It all started circa late 1920’s

This is a picture of my dad’s parents in the late 1920’s:

I know the first question on your mind and I’ll just say YES HE’S WEARING KNICKERS.  Or, as they were more formally known at that time, knickerbockers.  Shortly after that, “knickers” became slang for ladies’ . . . ahem . . . undergarments . . . and then those pants you see up there in the picture went out of style (what a crazy coincidence).  He’s also wearing a bow-tie which is so darn delightful that I can’t see straight.  The only thing more delightful is the fact that her name was Minnie.  Minnie!

The reason I call them “my dad’s parents” rather than “my grandparents” is because I never knew them.  In fact, I never even came close to knowing them; they died before my dad was done with school, within 6 months of one another.  Don’t you want to give my dad a great big hug?  I know I do.  So I don’t know much about them and honestly, I never really have tried all that hard to find out.  But today, this afternoon, my dad was over at our house and I looked at him and realized there is a whole lot I don’t know about his past.  I don’t know what his parents were like, what kind of house he lived in, where he went to elementary school, what he liked to do when he was, I don’t know, 8-years-old?  The more I thought about it, the more it started to kind of freak me out.  And it really freaked me out to think about if I’d realized all this after he was gone, when he wasn’t there to ask.  Oh man, that made me sad.  And moved me to action.

So I asked him some questions today.  And in the course of about 40 minutes, I learned more about his childhood than I had learned in the whole rest of my life.  Aside from feeling like a complete and utter loser for not ever asking these questions before, it was really great.  I kept finding myself saying “What?  WHAT? Really?  I never EVER knew that.  Wow.”  Like when he told me that the summer he turned 6-years-old, he didn’t leave his house or his backyard because his older sister (by ELEVEN MONTHS, please give Minnie some sort of award in Heaven RIGHT THIS INSTANT) had polio and so he was quarantined as well.  Quarantined.  The.  Whole.  Summer.  Tell that to your kids the next time they complain about being strapped in their carseat for the 7 minute ride to school.

My dad was born in 1941.  His parents had been married for over a decade and had tried for all that time to have kids.  They had his older sister, got pregnant immediately afterward and had two kids born within one year of each other.  I’m thinking this is one of those “Be careful what you ask for” things, right?  Anyway, here is a picture of my dad and his mom in 1942:

There are several things I love about this picture, starting with her FABULOUS shoes.  If you know me, you know I love a chunky shoe with flair but a touch of manliness to it.  Well, this must be where I got it.  A few other surface things I love are the clothes on the line in the background, the flower in her hair, my dad’s totally cliche and adorable white baby shoes, the very loved teddy bear in the left corner of the photo, you get the drift.  Dig a little deeper and . . .  I love the way he is looking at her, oh BOY do sons love their mommies.  Love love LOVE them.  And another thing I love is that I see a little of myself in her.  You might not (if you even know me) but I do, and that’s what I love.  Maybe it’s the expression on her face or maybe it’s how she’s crossing her legs or maybe it’s the way she’s holding him with her  arms and her hands like that — whatever it is, I see myself there.  It may be as simple as bonding to her, mother to mother, I don’t know.  But after hearing some stories about her and listening to him describe these photos, I do, for the first time, think of her as my grandmother.

My dad said Minnie was a little reserved when you first met her but she blossomed when she was around those she knew well.  He said she had content and happy times but also contemplative ones, moments she absorbed things around her and seemed quieted by them.  He said she loved, LOVED, baseball.  He told me how when he was little, the world series’ games were played during the day, instead of at night like now, and he and his sister would come home from school and the whole house would be dark.  And they would find her in the living room, listening to the game, totally absorbed.  He loved that about her.

Minnie died from the injuries she sustained in a kitchen fire in their home.  She was alone in the house at the time.  His dad died 6 months later of a heart attack.  My dad is a doctor, basically a scientist, and he still to this day says he is pretty sure that his dad’s heart just plain broke from the sadness of his wife’s death.  Which actually makes my heart hurt, too.

I’ve said this before when I was telling you about my grandfather, my mom’s dad, who was a B-24 pilot in WWII, but I’ll say it again.  If your parents or grandparents are around and are able, take an afternoon sometime.  Just go and ask them some questions about what it was like when they were growing up.  It can sometimes be a little difficult to get them talking about the past, I know, but if you just ask enough random, specific questions (What did you do after school in junior high?  What did your bedroom look like?  What did you have for dinner?  Where did you go, if anywhere, for vacation?  Who was your first kiss?  What was your first car?  On and on, you get the idea), eventually you will start getting some information from them that will pretty much blow you away.  There is no way on God’s green earth that you will be sorry you asked, even if there is some sad stuff in there or some scary stuff in there or some stuff you didn’t know they ever had to deal with in there.  You’ll look at them with new eyes and, most likely, more respect and admiration than you did before.  Everyone has a story, we’ve heard that a million times, but it’s true.  And your parents’ story and your grandparents’ story is part of your story, so you better learn it.  It’s part of who you are.

To end on another note, take a look at my dad in his 1942 version of an exersaucer:

My god, that thing is a DEATH TRAP.  They pretty much constructed that thing so that whichever direction he leaned, ever so slightly, he’d get scratched or stabbed or pinched by some rusty, tetanus-ridden corner of that thing when it fell over on him.  Plus, look closely — it doesn’t play music or tell a story or shoot flashing lights or ANYTHING.  The POOR POOR BABY.  

Thanks, Dad, for answering my questions today.  It means more to me than you know.

Tags: 1920's, 1941, baseball, Be careful what you ask for, bow-tie, clothes on the line, exersaucer, knickerbockers, knickers, polio, quarantined, World Series