Tell Me a Story

My 10-year-old grandson, Gage, often says, "Tell me a story about the olden days."  My 20-something grandkids still ask for stories.  I was sure they'd all been told but found one just this week that Zach, another grandson, had never heard.  Could there possibly be others?  Probably not but there are lots of them to be re-told, so let's get started.  This will have to be done in installments.

The story of my birth is quite remarkable.  My parent's youngest child was nine years old and now in her 45th year, Mother was pregnant again.  Her doctor told her she couldn't possibly be pregnant; Menopausal complications or a tumor, perhaps.  In telling the story, Mother always credited Daddy with saying, "She's had six kids.  If she says she's pregnant, she ought to know!"  Well, she was Menopausal and I was no tumor but complications were expected, given Mother's age and her long struggle with asthma.  She had been a 'sturdy woman', a tom boy growing up but developed severe asthma following a car accident.  She'd given birth to two sons since that accident but the concern with this pregnancy was that both mother and baby could not, would not, be saved at the time of the birth.  I was her easiest delivery and her smallest baby at 8 lbs. 12 oz.  My one defect, a 'tied' tongue, was easily remedied.  The doctor said a girl who couldn't talk would never do.  Mother wrote of her birthing experience:

"A pain wracked body, intense suffering in soul and in mind.  The day crept onward to meet the night.  Evening shadows rode silently in and parked in corners, until the maternity home stood in the shroud of nights silence.  But for me there was neither silence nor rest, only the untiring efforts of doctor and nurse to give what comfort or ease they could.  My husband's hand closed tightly over mine.  He spoke no word, but somehow I knew he was giving to me that needed strength.  Long moments of uncertainty, and then, the sweetest cry.  Our baby girl was born."

     --Myrtle Whitney Morgan

In my memory, my dad always sang--in the barnyard, in the fields, in the car, and in the church choir.  My mother grew up singing with her siblings for their own enjoyment and performing for all kinds of church, family, and community functions and she sang at night instead of telling bedtime stories.  My brother, Keith, gave me a red toy piano.  I learned to plunk out recognizable melodies with two fingers.  I'm told I was often put on the stage to play and sing at MIA functions, though I have no memory of it.  I don't know the why or how of it but in September 1951 my dad bought a Koller & Campbell piano!  The salesman's pitch was, "Buy quality because you will, no doubt, give Christie the piano as a wedding present when she is grown."  I asked my dad,  "Will Kent and I get the piano when we get married?"  "Kent's dad can buy his kids their own piano."  "If I marry Michael, will I get the piano?"  "Frank Olsen makes more money than I do!"  "Then who do I have to marry?"

I put lots of miles on my red child's rocker.  Sometimes during a summer's rain, I'd take my rocker to the front porch, sit in it with a cooperative kitten or dog in my lap, and make a tent with a blanket or quilt to keep us dry.  Both of my children and some of my grandchildren used this little red rocker.  Keith made it in a shop class.  Mother told the story about the night the Weston High School burned and how Keith ran all the way from our house uphill about a mile and threw the rocker out a window in order to save it from the flames.

My sister-in-law, Evelyn, makes heavenly divinity and popcorn balls.  She did her holiday cooking early and stored everything in tins.  I spent lots of time with Marion and Evelyn.  Just before the Christmas holiday one year, I discovered her stash quite by accident.  There was so much of it that I helped myself.  Another piece the next time I was at their house.  And the next...  I had no previous criminal record.  I was an adult when I fessed up.  It takes only the mention of this to get us laughing.  She sent a care package to me for years so I wouldn't have to steal to get a mouth-watering, heavenly piece of homemade candy.

In July, 1959, Mother and I traveled to Oregon by car to spend some time with Keith and Inga and their family.  We took a detour through Yellowstone Park.  Mother had her hard-as-rocks oatmeal cookies in her huge, metal dishpan sitting in her lap in a middle seat of the station wagon, covered only with a clean dish towel.  Well, the clean part may not be true since she had been using it to wipe up little kid's fingers and I don't know what else!  We stopped in the park at "Little Grand Canyon."  Keith, with cameras hanging 'round his neck and small children in each arm, started toward the trail leading to Kodak Moment vantage spots.  Inga and I were just a bit ahead of him.  Before the car was out of sight, we turned back at the sound of much commotion and saw a bear reaching into the side window, almost able to reach Mother sitting there.  She was hitting the bear with her dish cloth!  This did discourage the bear a bit so it left that window and went to the tailgate window, not fully opened but cracked to give Mother some air.  Mother got up on her knees in her seat and beat at that poor bear with her dish cloth while we all stood motionless, watching, Keith not knowing whether to drop his cameras and kids and run to the car to save his mother or grab his family and run to safety.  "Give the bear the cookies!"  Someone in the campground began beating the ground with a broom and the bear finally gave up.

How many tellin's will this take?  Only the surface has been scratched.  The stories--they're a part of who I am.