The Art of Visiting

My Grandma Fitzpatrick, visiting with relatives in the family homestead (circa 1970).

When I was growing up, there was something called visiting.

Visiting was when you walked down the road, or jumped in your car for a drive to nowhere in particular, and you ended up at someone's home. You didn't call ahead - you didn't have to.  No one cared if you did, and most likely they were home and excited to see you.  You were welcomed into the home, and before you knew it, you were sharing the latest news, telling clean, corny jokes laughing like a fool, and loving every minute of it.

And you never left without being fed. Sometimes an entire meal, but most definitely at least bars or cake, and the ever present coffee. The pace of life was different then. People weren't so much in a hurry, and they took the time to ask after you. How's your family? How's your garden coming along? I can't believe how big your boy is now; seems like yesterday he was just a baby. Did you hear...?

Life was not as regimented as now.  There was regularity, a rhythm, to be sure.  But it felt more organic.  I suppose it could just be that I was a child, and I'm now romanticizing it through the nostalgic lens of memory.  But I don't think so.  I think it was a better time.

Dad & the CCC's

My Dad grew up on a farm in northwestern Minnesota.  He only went through 8th grade, which wasn't unusual back then.  When you were part of a farm family back in the 1930s, every hand was needed to make it run.  Farming was a labor-intensive job back then, with many farms, including my Grandfather's, still using horses for some of the work right alongside machinery.

Dad, 1938

When Dad got to be around 19, he went further north to a town called St. Vincent, where his Uncle Gail and Aunt Liza ran Short's Cafe.  It was actually part soda fountain/ice cream counter, part restaurant, part saloon, and - if rumors were true (and I have heard stories from people who knew, that they were), part backroom gambling hall.  He went there to work in his uncle's establishment and there met my mother (age 16), one of the village girls stopping by for a soda.  While the rest of that story, as they say, is history, Dad had more personal history to forge before he and Mom were married and walked the rest of their lives together.

Dad's discharge papers from the CCCs.

Sometime in 1940, Dad decided to check out the CCC, or Civilian Conservation Corps.  The CCC was one of the New Deal agencies, offering work programs to young men seeking employment during the Great Depression.  To put it simply, the program provided training/experience for the young men, and much needed works projects for the public - a win-win for everyone at the time.

Dad worked in Company 718, stationed near Big Fork, Minnesota, which is in the north central part of the state, not far from the 'arrowhead' region.  His company was part of a group that worked in the Pine Island State Forest.

Dad's time with the CCCs were cut short, when he was notified to report for medical examination, the precursor to induction into the military.  It was then only a matter of time before he was called up for training, active duty, and sent overseas to fight.  But that, that is another story...

Call to Duty

Look up...Waaaaay Up!

Jerome the Giraffe and Rusty
the Rooster with Friendly...

I grew up in the farthest northwest corner of Minnesota.  Our homestead was part of the village of St. Vincent, but it was on the north side, behind some woods, and looked out onto farmland.  Unless you knew otherwise, it was pretty much like living out in the country.  To our west, just across a small field, were the river woods, and just behind them, was the Red River of the North.  It was the border between us and North Dakota.  To the north, just two miles away - and in our flat river valley, within view of our own eyes - was the Canadian border.  We were so close to Canada, in fact, that the little town just across it - Emerson, Manitoba - had the closest hospital to us, and therefore, I was born there.

There has always a close relationship between Canada and our little corner of America because of our geographic location. One of the things we shared was television.  In the early 1960s, there was no Sesame Street or Nickelodeon.  But for those lucky enough to have access to the CBC, there was the Friendly Giant.

The Friendly Giant was a beautifully simple program, consisting of Friendly the Giant, and his pals, Jerome the Giraffe, and Rusty the Rooster.  There were a few other friends like the Jazz Cats who would come by and jam with them for a few songs.  Friendly himself not only told fun stories and joked around with Jerome and Rusty but also played the flute.  The show always started with the camera slowly panning from right to left across a little village, until it came upon a very large boot, Friendly's boot.  All the while, you were hearing off-camera a comforting baritone voice saying it was a beautiful morning today, and so on.  Once the boot showed up, the voice would say, "Look up...Waaaaay up!", and up the camera went along with our eyes, until we saw the smiling face of Friendly.  He'd say he would go on ahead to open up the drawbridge so we could come in for a visit in his castle, and in the meantime we should start walking there to meet him.  As we imagined ourselves going to the castle, onscreen we saw it, and the big drawbridge being let down for us to cross; all the while, a gentle song was being played on a harp.  Once inside, we were escorted to the fireside where Friendly put out some chairs in front of the fire (one big one "...for two to curl up in..."), as well as a "...rocking chair for those who like to rock."  I always imagined myself in the rocking chair.  Then the show would begin!

Old Homes are Old Friends

The house I grew up in.  The section far to the right was all that was originally built by
my grandparents in 1906.  The rest has been added on over the years.  Every time I go
by and visit the house, I almost think my parents are going to come up to hug me...

I grew up in a very old house that leaned and creaked and had strange smells, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I loved it.

I am once again in an old "home with character".  I sometimes have little plants struggling through the cracks in the basement concrete by the washing machine, and herds of Daddy Long-legs living in the bathroom, as well as a colony of ladybugs hanging out pretty much everywhere they want to.  Many things don't work quite right, and it takes a lot of love and care, but that's alright.  I can relate.

Smokey

No photos of Smokey exist, but she looked a lot like this female Nebelung

Many years ago my first kitty, a feral female that adopted us who we named Smokey, got caught in traps twice.¹ The first time she came home with a leg that had a deep puncture wound all around the leg. She went up into the hayloft by herself for days, and came out healed, thankfully. The second time, she came home with the leg dangling, and did the same thing, but this time came down without a leg; we assumed the tissue left connecting the leg to the body died and she self-amputated. Both my parents, from a farm background, were confident she would heal herself, and she did. They had seen such things before. I was little and trusted what my parents said. A different time. Animals can be amazing...

 ¹ - We assumed whoever had set the traps, must have found her and set her free each time, otherwise she would have died in the traps...

Lessons from Grandma: Making Do

[Image Source:  Handy Farm Tools & How to Make Them]

My Grandma taught those around her the best way anyone can teach another - by how she lived her life. That's not to say she didn't express opinions. I'm just saying she usually was too busy to sit around talking about ideas, and was more about getting things done!

I used to love hanging out with her when I was a little girl, especially in the summers. Most of the time it was her and me and nobody else, which is how I liked it. Grandma would sometimes put me to work gathering acorns from the yard in the fall of the year. I'm still not sure to this day if that was necessary, or just a clever trick on her part to keep me out of her hair. Either way, I was diligent in my job and had filled a large vinegar jar full of acorns by the time I was done. As I cleaned her yard, I'd get close to her little garden out back, and her shed, which I thought were very intriguing, full of old garden and carpenter hand tools, some of them from the last century, belonging to her father.

One summer, Grandma decided she needed a wheelbarrow. Always having lived a thrifty lifestyle by necessity, by then she was living as a widow on a very limited, fixed income. Her solution? Plunder the plunder pile¹, scavenge a wheel, and slap together a homemade wheelbarrow! I was so excited by her project, she even let me help, and I ended up with my own smaller version. I used that thing for a lot of projects around her house and later up at the old homestead where I grew up (and she and Grandpa had built as their original home, as newlyweds...)

¹ - Plunder Pile: A pile of items saved for possible use or re-use at a later time, usually consisting of lumber, fence posts, old windows and doors and other such items. Usually stored outdoors in a pile against or behind a building, sometimes in the form of a tee-pee. Very handy resource to have when making lots of inexpensive, homemade projects.

War Wedding 1943

Mom and Dad, the day of their wedding on February 13, 1943