Kith & Kin

Someone knocked over Grandma’s mailbox. My mother-in-law came home on a recent Tuesday afternoon to find that her mailbox, located in a neighbor’s front yard across the street, had been knocked flat. Our first assumption was that the trash truck had knocked it over, but a neighbor claimed he had seen a passing driver hit it. (This neighbor is an undisputed oddball, not known for his honesty, so we’ll never really know what occurred.) The mailbox and post were plastic, but inside the post was a two-by-four for strength and a four-foot length of heavy pipe for stability. Whoever hit the mailbox must have been traveling at some speed, because the pipe was bent ninety degrees where it entered the ground. Shopping Mom gave me cash and asked if I would purchase another mailbox for her, remove the existing wrecked one, and replace it with the new one. Being a dutiful son-in-law, I willingly agreed. Have you shopped for mailboxes and mailbox posts at Home Depot? There are approxima...

Great-Aunt Lois and Grandma Leta were one of two sets of twins in their class (on the left above). I do not know who the other twins are. Grandma Swartz was a warm, loving person with a great sense of humor. She was exactly what a grandmother should be—interested in your life, full of wise counsel, a terrific cook, and a pleasingly plump hugger. She was my mom’s mom, and her full name was Leta Elizabeth Green Swartz. I wonder where her parents got the idea to name her “Leta”—it’s not a very common name. Grandma’s fraternal twin sister was Lois Parker. I barely knew Great-Aunt Lois because she and Great-Uncle Lloyd lived “Out West” all my life. But I was often told how different Leta and Lois were. Lois was what we called “a corker.” Blunt, profane, a smoker, masculine in her manner, and not in the least bound by propriety. I’ll bet her parents went through times of despair during her growing-up years. My mom told the story of visiting Lois and Lloyd one time before I was...

Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman. William Shakespeare,  King Lear , Act 5, Scene 3 Her face was round and soft and wrinkled, the way a grandmother’s face should be. She had a warm smile and a quiet laugh. Her full name was Lorena Oretha Gill Skaggs, but we all called her “Buddy.” She was born in 1905 in Fayette County, West Virginia, and she died seventy-three years later in Fayette County, West Virginia. She was mother to four children but gave birth to only one. She was of small stature and somewhat shy, but she had an inner strength that allowed her to placidly take things as they came, responding with a quiet, “Well . . .” She married my paternal grandfather, Weston Wills Skaggs, in 1936, and they remained married until her death. She was Weston’s second wife. Eva Grace Holliday Skaggs Weston’s first wife, my paternal grandmother, was Eva Grace Holliday, who was born on July 11, 1906. According to one of her cousins, “Eva was a ...

Great-Grandma Slutz lived in a neat little house in Fredericksburg, Ohio. If you were walking north on Mill Street (tiny Fredericksburg’s main street), you would cross a bridge over Salt Creek and then cross the railroad tracks and pass by, on your left, a house with the name “Graber” written on the door (which I pretended said “Grabber” because it was the home of a monster who would grab children who walked too close to the porch), and the next home was Grandma Slutz’s. This was the route I took walking home from school each day, starting in kindergarten. Grandma’s house had several concrete steps—probably five or six—that led up to her porch. To me they seemed quite high. You could stand on her porch and look down at the sidewalk, where Grandma waged war on grass and weeds that dared to poke through the cracks in the walk. She showed me how to kill them by pouring salt water or boiling water on them. Both methods quite effectively discouraged further growth. Directly across the s...