Grandparents in Covid-times

 After having Covid last Spring, Dave has a persistent "crackling" in lungs and wheezing.  We'll be seeing a pulmonologist this week, but this is more about the mental/emotional state of elderly grandparents.  I remember when we were on lock-down friends with young grandchildren fretted that their young grandchildren would forget them, but it hadn't occurred to many that we could forget our grandchildren.

With our young grandchildren, I started reading books to them on YouTube.  They became so accustomed to seeing me on the television that they would greet me and even wish me a happy birthday.  But, I wasn't seeing them since this was all on YouTube. Our daughter even said at Thanksgiving, "We see you almost every day and forget that you can't see us, too."

Most of our grandchildren were in their pre-teens-early teens when covid lockdown hit.  We missed seeing our family as everyone did, but we hadn't counted on them maturing into adults in the three years we didn't see them.  Having spent a career teaching teenagers, I wasn't surprised at their social distance to us when we saw them---no longer the screaming and running to greet us, but heads buried into phones or going to another room to "be teenagers".  What I hadn't counted on was Dave literally not knowing who they were.

This year, we moved to Kansas City to be closer to our family but the grandsons had grown up so much that Dave was constantly asking, "Who is that?"  He knew these young men were relatives but he thought they might be nephews.  When our grandson Brett (22) came to take Dave to a social gathering here at McCrite, I cautioned him that Grandpa might introduce him as his nephew.  I suggested it might be better if Brett just introduced himself, "I'm Dave's grandson, Brett." 

For Christmas this year, the family gave us Aura which electronically flashes photos every 30 seconds or so.  The family can all contribute photos remotely.  Dave fully recognizes the grandchildren's photos from 10 years ago, but not those after Covid, but he's learning.  Our daughters have uploaded photos all ages and stages of their children (and some photos of their childhood, as well).  Dave no longer watches hours of "Major Crimes" but watches the Aura as the photos flash by. We are able to see the "grands" before, during and after covid-times.  Several of the "grands" have even uploaded their photos with school activities and sports.  Davis is going to Spain for this semester and promises to keep us updated through the app.

Although the photos are generated randomly, I have the setting "on" for "Photo match" which displays photos side by side "creating moments of delight by pairing related photos" which explains pairings like this (Left is my brother and his wife.  Right is our grandson with me)

And this one with Libby, me and my (former) car Olivia. Libby is the current owner of Olivia.

So, we may still be struggling with the physical aspects of covid, but we are healing from the emotional toll it took.

Grandparents

Although both sets of grandparents lived fairly close, I spent most of my time with the Wickers.  My Long grandparents, who lived on Flad, had Ron who was just 8 years older AND all of my cousins.  The Wickers lived next door, with no children at home and only my sister and I for about 9 years.

Their home was more of a shotgun style house with one room leading into another.  When you walked in the front door, you were in the living room which had beautiful stained glass windows high on the outside wall.  If you turned left, you were in the sun room with windows covered in eyelet sheers on three sides.  I loved “hiding” behind the curtains---I can still smell the dusty starch of those sheers.  After they were washed they were dipped in starch and put on a frame called “stretchers”.  When dry, they hung stiffly from the rods, but I loved them when they were limp again and filled with dust.  I’d bat them and watch the dust fly in the sun light like miniature, silent fireworks.

Jane said we used to play a game which was pick a color and count the cars.  I’d always win because I was shrewd enough to know there were more black cars than a color.  Jane, always the romantic, would pick blue (her favorite color) and lose. . . .but she never learned. . . .sigh, little sisters are so hard to train.

I loved being with my grandparents---cards, fishing, delicatessen,wooshy-wooshy.  Eating fish on Fridays

My Looks

I wore my long hair in braids most of the time.  Mother liked fixing my hair in long banana curls, but I hated the look.  First, I had to wear rags to tie the curls in when my hair was wet.  Then, she spent HOURS coaxing the curls into the long curls which felt so weird when I walked---bouncing up and down like springs.  My head was very “tender” so I didn’t really like anyone brushing or combing it.  The nice think about braids was they didn’t have to be combed every day.  Mom could undo them, and then get the wisps and stray hairs back into the strand and re-braid it.  When I was a little older and wanted to be fancy, I’d put them on top of my head and add flowers.

Although there are some photos of me with pants on, I usually wore dresses (with leggings underneath if it was cold). I remember I got a new plaid dress to start school, a Christmas dress and an Easter dress.  My grandmother Wicker usually made my dresses, but we went to Famous-Barr, scouted out the latest fashions and copied them.  My grandmother Long bought me fancy dresses when she was alive---I think I have one of those dresses which was pink taffeta.  I know I have one of my plaid dresses because Becky wore it for 1950’s day at school.  My favorites were dresses with pinafores—white ruffly aprons worn over a dress.  I’m sure there were practical reasons at one time for pinafores, but WHITE, RUFFLY (which had to be starched and ironed) wasn’t really that practical for a child

 My play shoes had been my school or dress shoes which just got old---we didn’t really wear sneakers or have athletic shoes.  Our pediatrician said Keds were bad for our feet.  So, we always had good shoes---I’m sure if we had clothing allowances, our shoes were most of that allowance.  Although I have bad feet, now, it is definitely something genetic and has nothing to do with wearing ill-fitting or poorly supported shoes.  I can recall going to the shoe shops which had a wonderful machine---you could stand with your feet in the machine and SEE if the shoes fit---X-rays!  I shudder thinking of how many times I x-rayed my feet for the fun of it.

The shoe stores were wonderful---they always had little toy (a clicker or kazoo) or balloons to give away.  I still love the smell of new shoes.  I once even won a new pair of shoes from a coloring contest.  Mind you, it wasn’t art, but how well you could color their pre-printed drawing.  It was one of my proudest moments as a child.

My Friends and My Sister

Arsenal Friends

In the days before computers and cell phones, we had three ways to communicate with friends---a letter, an expensive phone call and a face-to-face visit.  For children wanting to play with friends, we would go to each yard and YELL!  We had musical chants for our friends.  I don’t remember if each person had a chant that everyone used for that person or if each individual called all of their friends in the same peculiar way.  I just remember calling, “Oh, Johnnie, oh, Johnnie, OOOOHHHH!”  Even if you couldn’t hear the words, you could identify who the chant was for or who the caller was.  It was especially fun to do it in the “gang-ways”, the walk between two buildings which echoed the chant.

 My first friends were probably the Bellams---Wayne and Wanda were twins who were older but smaller than I was.  Wayne was cute with curly red-hair hair and a sunny disposition; Wanda was dark, unattractive and seemed a little sour even as a young child.  They had an older sister Doris who needed dental work done.  Their mom and dad were also very small and probably alcoholics.  We shared a flat with them—they lived downstairs---we played in the back yard, front yard and on the porch together.  I don’t think Mom totally approved of their family but didn’t have much choice---maybe that’s another reason I visited so many relatives for over-nights.

The Lacy’s lived next door to us.  Delena was the mom and the children were Becky and Benny.  Becky was older, freckled, chubby and walked me to school.  Her brother Benny was Jane’s age and had some kind of chest deformity. Jane thinks he might have had heart surgery because she recalled he had a scar down his chest which we called “the carrot.” I adored Delena who was the only one I’d allow to “paint my throat” with methiolade  or mercurochrome when my throat hurt (before tonsil surgery).  I inherited some of Becky’s doll clothes which I was able to return to her when we moved back to St. Louis in 1978.

Next door to my grandparents were the Buerks---Marilyn was Jane’s BFF (they are still good friends) and her younger brother was Michael.  Theirs was a happy family although Dad drank too much.  Marilyn was very cute, blond, sunny and I always thought DIZZY.  But, later she proved to be more intelligent than I had thought becoming a teacher with a PhD.

Then, there were the Ernsts.  Mother approved of their family although it was a little unconventional---a widowed mother, a maiden aunt (Marie) and three kids, but the women had been or were teachers.  The two boys were a hand full---Johnny and Tommy---they needed the strong hand of a father which they didn’t have.  Mary was my age, very bright, but perhaps a little masculine.  Although I wasn’t really a girly-girl, Mary was even less one.  She liked playing army or baseball across the street.  She always wore her dark hair bobbed, wore boys’ clothes and was unrecognizable at birthday parties when she wore a dress and had her hair curled.  

We played army especially with the Ernsts---mostly we just liked ordering Jane and Marilyn around. Although Mary, Jane, Marilyn and I were girls, Mary told us girls in the army were called Wax (WACS).   But, school was my favorite game.  When my students would ask me how long I had taught, I tell them since I was about 5 years old. There were two “School” games.  The first was the traditional one where I would be the teacher and assign homework, read stories etc.  The second was a game we played on the front steps.  All of the children (2-3) would start on the first step (Kindergarten).  Then, the “teacher” would hide a pebble in the fist of one of her hands behind her back.  She would bring both hands to the front and the “student” would have to guess which hand the pebble was in.  If correct, the “student” got to move up a step (First grade).  The first one to the top of the steps got to be the teacher.

We also played “red light, green light” on the front side walk.  If the leader said “green light”, you ran until the leader said “red light” (stop) or “yellow light” (walk).  The first person at the end of the street was the next leader.  Another favorite game of mine was “A tisket, a tasket” and “Ring around the Rosie” both of which were circle games requiring at least 5-6 kids.  “Mother May I?” and “Red Rover” were fun games, too.  But, Red Rover was always an injury waiting to happen.  Two teams form a chain of hands.  One team says, “Red rover, red rover, send Janie (or another child) right over.”  That child would have to run and try to break the chain.  If she broke the chain, she got to pick someone to take back to her team.  If she couldn’t break the chain, she had to join the other team.  Being small, female and weak, I was picked on a lot.  I had two choices, I could run and leap on the clasped hands which usually resulted in me flipping head over heels, or I could take the “chicken” approach and duck under the hands and automatically join the other side saving myself injury.

When the street lights came on, it was time to go home and inside UNLESS we were with parents/grandparents in the backyard waiting for the lightning bugs to come out.

My Sister

 My sister Linda Jane Long was born around Halloween right before my 3^rd birthday.  I can remember Mom being in the hospital and everyone telling me she looked just like my grandmother Vennie.  I can recall peaking in the bassinette and thinking, “Are they all crazy---she looks nothing like Vennie---she looks like a hairy monkey!”  Actually, now I think she really does look and act like Vennie, but I couldn’t see it then.  She had a large amount of black hair with a little bird-like mouth.  She was sooo tiny.

As she got older and her eyes became more of her defining feature, everyone went on and on about how much she looked like LeRoy with those big, blue eyes.  Mom even got Dad’s photo out and would ask everyone if they knew who the photo was.  They were supposed to say, “That looks just like Linda Jane.”  I would roll my eyes---couldn’t they see he was dressed old-fashioned.  

And tiny, Jane was always so tiny.  I look back at photos and I wasn’t exactly a horse, but those big blue eyes in that tiny little face gave her a slightly elfin look which people ooed and ahhed over.  I felt very inferior in the looks department.  Then, she got all of the pretty blue dresses to match her eyes and I got red or pink---did they match my eyes?  She was like a little doll sitting pretty with her dress while I was a little more active trying to keep up with the boys.

When she started talking, we realized she couldn’t pronounce her “L” sound which was a handicap for Linda Jane Long.  Mother had wanted her called “Linda Jane” but St. Louis was a little far north for that Southern double name (unless you were Mary Sue, Mary Ann, Mary Beth etc.) so her name was shortened to “Linda” by most people.  So, when asked what her name was, she replied, “Win-da Wong”.  That did it for Mom--- I made fun of Jane all the time calling her “Chinese” and pulling the corner of my eyes.  Then, those big blue eyes would start welling up with tears. . . . She became “Jane Long” which I later called “Plain Jane.” (Never under-estimate the teasing power of an older sister)

My Neighborhood

One neighbor was Frieda Backoff who was quite a character.  She owned the four-family flat (4612 Arsenal) and kept the walks and steps immaculate.  She was from Germany and often called me “Struebelkopf”  which I think meant messy hair.  She lived in one of the flats which I visited on several occasions.  It was very dark and had a lot of fancy dark furniture with Oriental rugs on the floor, and it always had a very sweet smell—it made me a little sick.  I’m not sure if it was sweet-smelling from baking or if she used some kind of potpourri or incense.  She was definitely “Scrubby Dutch” although mother always suspected she was actually Jewish because she was so dark.  She always wore her hair in a hair net to keep it neat and was a devout Catholic despite Mother’s suspicions.  She worked as a cleaning lady and my memories of her are of Frieda on her hands and knees (in a house dress, support stockings rolled into round garters below her knees and shoes) scrubbing the entry hall, the front steps and the sidewalk with powdered cleanser like Bon Ami.  But, in her home, she always wore felt slippers---very typical of South St. Louis Scrubby Dutch—you did not wear your shoes in the house.  

Prior to the 1950’s, St. Louis furnaces burned soft coal mined in southern Illinois.  Our houses all had coal bins with chutes where the coal dribbled down into the bin.  There was a small oven-sized door that the coal was poured in on the outside. Then, in the basement  there was another door from which Daddy (or Grandpa) would shovel the coal and put it in the furnace.  There was another door at the bottom, where the cinders and clinkers were shoveled out into a metal bucket before tossing them in the ash pit.  

This soft coal did not burn cleanly---we always had smoke in our flat and there were times outside that the lights had to burn in broad daylight because the smoke was so heavy.  The Missouri Botanical Garden (Shaw’s Garden) even planned to move the entire garden out of the city because the plants were suffering and MOBOT even purchased property out at Grey Summit.  Our poor parakeet Babe even flew into the walls because he couldn’t see them for the smoke in our flat.  So, the “Scrubby Dutch” (like Frieda) scrubbed the sidewalks, steps, porches and entry halls, to try to keep the dust and soot out of their homes.  In the early 1950’s this coal was banned from being burned, the air cleared up and Shaw’s Garden stayed in the city.

Despite the air quality, I loved living in the city, but then I had Tower Grove Park across the street where I could climb trees, play baseball, go swimming, fish, hide in the bushes (which often had empty liquor bottles stored under them)---so I really had the best of the city.  But, I had to have an adult with me to go to Tower Grove Park because it was across a busy city street (Arsenal) with streetcar tracks and “bums” or “boogeymen” who lived in the park.  I loved the sound of the streetcars rumbling past at all hours of the day and night and still am lulled to sleep by street and train sounds. (crickets and birds chirping are very annoying when I am trying to sleep).  

Also, we used to have vendors with carts come through the city streets chanting their services and wares.  It wasn’t quite as musical as the scene in Oliver, but the chanting was very real.  Each vendor had a different chant so when you heard the cadence of the voice, you knew if it was the scissor and knife sharpener man or the ice man or the produce man.  The chants were very similar to what you might here at a baseball game.  We also have the icecream man, today with his canned music which is similar but I loved the sounds of the chants.  Even today, hearing someone say, “Get your ice cold lemonade heeeeeer, get it heeeeer,” it takes me back to a time when I could hear that on our screened in porch.  

Or favorite was the ice man who would clip-clop through the alley with a horse and wagon selling ice.  We would run after him and he would chip off a chunk of ice that we could suck on---delicious on a hot summer’s day.  The ice was needed for ice boxes.  Although we had an electric refrigerator, my grandparents and many in the neighborhood had ice boxes to keep food cold.  We have one in our family room which we converted to a liquor cabinet many years ago.  Most had a long door on the right with racks on the door for condiments.  Then, on the left was a smaller door also with racks.  On the bottom was a small door just big enough for a block of ice.  There is a drain hole in the bottom which drained the melting water to a tray underneath.  You had to lift the bottom panel to get the water out.

Behind us was the huge Continental Can Company.  Once a year they had a huge picnic/carnival which all of the “neighbors” attended---we could see the assembly line at work, eat free food and play carnival games.  But, my favorite business which we could walk to without an adult was the White Castle Bakery.  The smell of baking buns filled the air.  We would walk to the side door in the alley and wait for someone to come out and beg them for samples---delicious---bread is still my favorite guilty pleasure. . . .but not White Castle!

White Castle, a St. Louis fast-food burger place, was everyone’s favorite---long before McDonald’s was even in St. Louis.  You could get a bag of burgers for a $1 (probably about 10 burgers).  Dad would bring them home after work (when he worked shifts) and we would eat them as more of a snack than a meal.  I can still taste the burger heavy on grilled onion.  I remember begging Mom to make our hamburgers that way, so she would fry some onion in the grease with the burgers in a skillet (we didn’t really grill much living on the 2^nd floor)

I could walk a couple of blocks to the Velvet Freeze ice cream parlor (east on Arsenal at Morganford) or I could hop on a bus (with Mom or Grandma) and go to Grand and Arsenal where there were all sorts of stores, taverns, movie theaters.  Kingshighway and Arsenal was closer and also commercial, but it had car dealers, tire shops, Southwest High School and things I wasn’t too interested in until Southtown Famous-Barr was built.  

As a young child Kingshighway was just a way to get to my favorite “shopping center”  Hampton Village.  They had a department store with pneumatic tubes that took your money up to the office AND a grocery store which had doors open for you when you stepped in front of them.  I remember telling all of the kids in the neighborhood how magical that store was.  There were shopping carts where you could pick out your own groceries.  No more taking a list to a counter clerk and them bringing your food to you.  You could see all of the wonderful things that weren’t even on your list and whine for Ovaltine because they sponsored your favorite TV show. They had produce in bins that you could pick out yourself—no more having to go to Soulard (gag!) where all I saw was the garbage and rotting vegetables on the ground under the bin.  And, then, they gave you clean, neatly folded paper bags to put everything in---“Everything’s up to date in Hampton Village.”  You didn’t have to go to a separate store for your meat---they had a meat counter like a little butcher shop right there in the store!  I don’t think the in-store bakery had evolved yet because I still remember making trips to the bakery, but you could pick up a loaf of Wonder bread which was sold in a very colorful wax paper with balloons on it—“It builds bodies 8 ways.”