known, she was my only girlfriend in high school. It seems unbelievable now that I was not more popular with the girls at UCHS, but maybe their tastes had not yet developed enough.

I’ll go with that.

After Donna’s presentation, she, her husband – who is a former English teacher at UCHS – Melody Gault, retired Franklin County Library District director and UCHS grad, her husband, My Long Suffering Wife Ruth and myself stood around and talked.

During that conversation, I told Donna I thought she did not like me very much in high school. Up to that conversation, I always thought Donna did not like me because she had good, common sense. I thought she was telling Cheryl to run, which she eventually did. I thought Donna just wanted Cheryl to dodge a bullet, which Cheryl did.

With high school, I started down a weed-strewn path into darkness. It could have had terrible results had it not been for the Grace of God. I thank Him every day I found my way off that path and am where I am now. Ruth and I have often talked that had we met “back in the day,” she would have had nothing to do with me.

And I cannot blame Ruth. Maybe, Ruth wishes she did not have anything to do with me now. I can see where I might yet invoke that reaction.

But as I said those words to Donna, about not liking me in high school, I realized by looking at Donna’s reaction — don’t play poker Donna — I had both shocked her and saddened her.

I felt bad.

A couple of days later, Donna sent me an apologetic email about how she did not realize that was my take on those long-ago days, almost 50 years ago. She ventured she was jealous of me because Cheryl and Donna were besties going back to Brownsville Elementary School – there are photos. All of a sudden, when Cheryl and I were dating, Cheryl was spending time with me and not Donna, and Donna did not have a boyfriend at the time.

However, Donna mentioned the time she, Cheryl and I were sitting around Cheryl’s parents’ kitchen table at their house in Philomath and talking about our futures. Donna and I both wanted to be writers, and again through the Grace of God we were able to live out our desires. Before retiring, Donna was the Society Editor at the New Castle Courier Times. And before I was fired, I was the editor at the Brookville and Liberty papers. Donna now writes books people read, and I write books people will probably never read, but I still write.

One of the aspects of Donna’s presentation was having the audience members bring something found in the attic. Donna’s latest book There’s a Clydesdale in the Attic is about cleaning her attic during the Pandemic Shutdown, and all the things she found.

An aside here: Donna brought a large Ball bottle filled with something dark and seemingly intertwined. It is one of the things Donna found in the attic. Donna had Tim Beneker and myself – Tim is also employed at the library and was taking his break to hear part of the presentation – to pull away the blanket that covered it and to guess what was in it.

My guess was pig fetuses, which I know also shocked Donna.

There is historical precedence with my guess. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s and probably before that, local farmers would put bodies of deformed piglets in Brookville store windows for people to see. They were often mentioned in the Brookville newspapers from those times.

Anyway, they were minks. Not only the fur, but the heads including sharp, bared teeth, tail and feet. This, according to Donna, is how the women wore them during that time – early- to mid-20^th Century. They fixed them literally head to tail, with their very sharp teeth clutching to the tail of the other.

It was maybe more shocking than deformed pig fetuses.

Anyway, I brought an old pinball-like children’s game to the presentation. It did not come from an attic, but from my Grandma Stella’s closet. It was my uncle Billy’s. Billy was an Oops child. As far as I know he is living in a nursing home in Vegas. He is the last of my father’s generation. We lost touch with Billy in the 70s.

It is a pre-war game with drawings of cowboys and printed baseball terms. Why the developers put those two otherwise disparate aspects together is lost to time. But I loved it then, and I love it more now. It is the only thing I have of Stella’s.

My maternal grandparents were either dead by the time I was born or died months after my wonderful birth.

Thus, the only grandparents I knew were my paternal grandparents: Henry and Stella.

I do not mean to besmirch grandpa Henry, but I have no memory of him being sober. I was just 6 or 7 when he passed. There probably were many times he was sober around me; I just cannot remember them.

Estridges have an addiction gene lurking within us. It does not negatively affect every Estridge, but it is there. Both grandpa and my dad were alcoholics. And I know some current extended family members who fight their demons today. I have been lucky or blessed that I have not been addicted to anything but being lazy. And I am really addicted to that.

Both grandparents were born and raised in Southeastern Kentucky before migrating to the Whitewater Valley after World War I.

Now think of the poorest people you know and add a power to that. That was grandma and grandpa. Dad and some of his siblings paid for both of their funerals. Grandpa was illiterate and retired from the railroad when the railroad did not pay that much.

While I was editor, I met a guy who grew up on Cane Mill Road in Franklin County. He was a retired corporate attorney living in Indy when I knew him. He told me the house he grew up in was halfway between my mom’s house at Young’s Corner aka Yung’s Corner and where my dad’s family lived at the intersection of Blue Creek and Cane Mill roads.

Not to demean the Lanning family, but he said the Estridges were the second poorest family in the county, second only to the Lannings. He said the house was in terrible shape, and he could never understand how my uncle Donald and aunt Maxine could come out of that house everyday with good, clean clothes to wear to school.

The reason they had good, clean clothes was my dad quit school after the eighth grade (the 1930s) – he was the oldest child and it was expected, probably demanded of him — went to Cincinnati, worked in food service and sent most of weekly earnings home so grandma and grandpa could purchase store-bought clothes for his siblings still at home.

Dad’s family was itinerate farmers who lived on about every creek in Franklin County. They lived in the log cabin that still stands on St. Mary’s Road. Dad said when it snowed, it covered the upstairs floor where he and his brothers slept.

And that is where I picture grandma Stella. Dad said during the summer’s heat – Google the mid 1930s and see how hot it was then and that was prior to Global Warming I don’t think they blamed the weather on anything back then – grandma would stand in the yard and stir boiling lye to make soap.

From dad’s stories I think of grandma as one of the best athletes he ever witnessed. She was formidable in strength and someone who people did not cross or only crossed once. She was very demanding, could be – gruff seems to be a little weak — but she had a very soft side also. We grandchildren saw that soft side often.

She was the type of person who if you arrived at her house at 3 a.m., would have a large, hot and wonderful tasting meal in front of you by 3:30 a.m.

My OLDEST sister Linda, who is the family’s cook and award-winning baker, said she tried and tried to learn how to cook like grandma, but Stella did not use recipes and/or measure anything. She used handfuls, half handfuls, pinches and smidgens. Linda found a small grandchild’s hand did not have the same proportions as a grandma’s hand. So, Stella’s dishes are also lost to time.

She made the best peach cobbler I have had to this day. Her fried chicken may have been better or as good as the Mounds. I do not know because I never had the Mounds chicken, I have just heard and read about it. But grandma’s fried chicken and corresponding gravy were scrumptious.

One story about grandma I have treasured through my life is from my youth. I was 16 when she passed. Grandma and grandpa had moved to Liberty from Connersville when I was quite young. At the age of 8, I began to mow yards in the summer. I mowed grandma’s yard – grandpa was gone by then – for free. But I mowed another yard on the same street. The lady was as old as grandma, which meant they were about my age now or even younger than I am now.

At that other lady’s yard one day, my mower hit a ground nest of some type of stinging beelike creatures. And I got repeatedly stung before I could run away. My mower was still running and remained that way until dad got home from work and retrieved my mower.

After being stung, I ran up the block to grandma’s, crying and probably screaming all the way. Grandma put baking soda on my stings and gave me a Coke over ice in a big glass. I was allowed only one Coke a week and that was on Saturday night with popcorn in front of the Movie of the Week on NBC.

However, grandma would surreptitiously give me Cokes after mowing yards in her neighborhood. She told me what John L (my dad) didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. I readily agreed to that.

But the day in question, we sat on her covered porch and talked. Her talking soothed my crying, and her and/or the baking soda took the sting out of the stings.

At some point as the heat and humidity gathered, we went inside and that is when I found the game. I played and played with it that afternoon as my mower continued to run down the block. At the end of the day, when my dad came to get my mower and me, she told me to take the game home.

When I went back the next week to that lady’s house, I refused to mow near where the bees were even though dad said he had killed them all.

Not surprisingly, she fired me.

So, for the second week in a row, I came to grandma crying. I again got my Coke, and grandma told me not to worry but to come back next week, and I would mow that lady’s yard. Grandma speculated that lady might even give me a raise. I think I made $1.50 for mowing it.

And I came back the next week and found both things happened: I got the job back and I got a raise to $2. Not only that, but all the other old ladies on the block suddenly wanted me to mow their yards. It was a bonanza for me.

During that time, I heard mom and dad talking at the supper table after the dishes were done by my sisters. Dad was drinking his 7 and 7 from a waterglass. They did not know I was nearby listening as I often did. They speculated on how grandma had threatened or did something worse to the poor old ladies on that block. While they seemed concerned about it, they also were smiling.

As was I then and am now.