Here’s an essay I wrote about my grandmother Delma. I had originally planned to submit it to “The North Wind,” which is a family newsletter. But even after revising it several times, the essay just didn’t have the punch I wanted it to have. I finally decided it’s just never going to be good enough for publication, so I’m putting it here instead.
My Grandmother, the Alien
By Todd Bradley
My maternal grandmother, Delma North, died on March 31, 2003. We had a memorial service for her on April 19, in Grand Junction, Colorado. Reflecting on her life, I know it was very different than my life has been. In fact, I’d go so far as to say my grandmother was an alien! No, I’m not saying she was actually an extraterrestrial, but she came from a time and place that were so much different from the time and places I’ve seen that they seem like another planet.
Delma was born in 1910 in a place called Waynesboro, Tennessee. In 1910, the US population was around 92 million. By the time I was born, just 59 years later, it had more than doubled to 203 million. And today, it’s about 291 million. Next time you’re out shopping or stuck in traffic, imagine that 2 out of every 3 people around you aren’t there. That’ll give you one idea of how America was different when Delma was growing up. It just wasn’t so crowded!
That’s not to say every part of country has grown at the same rate. I’ve never been there, but I have this notion that Waynesboro (the county seat of Wayne County) was a pretty sleepy place when Delma was born and is still a sleepy place today. In 1910, all of Wayne County has a population of 12,062. By 1999, it had only grown 36% to 16,413. I guess you could say that of all the people we’ve added to the US in the past 90 years, not many have been attracted to Waynesboro.
How else has the world changed? As I write this on my PC, I’m sitting in my den, looking at the things around me and thinking about how much of it didn’t exist when Delma was growing up. Of course the personal computer was decades away, but even the cathode ray tube was still highly experimental. The first TV broadcast wouldn’t happen until the 1920’s. CDs, cassette tapes, stereo, the pocket sized camera – none of it existed in 1910.
My house itself couldn’t have even existed then! Drywall was still in the research & development stage, and wouldn’t be perfected until 1917. Latex paint didn’t exist. Nobody had air conditioning. Probably nobody in Tennessee even had electricity!
In 1910, the idea of long range commercial air travel was almost science fiction. Glenn Curtis made big news that year by flying from Albany, NY to New York City – a trip of 137 miles – in only 152 minutes. He claimed a $10,000 prize for that daring feat of speed, averaging a whopping 54 miles per hour.
The game we now call football, which now seems to be a definite symbol of America, would have been almost unrecognizable to modern fans. In 1910, the forward pass had just been legalized, touchdowns were worth 5 points, and players were just getting used to the recent development that field goals were only worth 3 points now instead of the original 4. There was no national football league. Instead, every little town had its own team. Ohio, for instance, sported at least seven professional teams, all reeling from the rapid escalation of salaries. By 1915, salaries had risen to the point where one star player was earning $250 per game!
So, it was a very different world then. I remember growing up thinking how strange it seemed that Delma never learned how to drive a car. That’s right, if she needed to go somewhere, she had someone else drive her. Nowadays, at least in my world, the idea of anyone not knowing how to drive is pretty foreign. But I guess there just wasn’t much need for that skill as farm wife in the South during the Depression Era.
And then there’s Delma’s language. My other grandmother, Grace, used some pretty colorful language. If anyone ever had a contest to crown the Queen of Similes, Grace would have won so many times, they’d have to retire her jersey number. I never could figure out if she made them up for the occasion, or if she just had a great mind for remembering similes she heard from other people, but she had a simile for every occasion–things like “quiet as an ant fart” and “lonely as a skunk sprayed hound dog.”
Delma, however, used words I’ve never heard anyone else use before or since then. For starters, there’s “you-uns,” short for “you ones.” Unfortunately, the English language lacks any way to differentiate between second person singular and second person plural. That means when I’m in a crowded bar late on a Saturday night and say, “Could you help me up off the floor?” nobody knows if I’m talking to the bartender or everyone in the joint. To account for the fact that “you” can be either singular or plural, regional oddities have sprung up. People who learned to talk in Texas (like me) learned “y’all” as the second person plural pronoun (though I quickly un-learned it when my family moved to Wyoming). But Delma was the only person I’ve ever heard use “you-uns” for the same thing. And there’s “old tymee.” She used this phrase to mean old fashioned rural stuff – music, in particular. The nearest thing I’ve ever seen is the written phrase “old tyme,” but Delma definitely pronounced it as “old tymee.”
Finally, Delma was an old-fashioned cook. In her day, it was expected to make both bread and pie from scratch, every single day. I remember when my family visited her when I was young, she’d whip up one or two loaves of bread and one or two pies in no time at all, without really even thinking twice. How many people do you know today who make their own bread from scratch every day? And boy, could Delma make good pies! Cherry’s my favorite kind of pie, and I’ve eaten a lot of cherry pie in a lot of different places. I can tell you without a doubt that Delma made some of the best cherry pies on the planet. She could’ve easily won first place in any bake-off in the land with one hand tied behind her back (assuming my other grandmother, Grace, wasn’t there).
So, all this adds up to why I sometimes think of my grandmother Delma as an alien. She came from a different world, spoke a different language, and did things differently than anyone today does. I’ll always remember her for how unique and special she was.
Essay References
City of Waynesboro: http://www.cityofwaynesboro.org
US Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov
NFL History: http://ww2.nfl.com/history/chronology/1911-1920.html
Drywall History: http://www.stucco-plaster-drywall.com/the-history-of-sheetrock.htm
More History Stuff: http://investor.usg.com/news/20020524-81376.cfm
More History Stuff: http://www.bartleby.com/61/94/Y0029450.html
[Ed. – After I wrote and posted the essay above, my parents suggested I should collect some of the strange sayings from my grandmothers. So, here they are. If you know of any others, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.]
Other Similes
From Grace:
larapin – delicious to eat
lawdy mercy
wouldn’t that just cork your pistol
doesn’t have the sense he was born with
thicker than ticks on a dog’s back
hotter than all Billy Ned
colder than Billy Hell
worthless old codger
he’s just gone off his rocker
drunker than a skunk
busy as a one-armed paperhanger
as happy as if he had good sense
From Delma:
need to just put him away – someone who’s too ill or old to be real productive anymore and should be sent to a home