Memories of a Grandmother

My Grandmother Clara was born in Massachusetts, and for her entire life, remained a true New Englander. Though she spent her adult years in Montana, she never lost her Massachusetts accent.

When Gramma talked about her childhood, she talked about her friends. It seems like all her stories took place during a cold, New England winter, when she would ice skate on the pond.

When she was 19, Clara went to Montana to the Shaw Ranch, which was owned by a family friend. There she met my grandfather Samuel B Chase, from Chicago. In 1892 fudge was 'all the rage,' like Starbucks is now, and Clara learned to make fudge. After she went back to New England, she sent it to him across the country as a sign of her affection-- one can only imagine the condition in which it probably arrived! This was the beginning of the rich family history, based on fudge.

At age 20 Clara moved to Montana and married Sam.

Clara and Sam's marriage can best be described as devoted. They treated one other with tenderness and respect. Sam was a true 'gentleman.' They had two children: a daughter, Eleanor, and a son, Samuel.

In 1910, when Eleanor was 15, a bout of Scarlet Fever left her heart damaged. Clara took her to Seattle for treatment, but Eleanor did not survive.

A journal, found years later, contains my grandmother's writings, her attempts to console herself at the loss of her daughter. Though Protestant, Clara transcribed the words of the Rosary. She wrote down the poems A New Little Girl In Heaven, author unknown, The Beyond by Longfellow,

A Child's Grave at Florence by E.B. Browning, and others. A stoic New Englander by nature, this was Clara's way of grieving.

She wrote:

So shall it be at last, in that bright morning

When the soul maketh, and life's shadows flee:

Oh, in that hour, fairer than day lights' dawning,

Shall rise the glorious thought, I am with Thee!

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the 1930s there were two railroads that serviced Great Falls Montana: the Milwaukee and the Great Northern. During the Great Depression, men, called “bums” rode the rails looking for work. They went to people’s back doors and asked for food. I remember sitting on Gramma's back steps with the men while she fed them.

I spent every Wednesday and weekends with my grandparents. They lived just three blocks from my house.

I remember that I had to cross the street car tracks and that was a big deal!

I loved being with them.

Although I would never replace her daughter, I believe that a little granddaughter was very special for Gramma. She called me “her treasure.” Imagine how a little girl feels being told that she is someone's treasure...

The only time that I remember her scolding me was when she thought I ate a crab apple from one of her trees because she worried I would get a stomach ache (I hadn't). She told my mother I was never bad and my mother said “that can’t be right…” But I think it was true…

I had no reason to be bad with her.

The clock in her house would chime 3:00 and we would get three squares of Baker’s chocolate – never Hershey’s-- had to be Baker's.

She ready many stories to me, particularly The Little Colonel series. When Gone With the Wind the book came out it was an enormous thing and my grandmother would sit me on her lap and would read to me skip the “bad parts.” I loved the fact that she was not a thin grandmother. I loved that she was so much more pleasant to sit on than those slender ladies. At Christmas when we would go to my grandparents', house there would be lots of wonderful presents for Sam and me. Best of all, I was given books, books, books, and I would pile them all together and relish the thought of all the hours of reading ahead. And then the decision,"Which one to read first?"

My grandmother taught me never to lay a book down open, flat, that it could "break its spine." To this day I feel guilty enough that I rarely do this even if it means I must hunt down a book mark. I think you would say that for herself my grandmother's taste in reading was eclectic, for she thoroughly enjoyed "movie" magazines as well as books and more books.

Somehow I sensed, though nothing was said, that my mother scorned this pleasure of her mother-in-law. When she bought movie magazines for herself she bought comic books for me--Superman, Batman and Flash Gordon--very tame by today's standards.

We went to the movies together and we watched the main feature and the second feature and a cartoon and the news and previews and then the main feature again. We would stay through the whole afternoon. We ate Tunafish sandwiches on squishy white bread and chocolate. We got air conditioning then, only in the movies. There was a blue and white sign outside that said “Cool Inside.”

On Sunday afternoons while Grampa listened to the N.Y. Philharmonic on his big Philco radio, Gramma and I played paperdolls in the bedroom so as not to disturb his concert. The very best were the Gone With the Wind paperdolls---oh, what costumes there were to dress them.

I remember that Gramma loved the singer Marian Anderson. At the time she was controversial because she was a "negro" and sang patriotic songs. But my grandmother, having grown up in New England after the Civil War, was an abolitionist. In 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution denied Anderson the right to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. Thousands of DAR members, including Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned. Eleanor Roosevelt then arranged for Marian to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She sang 'My Country Tis of Thee.'

Clara's favorite patriotic song was "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean". She referred to the flag as "Old Glory" and Independence Day as "The Glorious Fourth". On November 11th, now called Veterans' Day, but formerly known as Armistice Day ( WW1), three minutes of silence was observed at 11:00 o'clock in the morning. Whether Gramma and I were in her kitchen or walking down Central Avenue, or in the Paris department store, we, and everyone else, stopped in our tracks, bowed our heads and honored American war dead for three (I think) minutes.

I think she struggled with depression often. She had little social life, but kept in touch with New England friends by letter always. She wrote in her diary every day and she asked my mother to destroy the diaries when she died-- and my mother did. I really wish she had not.

Clara lived almost 90 years. She ate chocolate ice cream for dinner every night, which my grandfather bought her on his way home from work. If she ate a piece of lettuce, I never saw it! Seventy-five years later, I "treasure" the memory of my grandmother, whose love so enriched my life.