Oskaloosa, Iowa circa the early 1950s
My father’s parents were Thomas and Daisy Denney. They lived in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Grandpa owned an auto shop in town. We lived in Davenport where dad worked in a box factory by the Mississippi River; we would go visit quite often. We had a lot of relatives that lived in the area and those visits seemed to always become a family event.
My grandparents lived in a big, 3-story, white, Victorian home on Main Street. After the kids left home Grandma turned the house into a home for the elderly. It had a large, covered porch that wrapped around three sides of the house, it was filled with rocking chairs, swings, plants, and small round tables to set drinks on. Grandma called it a veranda. It was a great place to play hide and seek.
I always wondered why Grandpa lived on the third floor of the house by himself, but kids didn’t ask questions back then. You were to be seen and not heard. His rooms always smelled of cars, tobacco, and whisky. He had a puffy face and a large red nose. Grandpa had a drinking problem, as did several men on dad’s side of the family. He started drinking whiskey when he was a small boy. He never said why he drank only that he liked it. After grandma died and the house had to be shut down he went to a nursing home in Davenport. The doctors said it would do more harm than good if he was forced to quit drinking. He had a standing order for a shot of whiskey each night before bed. He got sneaky though and started saving the nightly shots in a jar he kept under his bed, then on Friday nights he would drink what he had saved during the week and get what he called a buzz on. He thought it was a great trick to pull on the nursing staff until he got caught, then the nurse would stay in his room until he drank the shot.
I liked to go up to Grandpa’s part of the house because his rooms were piled high with books. He was an avid reader. I guess that is where I get my love of books. He would come home in the evening, pick up the tray of food Grandma Daisy had left on the bottom step, go upstairs to read and drink until he fell asleep. He liked westerns and had a collection of Louis L’Amour books. He would read to me about cowboys, ranching in the old west, and the plight of the Native Americans. To this day my favorite books are American historical novels.
He would call me Omelia when I would come to visit. I would say, “No, Grandpa. I’m Judy!” But he would always answer, “Oh, you are Omelia to me.” When he passed away we found in his things a picture of his Aunt Omelia. I look just like her. This answered the question of why he said I was a throwback to the original breed. I wish I had learned about her life and why she made such an impression on him. I have been told she was a teacher; maybe she is the one who got him interested in reading.
Grandma Daisy lived on the second floor and liked to sit in her rocking chair in the evenings; at the window overlooking Main Street. She could tell you about the people going by, who they were, and what they did. She was a bit of a town gossip after all and we kids didn’t know who she was talking about.
I liked to listen to her stories and watch her do needlework. She embroidered, and when I got old enough she taught me how. She did beautiful tapestry-like pictures. It is called crewel embroidery. This skill came in handy when I operated my Adult Family Home caring for dementia patients. When someone couldn’t sleep I would set up with them talking and doing crewel. It helped pass the time and watching me seemed to calm them.
She would say that a girl who had tight-ordered stitches would go far in this world. She liked to listen to the radio and watch us kids dance around her room. She would laugh and tell us we were silly.
She loved to bake and won lots of prizes for her cakes at the fair. From the time I was little, she would make me a cake for my birthday, when we were there for a visit, even if it wasn’t my birthday. When I was older and away in boarding school, she would pack my cake in popcorn and send it to me in the mail. Sometimes it was in pretty bad shape when it got to me! The meringue icing would be in pieces, but I looked forward to them anyway. The girls in the dorm didn’t mind helping me get rid of the box of crumbs! They thought it was funny, but nice, that she would send a cake through the mail.
The residents lived on the first floor where it was easier to get around. There was a huge kitchen, and Daisy was a well-known cook in the area. I liked helping in the kitchen and setting the table for all the residents. Another job that she let us kids do was to push the resident’s wheelchairs around the veranda. They liked when we came to visit because we would push them around and around.
I found out when I grew up that Grandpa and Grandma had been divorced for years, but neither one would give up the house. And Grandpa would say, “Besides, she is the best cook in town!” But Grandma just couldn’t abide by the drinking.
To this day I love to read, sew and bake. I have a theory that those learned skills get embedded in our DNA and passed down through the generations. Do you ever find yourself thinking you see a trait in one of your relatives that an ancestor is said to have had? I’m just saying it is something to think about.
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