Chapter Two: Scrappy

Two

Eleanor Mae was born in Baltimore. An Aquarius.  Born twenty-two years into the millenium. The second child and the only daughter, to a British mother, Jennie and a father, Howard, who enlisted in the Royal Canadian Mounties before the United States had gotten into the first world war.  It was there that Grandaddy lost his arm.

Her dashing older brother was three years her senior.  There was another dashing brother five years her junior.  A couple of siblings were born interspersed around them. Had they lived, there would have been seven children in the family.

Mom married at eighteen.  She and my Dad joined the Army.  Mom was in the Women’s Auxillary Corps (WAC). She must have been about twenty in this photo.

 My memory is that they were both in the military for two years.  After their service, they returned to Baltimore.

Somewhere along the line, Mom ran a lathe.  That was typical of most women during the war years after their spouses left for military service.  

Mom said her father was an alcoholic, that her mother always crying, always whining.  None of it was what I experienced except for my Granddaddy’s drinking.  He was often drunk.  I know that because he often fell off a barstool.  

I would spend part of my summer vacation taking care of him while his six ribs healed from the fall. There were lots of jokes about his drinking.  One in particular was that he needed something to strap him upright to the bar stool.  That was long before seatbelts were invented in automobiles.

My memory of my Nana was that she was loving, wore colorful jewelry (costume, but who cares) and always had a hat on.  She also said, “to mat toes” for tomatoes.  It didn’t make sense she didn’t pronounced potatoes the same way. It always made me laugh.

Nana, a petite and warm woman, came to the United States in the early ‘20s from London, England.  Over time she lost most of her accent except when she would speak of tomatoes.  She pronounced them “toe matt toes.”  It always made me laugh.

Nana had eloped in her early twenties to marry her handsome boyfriend from Maryland, who at the time of their meeting, was in London as he had enlisted in the Canadian military long before the United States got into the first World War.  That is where he lost his left arm. Nana later learned his family owned the land on which Cape Canaveral is built.

Nana says that there were maids in her home when she was raising her children.  An upstairs maid and a downstairs maid.  There is also evidence the family was wealthy.

Granddaddy’s parents died when he was young.  Penniless, he took a job working for a mean couple, living in a barn essentially an indentured servant. Granddaddy was seventeen years old when a lawyer came to the house where he was working. The attorney told him of his inheritance.  He left both the barn and his employers immediately.  After he finished high school he went to college.

I never knew Granddaddy to be anything but quiet.  Even as a young child, he never talked to me.  I was expected to hug him when I saw and left him.  I often wondered if losing his arm in the war, and living through the Great Depressions were some of the reasons he started drinking.

Mom said he was often abusive to her, both physically and verbally.  That she couldn’t go to medical school and had to go to work to support the family because of his drinking and inability to work consistently left her both angry and bitter. She never spoke about her anger but was quick to identify it in others.

Aunt Phyllis, my mother’s childhood friend, called her “Scrappy.” My brother and I called all of my Mom’s family and friends “aunt.”  It was a southern endearment. Phyllis was my father’s second cousin.  She introduced my parents to one another.

Phyllis was one of the best people I knew.  And very aware of children, unlike my mother.  Phyliss always offered me a treat when Mom and I visited her in the next town.