Things Are Not Always What They Seem, nor People

Beth wants me to tell the story of the woman who danced naked on the counter at the bar and I said I would tell why I am reconsidering what I was led to believe about my grandfather. Since those stories are related, I will tell them both now.

Growing up, I wasn’t told much about my father’s father, just that he had abandoned his wife and children. However, the tone of voice my parents used and the way they avoided visiting him told me a lot more. Obviously, that was a despicable act and he was a horrible person, not worthy to associate with his granddaughters. My grandmother was an innocent bystander, suffering from his evil act, struggling to make a living with her son and daughter on a farm without a man to run it. Well, it may not have been that simple.

I mentioned earlier that my father’s mother, Ella, was good friends with her husband’s sister, Norma. I remember Aunt (really “Great-Aunt”) Norma as the organist for the Methodist Church in the little town of Lanesboro, MN on the Root River (called that because it looked like a network of roots—We crossed it umpteen times on the way to visit them.). She was a gourmet cook and took wonderful care of her house with its Oriental rugs and other fine furnishings. She seemed the essence of respectability to me as I was growing up. My mother fretted over her children’s manners more at Aunt Norma and Uncle Ray’s house than anywhere else. They never had any children of their own and did not understand childish ways very well. They treated us like small adults, which I really enjoyed.

However, thirty-some years earlier, neither Ella nor Norma was so respectable or decorous. After my father and Aunt Norma died, my father’s sister, Carol, told my mother some tales of way back when. She heard the stories from Aunt Norma herself. My mother was shocked and never told anyone for a long time. She did eventually confide in me, but I do not know whether she told my sisters. Carol told her that Ella had often said that her two pregnancies were both of unusual length—one very short, the other very long. You need to understand that Ella and Glen, Sr. married just as the Great Depression was getting under way. The farm did not bring in all the cash they needed and jobs were hard to come by. Glen had to travel around the country, even to Canada and Alaska, to find work to pay taxes, etc. He was often gone for weeks or months at a time. Apparently, Ella eased her loneliness with Glen’s brother, Elmer, the first time and with his best friend, name forgotten, the second. She did have her friend Norma to go out to bars with and on at least one occasion the future Methodist organist removed her clothes and danced on the bar counter. I think that was before she married the eminently respectable dentist, Ray Palmer. I wonder whether it is related to the reason she could not have children. Often when you contract certain diseases you become sterile. We will never know for sure.

Anyway, these two were pretty wild in their younger days and my grandmother was not as blameless as I was led to believe. I think that my grandfather left when he found out that “his” children were not his at all. Of course, there is no way to verify this, but it seems a pretty good guess. I do not find that despicable. It is Ella’s behavior which bothers me most. And Norma has paid the price for her conduct.