Grandma and the Prince - Part 10 - Barbara Bretton

<==Grandma at 19

I'm going to pick up where I left off in my Grandma's story. This is a transcript of the tape I made back in 1976. Grandma and her sister Edith (Dede) are off in search of a new job.

=====

Edith and I – there was a place not too far from here. The factory needed help. The sign said "Girls needed. Glove making. " We go over and hired us immediately but he put us in the wrong places. He put me on gloves and Edith on the sewing machine when it should have been the other way around. I had to form the gloves. You see there were two metal hands, heated, and after they sewed the gloves, you put them on the hands and shaped them. You look to see if there are any holes. If you find a hole you use a piece of paper and you send them back.

Edith worked by the hour – she had to do the sewing over and over again. They docked her most of her wages. I used to dread getting a bundle from Edith because I knew Edith could not manage her sewing machine. So one day the manager said to her, "Miss Dimler, I’d like to see you before you go home. "

She said to me, "You know, I think he’s going to sack me."

"So what, Edith," I said carefree as you please. "You should be on what I’m doing and I should be doing what you're doing. How about we don’t go back?"

So we didn't. [laughter]

I don’t know what we said to mother but I know there was a terrible row.

Then I get another job. I don’t know how I found it but it was another factory. I was so ashamed, coming from rich people and all. My mother didn’t know what I was doing. So I went to this job every morning where they had piece material in bulk. My job was to make sure that when it winds around the spool that it’s even. A man would come around with a big bin and take them away. But then the floor man comes around one day and takes a shine to me. He wants to take me out and I tell the other girls.

"What did he say to you?" they asked.

"He asked me to go out with him," I said.

"You're not going out with him! Don't you go out with him, Elsie!"

Well, Barbara, I got scared and told my mother about him. She came to my place of business to meet him, saw where I was working and was shocked. She said, "That's the end of this!"

[I ask if my great-grandfather was working.]

What did Grandpa do? He was manager of Bohack. Great-grandpa. He walked right in off the street, off the boat, and got the job. The women were crazy about him. My father was very handsome and they all flocked to Bohack for meat. He had quite the following. He was a devil, he was. He was a devil with me and my mother wasn’t far behind either. I can tell you plenty. I can tell you plenty, my dear. Your hair would uncurl.

=======

And here I am thirty-three years later, still curly-haired, still wondering what she meant by those last few sentences.

to be continued next month

PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and you can find me here and here. I'm happy to say that LACED WITH MAGIC is on the stands this month. I hope you'll take a minute and visit my website to read an excerpt. I think you'll like it.

Barbara Bretton: Grandma and the Prince - Part 30

WINNER: Congratulations to Lolarific, winner of my May contest. Lolarific, send me an email at barbarabretton AT gmail DOT com with your mailing info and I'll ship out your prizes ASAP!

I remember when the idea for Midnight Lover hit me. I was reading Nevada Magazine in the lobby of the Princeton Medical Center. My then ninety-year old grandfather had broken his hip the day before (and, trust me, that is a story in itself) and my husband and I had driven down from Long Island to see him before his surgery. Grandpa was a man of the old school. Not even a broken hip and assorted painkillers could dull his mind. We talked as we waited for him to be taken into surgery and he told me some stories I hadn’t heard before.

He was a child of the American prairie. Born in Kansas, one of four children, before the turn-of-the-last century. He remembered riding in a prairie schooner as his family made their way from one part of the state to another. Proud of his country, he was also proud of his native American heritage, of the Chippewa blood flowing through his veins and mine. One of my prized possessions is a tintype of my great-grandmother crouching down in her calico dress and staring into the camera, as if daring it to steal her soul.

That morning before surgery, his stories were endless. The cruelty of the land. The beauty of it. His father’s savagely broken heart when my great-grandmother died young. The children were scattered to surrounding farm families. The girls were no trouble to place. Grandpa’s older brother was big enough and strong enough to work the land; a farmer took him in immediately. Grandpa, however, was skinny and young. Too old to be a cute little boy yet too young to be a productive farm worker.

“I was turned out to grass,” said my grandfather that April morning, “with a note pinned to my undershirt and a coin in my pocket.” He was twelve years old and alone. He rode the rails across the country, working wherever he could to keep body and soul together. He grew up fast and tough and made his way by rail to the Grand Tetons where he worked at a logging camp until the outbreak of World War I.

I knew I was looking at a hero being born. (And didn’t my five-times-married grandpa just love that!) Just that morning I’d read a delightful article in Nevada Magazine about the old mining town of Pioche where, back in its heyday, women had swarmed its streets, marrying the hapless male citizens before they knew what hit them. In a switch on Lysistrata, the men banded together to form a secret society whose sworn duty was to steer clear of matrimony for one full year. That would teach those husband-hungry spinsters a thing or two . . . and maybe make the streets safe for decent men again!

Why not take Jesse Reardon, a hero sprung from my grandfather’s stories, and place him in Silver Spur? Why not make him the richest, toughest man in town? Why not have him embody everything Silver Spur is – or claims to be?

Why not bring Caroline Bennett, formerly of Boston, to town? Make her beautiful, bright, and while I’m at it, why not make her the only woman for miles around who isn’t interested in marriage.

I had a wonderful time writing Midnight Lover and it was a thrill to hand Grandpa his own copy when it was published. He’s gone now but his stories remain, both the ones he lived and the ones he inspired.

Thanks to the internet and the explosion of e-book readers, two of my historical romances from the late 1980s have a new lease on life. Both Fire's Lady and Midnight Lover are available at most of the ebook sites. Click MIDNIGHT LOVER and you'll be taken to Amazon where you can read a sample or buy a copy of your own. (And they're only $2.99!)

NOTE: Fire's Lady will be available in a few days. Sorry I don't have a hot link to give you right now.

He was begotten in the galley and born under a gun. Every hair was a rope yarn, every finger a fish-hook, every tooth a marline-spike, and his blood right good Stockholm tar.
--Naval Epitaph


PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and you can find me here and here. Leave a comment behind and you'll be automatically entered in a drawing. The winner will receive signed copies of CASTING SPELLS, LACED WITH MAGIC, and SPUN BY SORCERY and a little sweet surprise.

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Barbara Bretton: Grandma and the Prince - Part 29

WE HAVE A WINNER! The April prize goes to Pat Cochran! Pat, please send me an email with your mailing address and I'll ship ASAP. You can reach me right here.

Here is the third and last installment of Grandpa Larry's World War I reminiscence. He called it "Under Sealed Orders" and the words that follow are all his. (Not too bad for a man with a sixth grade education!)

* * *

There weren’t many rumors going around on this crossing. All had a pretty good idea where we were going and that was to England, which proved to be correct. We arrived at the Devonport Naval Base where our guests departed. We were there several days and I went on liberty to nearby Plymouth and later took a rip to London. We had to coal ship while there and it turned out to be quite a chore. In the States, we always coaled ship under good, modern conditions, but there we had to coal by wheelbarrow. It took the crew 36 hours straight.

When we finished, we cleaned up and were preparing to go home. Tied up at a dock nearby were two American destroyers. They were at the Devonport Base for minor repairs, I suppose, and this day they were preparing to leave to go back on patrol. One of them, as I well remember, bore the historic name of John Paul Jones. This vessel sent a request to the Huntington for a replacement draft of eight men, as they were undermanned for one reason or an other. The draft was to be on a voluntary basis. It just happened that for some time I had had it in the back of my mind that I would like to get destroyer duty, but the opportunity had never presented itself. Now here it was.

I went back to the ship (inaudible), such things were handled there and put my name in for the transfer. A while later, the bosun’s pipe sounded the call with the names of the men on the draft to pack their bags and hammocks and stand by for the transfer. My name was among them. My friends thought that I must be somewhat off my rocker to volunteer for duty with the tin can fleet, as the destroyers at that time were called. You see, the destroyers are expendable. I don’t know – maybe that was the reason I wanted that duty. They were much smaller in those days than the big powerful ones of World War II and the present time. They were just a heartily-armed tin cans. A rack on the stern loaded with ash cans (depth charges) from three tube torpedo launchers, deck-based, two on each side of the ship, each tube with a warhead torpedo at ready, and a strong battery of three-inch guns, plus speed. Speed was their best defense, otherwise a rifle bullet could blow them out of the water (not literally speaking, of course.) After a while, the word was passed for the men on the John Paul Jones draft to lay aft on the quarterdeck with bag and hammock.

We lined up and were given envelopes which held our transfer papers. Then it was the old service system of “hurry up and wait.” We discussed the transfer and reckoned that soon we would be heading for the ever turbulent North Sea. Then a yeoman came from the ship (inaudible) office and spoke to the Officer of the Deck. Soon he came over to me and took my transfer envelope, saying that I was instructed to return to my Division with bag and hammock. I was highly disappointed but there was nothing I could do. I wondered if I was unqualified, but I was conceited enough to reject that idea. The other seven men of the draft were dismissed and shouldering their bags and hammocks. I watched them walk down the gangplank to oblivion.

I took some good-natured kidding that night from some of my friends about my short period of service with the tin can fleet. The next morning the report came in: the John Paul Jones had no more than reached the open sea when she took a German torpedo and went down with heavy casualties. I never heard whether any of our seven men survived or not. I must admit that it sure shook me up. That was a close one. I never learned who gave the order or why my transfer was canceled, but there is one thing I know and that is that somebody high up there did not want me to be on the John Paul Jones.

My Note: Grandpa lived another eighty years after that incident!

* * *
He was begotten in the galley and born under a gun. Every hair was a rope yarn, every finger a fish-hook, every tooth a marline-spike, and his blood right good Stockholm tar.
--Naval Epitaph


PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and you can find me here and here. Leave a comment behind and you'll be automatically entered in a drawing. The winner will receive signed copies of CASTING SPELLS, LACED WITH MAGIC, and SPUN BY SORCERY and a little sweet surprise.

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Grandma and the Prince - Part 19 - Barbara Bretton

<--My great-great grandmother Eliza. She was a full-blooded Chippewa from Ohio who looks as uncomfortable in front of the camera as I do. I wonder if she ever wore that fancy dress again. Knowing her through my grandmother, I kind of doubt it.


CONGRATULATIONS to Marybelle, winner of last month's giveaway! Please email me here with your mailing address and I'll send off your goodies ASAP.

My family saga continues. I'm still fascinated with how a Chippewa/Scots Irish kid from the plains of Kansas ever fell in love with a (formerly) rich girl from Liverpool. How amazing that their paths ever crossed.

Grandma El lived in a mansion. She grew up with servants. Grandpa Larry rode across Kansas in a prairie schooner. But somehow . . .

I guess that's why love stories fascinate me. Somehow, somewhere, two people find each other against all odds, all reason, and a new family is born.

Do you ever wonder who'll be telling your story years from now?

* * * *

This is a verbatim transcript of a conversation with my grandfather Loren R. McNutt, who was one hundred years old at the time.

Taped on February 4, 1997.

My grandmother Eliza, to borrow a phrase made famous by the Readers Digest, was to me a most unforgettable person. Born as near as she knew in the year 1826 in the small Indian village of Wapakoneta, Ohio. Oddly enough, it is also the same town where Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon (you remember that, right?) was born and raised. Exact dates will have no place in this as I do not know the exact ones, but I believe that she settled in the Territory of Kansas in the eastern part where she spent the rest of her life. Just where she lived when she raised her family I never knew. As was usual in my young life, nobody ever, at least not relatives, ever explained much to me.

The only place I ever knew her was in her log cabin, smoking her clay pipe in front of the stove. There was no fireplace, just an old flat-topped iron stove. It was a two-room cabin, one room downstairs and one room upstairs, naturally outside plumbing. It was built in the woods and overlooked a deep but narrow valley where my Uncle Billy, who never married and lived with her, had his truck garden which produced practically everything they needed to survive except, of course, the staples such as salt, sugar, coffee, tobacco, etc.

My grandmother was the only relative after my mother died who I really felt comfortable with. I never lived with her, just visited whenever I could and I loved to have her talk to me. Before she got too feeble ("rheumatics," she called it) she used to take me out in the fields to gather greens. She knew so many different wild plants, the leaves of which made the most delicious greens when properly cooked.

She told me many stories about the hard life in the early days of the Kansas Territory. She knew John Brown, the Abolitionist, who wound up at Harper's Ferry, like I told you about. She raised six children. She had 21 grandchildren and I have no idea how many great grandchildren. Many of the cousins I never knew as my brother, my two sisters, and I were among the youngest of the grandchildren. I know she had a hard life but I never heard her complain. I know that very few of the relatives ever visited her because she was Indian. [Ed. note: Chippewa]

She surely was not glamorous but she had something in her makeup that made me feel peaceful and comfortable. Although she never really expressed it in words, I could feel that she had a great love for me and was deeply concerned about my welfare.

I am sure that she had grandchildren that she had never seen, probably a number of them.

Likely the children of Aunt Belle Griffith, who with her husband had homesteaded in Oklahoma, never came back to see her. They were ashamed to be Indian. In fact, I had only met two of her seven children. Her two eldest sons, Ed and Dave, who in the summertime traveled with the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Wild West Circus and Performing Cowboys. I also knew that some of the relatives were a bit ashamed of her. Some of them were college graduates and did not care for her backwoods way of life.

As far as I know, she was illiterate in the three R's but not in her mental faculties. She was sharp to the end.

None of these things made any difference to me because she was the best friend I ever had and I will always remember her.

* * * *

PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and you can find me on Facebook and Twitter and here and here.
I'm in a giveaway kind of mood so if you leave a comment I'll enter you in this month's drawing. More books! More salt water taffy! The winner will be announced at the top of next month's post.

See you then!




ON SALE 11/2/2010

Grandma and the Prince - Part 5 (Barbara Bretton)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4


Do you remember those old B-movie westerns? They were TV staples when I was a kid. The good guys wore white hats; the bad guys wore black. You cheered the heroes and hissed at the villains and you never for a second questioned who was right and who was wrong. You just knew.

Too bad life isn't like that. One of the things I've discovered as I dig back into my Grandma El's life is that there are shades of grey everywhere I look and nobody left to help shine some light in the dark corners.

According to the story my Grandma El told me, her father was a ladies man. "A divil of a man," she called him and I'm not sure whether or not it was a compliment. She claimed her mother gave as good as she got and for my great-grandmother Nell's sake, I hope she did.

Sometime around 1904 when my grandmother was 4 years old, her father Charley did something so dastardly, so unforgivable, that he had to take his family and leave England for New Zealand. (Let's face it: you couldn't get much farther away from home, could you?) Although he had been born into money, he'd apparently squandered his share and couldn't afford passage for his wife and three kids so he turned to the family at Sea View for help.

I've warned you that the Dimlers weren't exactly the Waltons, right? Well, great-grandpa Charley "sold" his eldest child, Edith, to relatives at Sea View for enough money to get him to New Zealand and set himself up with his own butcher shop.

I know. It boggles the mind. Poor Dede was only seven years old at the time, a tall gangly introspective blond in a family of short and boisterous redheads. Can you imagine how she felt when her parents and siblings sailed away? (Actually I know how she felt and will tell you next month.)

I've often wondered why my great-grandfather chose New Zealand. Out of all the places in the world, why such a far away (and beautiful) country? And why didn't I ever ask my grandmother that question?

They settled down in Auckland, in a small house on Ponsonby Road that my grandmother loved.
The photos are front and back of a "real photo" postcard my Charley sent to Dede from New Zealand. Unfortunately Grandma El glued the postcard into an album so much of the message on the back was lost.

The postcards lead me to believe that Dede had been left in her grandfather's care, something that makes my blood run cold. Her life must have been something out of a Gothic novel. Not so Grandma El's life. She loved every second of their ten years in New Zealand. Decades later, she glowed when she talked about the beauty and freedom of the place. (She claimed her best friends were neighboring Maori kids but I'm not sure that wasn't wishful thinking on her part.)

In 1914 Charley ran out of money and into trouble again and packed up the family for the return trip to England.

He didn't stay long. In 1916 the entire family, Dede included, was on its way to America.

Here are Grandma El's words, transcribed from a tape I made of her during the summer of 1976: "We came back to England when I was 14. They were broke and in disgrace. We stayed at Sea View for two years. Oh, Barbara, the things people thought! The Germans were the enemy and someone said my grandfather was signalling them with secret messages and people threw rocks at us and set fire to the house. We were hated by the town. You don't know what it was like . . . the bombs . . . the fires . . . the zeppelins overhead . . . terrible . . . terrible. Then he decided we were going to America. It was 1916. The War was still on but he had to go. We made the trip on an American ship. We stopped in the middle of the Atlantic with our engines off on account of the submarines everywhere. I remember that only the American flags on the ship saved us.

"I remember it was hot, so hot, when we reached New York. We didn't waste any time getting jobs. The second day our parents said, 'Find work," and we didn't know anything. I was brought up rich. I couldn't do anything. So I found a job as a nursemaid for a rich Jewish family on Central Park West. I took care of their little girl and the mother used to say to her, 'Now you should learn to speak like Elsie -- cahn't, tomahto' and I would feel so good to be appreciated.

"We used to go--I can see it now--to the swanky shops like B. Altman on Fifth Avenue. She had a chauffeur and a limousine and I would sit in the rear and I can still see him placing the fur robes over the madam and the girl. But not me. It wasn't done. I told them that I'd had servants too but who knows if they believed me. I was just a green kid.

"One day I left them. I don't know why. I just left. I didn't know any better. [silence] You don't know what it was like to come here . . . everything so big . . . so much . . . all the food and stores and people. I loved it from the first."

And then the unthinkable happened: Charley died of a heart attack at 47 years of age.

May 2, 1922
(from)
AVOCA
22 Ashfield Rd
Aigburt (?)
Liverpool

Mrs. Dimler, our united and heartfelt sympathy go out to all of you in your dreadfully sudden Bereavement. It was a bombshell to me and tears trickled down my face whilst reading the sad news to the rest of the family at the Breakfast table.

May God be with you in this your hour of trial.

Margaret is away at Chester - and we wrote her the sad tidings. She replied immediately - sending her love and sympathy.

Now as regards Charley's affairs under his late mother's will -- you may rest assured that your interested will be carefully guarded by the Enors. It is a pity Charley did not make a will - especially as he wrote me regarding in his very last letter. You may have possibly read my reply to it - stating that the balance eventually due to him after meeting his legal liabilities is somewhere around about 150 pounds - perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less.

I presume Charley was still a British subject at the time of his death - if so this money will be disbursed according to British law. If on the other hand he was a naturalized American (and I never heard anything) then I must have documentary evidence of this fact and a letter from a New York Notary Public direct - stating American law on this point. You quite understand, don't you, that if Charley was not an American then all this red tape business and expense will be unnecessary. So please write me by return so we may put things in order. Also please thank Cassy for his very feeling letter.

With kind regards to all of you we remain yours in sympathy,
The Ludeck Family

----
To be continued.

PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and you can find me here and here and here. My next book, LACED WITH MAGIC, will be released in August. I hope you'll watch for it.

Grandma and the Prince: Part 2 - Barbara Bretton

(Part 1 can be found here.)

No matter how many questions you ask, no matter how many stories they tell, the truth is you'll never know everything there is to know about your family.

In a million years I never would have guessed that the photos of my grandmother and her prince were the key to the Big Family Secret I wouldn't know about until just before my father died in 2001.

After sifting through the photos and trying to make sense of it all, I picked up the phone and called my parents.

"About Grandpa Bert," I said, after taking a deep breath. "Did he have a nickname?"

My mother was quiet for a moment. "As far as I remember, Bert was his nickname," she said.

"Are you sure he didn't have another nickname?" I persisted. "Maybe something just Grandma called him...like, maybe, Prince?"

Silence from my mother and then, "Let me put your father on."

Uh-oh.

"So who is this guy?" I asked him. "What's the deal with this Prince Mohindin?"

"I think he was an Arab sheik who rented an estate on the North Shore every summer."

For once in my life I was close to speechless. "You're kidding," I said.

"Aren't you?" My grandmother and a Long Island sheik? That was too much even for me and I tell lies for a living.

"I wasn't more than four or five," he went on, "so I don't remember too much. He had a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and a Turkish aide-de-camp named Ziggy who looked like Peter Lorre."

"I don't understand," I said. "I thought you were a middle-class family from West Hempstead. What were you doing in Gatsby country during the Depression?"

Of course he couldn't answer that. When you're five years old, you go where your parents go and you don't ask questions.

"We were up in Sea Cliff that summer," he said. "We used to see J. P. Morgan's yacht gliding across the Sound." He and his sister Mona and their cousin Jackie played on Morgan's Beach. They climbed the huge boulder that jutted out into the calm waters and pretended they owned everything the eye could see. "The rich people didn't stay much east of Syosset back then," he said.

They congregated like great sea birds in Great Neck and Sea Cliff, Oyster Bay and Glen Cove. I'm not sure Glen Cove even has a railroad station any more but, back then, the town was about as tony as it got . Take everything you ever read about Fitzgerald's North Shore of Long Island then multiply it by five and you're getting close.

I'd always assumed both the Fullers and the Dimlers had lost their respective fortunes by the time my Grandpa Bert and Grandmother El met and married but maybe I'd been wrong.

"Were you rich?" I asked my father.

"I don't think so," he said, "but we did have a housekeeper for awhile."

"That's more than we ever had," I pointed out.

"Lots of families had housekeepers back then. It wasn't that unusual."

I reminded him that simply having a house that needed keeping was kind of unusual during the Depression. It seemed like the perfect time to cut to the chase. "Did Grandma have an affair with Prince Mohindin?"

"I was five years old," he said again. "I don't know what they did. All I can tell you is that the Prince was an artist and he gave Mother a painting and two sculptures."

"Where are they?"

You could almost hear him shrug. "The painting might have gone up in the fire."

"What about the two sculptures?"

"I didn't see them when we closed up the apartment. Your aunt probably took them after Mother died."

And that was that.

Except it wasn't. The puzzle of my grandmother kept me awake nights. It didn't make sense. Hadn't she sat with me weekend after weekend in 1976, telling me her life story for the tape recorder? My savvy, story-telling grandmother who always said, "Stop the tape," when she got to the juicy parts. I knew there had been men besides her husbands. Wasn't she the one who'd said she'd lived a woman's life, experienced everything a woman could experience?

I knew about Rudi, the retired businessman, who fell in love with her when they were in their sixties and would lie on the floor kissing her feet while she did the dishes. (I should have warned you, shouldn't I? Sorry!) I mean, Grandma El (my father's mother) had become engaged to Grandpa Larry (my mother's father) when I was three years old. (My Uncle Budd's comment was legendary: "Holy #@*#, this is Queens not Dogpatch!") She wasn't beautiful or even pretty but she loved men and they loved her back right through to the day she died at 90.

But for all of her openness, all of those hours of family history that she willingly related to me, she left out one minor bit of information: she never told me about her first husband, Max.

A man I'd never heard about who happened to be my grandfather.

(Author's note: my research shows me that Prince Mohindin was probably from India.)

PS: I'm Barbara Bretton, author of CASTING SPELLS. You can find me here and here and here.

Grandma and the Prince - Part 20 - Barbara Bretton

<==Grandpa Larry and yours truly, a thousand years ago! Estella, congratulations! You're the winner of my July giveaway. All I need is your mailing address and we're in business. You can email me here or here at barbarabretton AT gmail DOT com and I'll do the rest.

And Marybelle, I'm still waiting for your mailing address. You were June's giveaway winner. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
===============

This month I'm sharing a 1980 letter from my Grandpa Larry. He was 84 when he wrote it and legally blind. Keep in mind the man had only a sixth grade education. Everything he knew (and he knew a lot) he taught himself. He had a curious, searching mind, enormous discipline, and amazing wellsprings of strength.

His letter is in answer to one of mine. Right after I came home from the hospital after cancer surgery, I was contacted by a long-lost relative on Grandpa's side of the family. MS was in her early fifties at the time and she had recently embarked on a genealogical project that led her to contact Grandpa Larry, my parents, and me.

I laugh now at my wide-eyed innocence. I couldn't imagine how she had lived her entire life not knowing that Chippewa blood flowed through her veins. (Clearly I still had a lot to learn about family dynamics and keeping secrets.)

This is my grandfather's take on it.

--

March 11, 1980

Dear Barbara:

I hope that by the time you receive this letter you will be home from the hospital and feeling in good shape. I was glad to get your letter. You write such a nice letter. I hope that both you and Roy have been well. There seems to have been a lot of flu going around.

Well, I can understand your statement that this MS does not know anything about her heritage because her mother Marion did not likely know anything either. You would have to understand about my uncle to get the picture. I suppose that MS probably heard about it from one of the other second cousins.

You see, my uncle was not my favorite uncle, although I respected him and he treated me very well. It was just one of those things. Some relatives you like better than others. I am under the impression that he considered his Indian heritage as a skeleton in the closet and wished to keep it there. He was the youngest of his brothers and sisters and also the better educated. When he was a little boy, the Indian uprisings were still going on. Of course, we know that they were fighting to keep from being pushed back into the barren reservations and there was a lot of bitterness on both sides. Even when I was a small boy, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse – the great Indian commanders – were far more than just a memory. The Custer Affair at Little Big Horn (which happened on your birthday – look it up!) still rankled. As they would say, Indians were not some one you would invite in for a cup of tea. When my mother was so sick, we had another Indian girl named Carrie Zane from another nearby Indian family help take care of my mother. Also nearby was a stately old Indian named Tecumca Tony Jones who had somehow come into money – his family gone to the four winds – lived alone in a big red brick house. Nobody ever paid any attention to him but he always conducted himself with great dignity. So now I will try to tell you about my uncle.

I never knew too much about him early in my life. I don’t know where he went to school. The thing I do know is that he had the finest penmanship of any I have ever seen, barring none. He used the old Spencerian style with pen and ink, a style which started out with the invention of the fountain pen and completely disappeared with the development of the ballpoint pen. It was done with a freehand motion, using the wrist. You have heard the saying “letter perfect,” well that was his writing He could take a sheet of white paper and with that freehand motion of light, shade, and flourishes, draw a most beautiful bird flying through the air. Unbelievable.

Lane, Kansas – where my uncle lived all his life from I guess late teens, was then – and as I remember it – a pretty town of about 800 people. It had an unusual number of good stores and business places, like two blacksmith shops, carpenter shops, and the like. It was located in the center of a rich farming community and many well-to-do farmers lived for miles around and used it as their business center and made Lane a busy, thriving town. But now my sister Lula tells me after the advent of the huge cooperative farms came in and bought up all of the individual farms and the farmers moved away, it went down to nothing and now there is not even a grocery store in the town.

During the good days of Lane, my uncle knew everybody from miles around and everybody knew him and he was a highly respected man. His two older daughters Clo and May, that I knew well, were both graduates of Baker University, a well-known college for women (in existence today) located at Baldwin. Not far from Lawrence, Kansas – the location of the University of Kansas.

He was one of the first, if not the first, to be appointed as a Rural Free Delivery mail carrier, a job he had for many years. His route was about 25 or 30 miles and he delivered six days a week by horseback, horse and buggy, and as the roads became better cared for, by an Indian-made motorcycle, and the last time I was there, by Model A Ford Touring Car. He was a hard-working man, and after he returned from his route, he would work the rest of the day and evening in one of the local stores.

The last ten years of my grandmother’s life, the years I knew her well, I never knew of him visiting her once, although he may have but I don’t think so. I have a pretty good idea why.

Of course, my Uncle Billy lived with her but with the exception of Lula and myself and on one or two occasions my cousin Ed Griffith (my Aunt Belle’s second oldest son) I never knew of a relative visiting her although it may have happened but my grandmother never mentioned it to me and I was with her as often as possible and we talked of many things, about her life as a girl in Ohio with her tribe and her early days in Kansas. But she was in a way too stoic and I never heard her complain about anything.

There is one thing I believe and that is that few, if any, of my uncle’s many friends and neighbors in and around Lane ever knew that the Little Old Injun Lady who lived in the log cabin in the woods near Rantoul – and not many miles from his home – was his mother.

I wonder if it was pride or shame.

This has been a long drawn out explanation but I have tried to show why I think it is highly possible that none of his children or grandchildren knew or were told anything about his mother’s origin and that is why I think that MS would not know and when did find out something, try to find out more.

Take care of yourself.

Love to both of you,

Grandpa

--

Grandpa was right. MS didn’t find out about her Chippewa heritage until after both of her parents died and she began studying genealogy. She grew up in California at a time when Indian blood was something to hide. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know I was part Chippewa, but then I grew up in New York City where it was exotic and glamorous. Same country, same family, vastly different takes on an incontrovertible fact.

See you next month!

PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and I'm looking to give away some more books to a commenter who'll be chosen at random and announced right here next month.

PPS: The trade edition reprint of SOMEONE LIKE YOU will be out in early October. SPUN BY SORCERY, third in my Sugar Maple series, hits the stands in early November.

PPS: You can find me here or here or on Facebook. I hope you'll stop by and say hello.

Grandma and the Prince - Part 6 - Barbara Bretton

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

For all that Grandma El retained her love of England until the day she died, she never felt the need to go home again. When she left England for the United States during World War I, she didn’t look back. Through the years El talked endlessly about the importance of family and how it was she who kept us all together but, when push came to shove, she’d found it easy to leave her English relatives behind.

It wasn’t that easy for her sister Edith. Dede (her family nickname) was the child who had been bartered to childless relatives in return for passage to New Zealand for her parents and siblings. She was the one who’d been left behind in England while El and Cass ran free in Auckland. England was her home and always would be.

In 1963 Dede retired from her job at the Hotel Taft and moved to a three room apartment on Layton Street in Elmhurst, five short blocks from where we lived. My mom was elated. She’d adored Dede from their first meeting and the thought of having her living nearby put a permanent smile on my mother’s face. Dede was an odd combination of reserve and warmth, of wicked humor and cool sophistication. She and my mom went to the movies together every week. Risque foreign films with subtitles and content objectionable to the Diocese of Brooklyn that they laughed about afterward over coffee and pie at Dede's apartment.

My Aunt Mona, El’s daughter, adored Dede too. She took her shopping after work, out to dinner, vied with my mother for Dede’s attentions and love. Grandma was still living in New Jersey at that time, which was a good thing for all concerned. The major battles between the sisters were still a few years in the future.

R to L: my aunt Mona, my mother, Aunt Dede

Taken at my wedding 9/8/68

Dede was the one who stayed in contact with our relatives in Liverpool so when she decided to return to England for a visit, nobody was very surprised. “Come with me, El,” she said to her sister. “Let’s go home together.” But my grandmother wouldn’t consider it. “What do I want with England?” she said to Dede. “You can go alone.” And Dede did. She went to Rome and Venice and Naples. She went to Zurich and Brussels. She went to Paris. She went to London where she met a man who would become very important to her. And then she went home to Liverpool. To Sea View where she’d spent her childhood.

To the same dog she’d played with as a girl? Wait a second!

The well-groomed collie was sprawled on the lawn when her cab pulled up the long curving drive. What a well-behaved dog, Dede thought. He didn’t even glance her way when she called to him. “That looks just like Teddy,” my aunt said to the cousins who greeted her. “That is Teddy,” they said. “He died the year after you left for America. Grandmamma had him stuffed.”

I am descended from a long line of animal lovers but obviously some of them loved animals a tad too much. Poor Teddy had spent the last forty-five years as a lawn ornament, brought inside only when it rained. “We just couldn’t part with him,” they said. “We comb his hair ever day.”

That was one of the nicer family stories Dede told us. The other ones? Well, let's just say I'm not proud of the genetic mix bubbling through my veins. My great great grandfather was master of all he surveyed. When Dede moved back to Sea View, he was still the patriarchal figure whose moods set the tone for life inside the great house. The Edwardian Era flourished in London, but the Victorian Era, in all of its repressed and urgent sexuality, still reigned in my family’s home. My great great grandfather knew he existed above the law within the walls of his house. Children lived in the shadows, in a netherworld of adult expectations and their own fragile dreams.

They knew what they were doing, my family, when they asked for Dede rather than El. Dede was tall and awkward, a quiet girl who grew into an introspective woman. She lived an interior life. Not so my Grandma El. El would not have gone quietly to her new home. Society’s conventions were enough to still Dede’s protests. Society would have had to work much harder on El. I like to believe society would have lost the battle.

No one spoke up against my great great grandfather. His daughter Claire retreated into her own private world. She crept through the house on silent feet, seeing everything, revealing nothing at all. Dede would awaken with a start in the middle of the night to find Claire standing over her, gazing down at her with vacant eyes. No motherly touch from Claire, no words of comfort from anyone at all.

(Would it surprise you to learn that Dede grew up to be a reserved, self-contained, independent woman who turned into the quintessential geisha each and every time she fell in love?)

My great great grandfather’s reach extended beyond Sea View. Your daughter for my patronage, he’d said to the dairy farmer. The dairy farmer thought it sounded like a fine deal and the two men struck a bargain. The girl, a scared little chit in a faded cotton dress that had obviously known its share of owners, was delivered that night to Sea View. Dede watched from her window on the second floor as the child walked around back to the servants' entrance. Briefly she considered tapping on the window, to let the girl know there was someone who understood what she was feeling, but Dede knew an action like that would bring the wrath of God down on her own head and so she kept silent.

I learned from Dede that my great great grandfather died in bed one night with a young girl spread-eagled and crying beneath him. There was a sense of acceptance about Dede as she told this story that puzzled me, but that was only because I was too young to really understand what she wasn’t saying. I was a happy, spoiled American child of the 1950s. Stories about rich relatives and spooky mansions and Jane Eyre-ish little girls passed around like baseball cards were the stuff of the books I devoured on a daily basis. The fact that this was real, that it had happened to my Aunt Dede, took years to sink in.

A hint of things to come: Dede runs off to Detroit with a handsome cop. My grandmother ends up destitute with two kids under the age of five. (Although I didn't find out about that until I was fifty years old!)

As with most things in my life, it is only through writing about them that I've come to understand my family's history.

Okay, maybe "understand" isn't the right word. Let's just say I'm starting to make a little sense out of it.

Thanks to all of you who have read and enjoyed the story so far. I appreciate your comments more than I can say. This month three commenters chosen at random will receive signed copies of CASTING SPELLS and JUST DESSERTS as a small token of gratitude.

PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and you can find me here and here and here. My next book, LACED WITH MAGIC, will be released in August 2009.

Grandma and the Prince - Part 9

Yes, that's the actual manifest from the Philadelphia, the ship that brought my grandmother and her family from Liverpool to New York. They left in disgrace but arrived in a style unlike the usual early 20th century immigrant. They brought trunks filled with finery, a yappy Pomeranian, and the memory of a life they'd never know again.

Which, in some ways, was probably a good thing even if it didn't seem that way at the time.

Charles Henry Dimler, my great-grandfather

Ellen Fawcett Dimler, my great-grandmother

If you can't make it out, here's what I see on my screen, courtesy of Ancestry.com :

Manifest of the S.S. Philadelphia sailing from Liverpool 28th August 1916

Dimler, Charles Henry - age 43, English from Great Britain, butcher, other things I can't read
Dimler, Ellen Louise - age 38, wife
Dimler, Edith Barbara - age 18, daughter
Dimler, Charles Casson - age 17, son
Dimler, Elsie Isobel - age 16, daughter

Last month I promised I'd share the transcript of my grandmother's reminiscences. Fasten your seat belts!

Elsie: We came back to Liverpool when I was 14. They were broke and in disgrace. We stayed at Sea View for two years. Oh, Barbara, the things people thought! The Germans were the enemy and someone said my grandfather was signaling them with secret messages and people threw rocks at us and set fire to the house. We were hated by the town. You don't know what it was like . . . the bombs . . . the fires . . . the zeppelins overhead . . . terrible . . . terrible. Then he decided we were going to. It was 1916. The War was still on but he had to go. We made the trip on an American ship. We stopped in the middle of the Atlantic with our engines off on account of the submarines everywhere. I remember that only the American flags on the ship saved us.

I remember it was hot, so hot, when we reached New York. We didn't waste any time getting jobs. The second day our parents said, 'Find work," and we didn't know anything. I was brought up rich. I couldn't do anything. So I found a job as a nursemaid for a rich Jewish family on Central Park West. I took care of their little girl and the mother used to say to her, "Now you should learn to speak like Elsie" -- cahn't, tomahto -- and I would feel so good to be appreciated.

We used to go--I can see it now--to the swanky shops like B. Altman on Fifth Avenue. She had a chauffeur and a limousine and I would sit in the rear and I can still see him placing the fur robes over the madam and the girl. But not me. It wasn't done. I told them that I'd had servants too but who knows if they believed me. I was just a green kid.

One day I left them. I don't know why. I just left. I didn't know any better. [silence] You don't know what it was like to come here . . . everything so big . . . so much . . . all the food and stores and people. I loved it from the first.

I got another job with rich people. Their name was Hayes. The little girl was Bunny; she was 2 or 3 years old. I stayed there, lived there, and they treated me like their daughter. They were lovely people. I stayed with them quite awhile then next I knew I got a job at a store downtown on Broome Street where they sell picture frames and all. I had to measure pictures for frames and I didn't know how. We were living up in the Bronx on the beautiful Grand Concourse. I had to bring these frames home on the el (BB: elevated subway) and I didn't know where I was going. Even the dumbwaiter! I didn't know about garbage going down on the dumbwaiter. I didn't know what a deli was!

The Grand Concourse c.1919 - the carriage is heading west to the el, now the #4 subway

A kid comes here and sees all the food and everything . . . [silence]

Well, dearie, I got a job at National Outlet. I was a tabulator. National Outlet was like a Sears Roebuck catalog. [laughs] Can you imagine? I was a young girl. Seventeen? Kathryn was the supervisor. The girls used to get a great kick out of me. They'd get me to answer the phone: "Halloooo?" Cahn't and all that stuff. The Duchess of the Grand Concourse they called me. It was on 23rd Street. I'd take the el every day.

And then I met a boy. I had a crush on Louie. He was about 18 and I fell madly in love with him. "Would you fetch me a glass of water?" I'd say. And he'd laugh. "Oh, the Duchess again!" He liked me. Such a nice boy. I was very happy there, with the job and him. But he left and then I left. He took a job (he had a brother in show business, a comedian, and his father lived up in the Bronx.) I went to his house. I can see it now -- all slipcovered, even the desk, everything was covered. I liked his father. His mother was nice, but she didn't like me. His brother was on the road, so we went out. Louie got a job as assistant manager at the movie theater on 125st Street. I used to go to the movies at night and I'd sit in the box and he'd come up and talk to me and I'd get a thrill watching him rush down the aisles. Black hair! He had style. He wasn't good-looking, but he had style. Something about him fascinated me--his eyes?

But things happen. I don't remember what. My family and money. They needed my wages. We, all three children, would hand our pay envelope to our mother on Friday. Unopened. I was so proud. She would give each of us something for the week but no more. Every penny was accounted for. I had to move on to another job because Edith had trouble keeping work. We were going to work together. Our father would bang on the door in the morning. "Girls! Don't forget you have to get up and look at the paper. You need jobs!"

to be continued next month




PS: I'm Barbara Bretton, author of Girls of Summer (available now) and Laced With Magic (available in two weeks) and you can find me here and here and here.

To celebrate Girls of Summer's re-release as a trade paperback, I'm giving away five copies to five commenters. Just leave your message here and I'll post the winners here in the comments section on Saturday. Good luck!

Grandma & the Prince - Part 35

Mona at 16

Now here's where my Aunt Mona's story get weird.

Last month I told you about her romance with Jack the photographer and the moment when I first saw real, live, grown-up romance on the day Mona and her friend Helen opened their own real estate office.

I can almost hear why you're thinking. Wow! Early 1960s and she was living the Gloria Steinem/Betty Friedan dream. Mona was smart, sexy,and independent. She thought nothing of jumping behind the wheel of her gigantic, snow white, Chevy Biscayne and driving across the country alone to San Diego, just because she could. Well into her seventies, she was driving the Florida-to-New York trail twice a year. She was five-foot-two and weighed maybe one hundred and ten pounds but the woman was fearless. Except for her brief marriage, she lived alone her entire life and loved it. She walked city streets at night and didn't blink. She was probably one of the strongest human beings, both physically and mentally, that I have ever known.

  But I found out much later that when it came to love, my sassy and ambitious aunt was  a geisha at heart. Love makes us all a little crazy. That's a given, isn't it? When you're wildly in love, you're not thinking clearly. In fact, you're lucky if you're thinking at all. The same woman who had a cleaning service come into her apartment twice a week, the same woman had her laundry done by professionals, the same woman who didn't take orders from anyone, cleaned her boyfriend Jack's apartment twice a week, ran over to walk his dog every afternoon, and made sure he had a nutritious meal waiting either on the stove or in the fridge when he came home each night. Or early morning, depending on what he'd been up to. You see, Jack liked Mona but he didn't love her and no matter how many dishes she washed or how many dog-walking miles she racked up, nothing was going to change that fact.

A few years into their relationship, he told her he was in love with someone else.  And Mona continued to clean his apartment. Then he told her he was engaged to marry that someone else. And Mona continued to walk his dog. Finally he said the wedding was next week and maybe it was time she gave back his key. And she did.

Jack's marriage didn't last but his friendship (and maybe more) with my aunt Mona did. Same as her friendship with her ex-husband.

And the dentist who lived with his sister Tillie. But I'll tell you about him next month.

P.S. My name is Barbara Bretton and you can find me here  and here and here.

P.P.S. I apologize for taking so long to send out last month's prizes. I promise you they'll go out this week.

P.P.S. I'm giving away e-books this month. Ten commenters will each receive a copy of The Marrying Man for their Kindles.

P.P.P.S. Barbara E., you are my March winner. Please drop me an email at barbarabretton AT gmail DOT com with your full name and mailing address and I PROMISE I'll send out your prize ASAP.

P.P.P.P.S. Here's what I've been up to.

The first time they met, his dog trashed her car.
The second time they met, she set fire to her bathroom.
The third time they met, they fell in love.

Annie Galloway isn't looking to fall in love again. Sam Butler doesn't want a home and family of his own.

Too bad fate has other plans . . .

A SOFT PLACE TO FALL is a 100,000 word contemporary romance, previously published by Berkley Books.Available now for the first time as an e-book.

Click here to read the first chapter.






     
The Edge of Forever, an award-winning Harlequin American, available for the first time in e-book form.

OPPOSITES ATTRACT . . .

But can a night of passion turn into a love that lasts forever?

Meg Lindstrom is a struggling photographer who drives a limo to make ends meet.

Joe Alessio is a best-selling author of fiery historical romances who hasn’t written a word in months.

They don't have a thing in common until Meg falls at his feet one sunny October afternoon and Joe realizes he’s finally met the woman of his dreams.

But first Joe will have to convince Meg that her dreams really can come true . . .

Click here to read an excerpt on Amazon.

Grandma and the Prince - Part 4 (Barbara Bretton)

I'm going to jump forward in time this month and give you a preview of things to come. Next month we'll head back into the early 20th century and visit New Zealand and New York City.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

----

Once upon a time my Grandma El and her daughter, my Aunt Mona, dated the same man.

Unfortunately that man was my grandfather.

I thought that would get your attention. I didn't cut my teeth writing confession stories for nothing. If you want to sell your story to an overworked, underpaid editor, you've got to hit her right between the eyes with a left hook she's not likely to forget.

For a brief moment in time and space, my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather were simultaneously spouseless. (Which was pretty much of a miracle, if you consider the fact that my Grandpa Larry had five of them and Grandma El had three.)

My grandfather Bert died on June 1, 1950. My grandmother El and Grandpa Larry both remarried in 1954. I did the math. Somewhere between 1950 and 1954 they got up close and personal and damn near turned the Fuller/McNutt family on its ear.

For such a tiny family, mine seemed to generate enough sturm und drang to rival any fictional clan Tennessee Williams ever dreamed up. My husband likes to say we're small but volatile. And that's about as good a way to put it as any other I've heard. This, however, was more than any of them could handle.

Grandma El in NYC around 1952

I don't remember anything about that time. I was too young and families were much better at keeping secrets in the 50s than they are now. However, the knowledge that El and Larry had been briefly engaged seemed to become part of my particular universe when I was around six or seven years old. I loved my new grandparents (Les and Bess. Who could make that up?) but it always seemed a shame to me that El and Larry hadn't been able to make a go of it. Being around them was like going on vacation. They loved to dance and laugh and travel. They were both social creatures who enjoyed nothing more than being around other people, a trait I most definitely did not inherit. Put me in a crowd of strangers and I clam up and scuttle toward the nearest exit. Put either one of them in a crowd of strangers and--well, let's just say they didn't stay strangers long.

When El and Larry walked into a room, they brought their own built-in spotlights. Star quality? Absolutely. They both had it in spades. And it had nothing whatsoever to do with looks. It was something else, something that went so deep that my grandfather still had it--whatever it might be--when he died at 100 years of age. Oh yes, they were a match made in romantic heaven and, for a time, it looked like they'd have the happy ending I've spent many years writing about.

So where does El's daughter Mona enter into it? She's the one who told me she'd dated Larry while he was dating her mother. Sex or movies? I don't have the answer to that one. I'm not even sure I want the answer.

Still, although it was more than fifty years after the fact, the look of triumph in her eyes was unsettling. Picture the teenage girl with the dying father and high-stepping mother. Picture the rebellious young woman with the Ava Gardner looks who finds a way she can hurt her mother and shake up the family at the same time.

Mona at 16

It's Christmas 1952. The middle-aged mother is widowed and unsure of herself as a woman. The daughter is twenty-six and in her prime.

The man? Well, he just might be in over his head.

Grandma El and Grandpa Larry

My parents took sides. My mother's sympathies were with El. My father's were with Larry. As my mother once told me, "I had no childhood baggage with El, the way your father did. It was easier for me to love her."Same as my dad loved Larry. There was a connection between the two men that was easily as close as the connection between a father and his natural child. My grandfather's five marriages didn't turn my dad's childhood into chaos.

But, in the end none of that mattered, because the whole affair was already barreling toward the finish line, thanks to a pair of birthday earrings from Larry that El decided to have appraised. For insurance purposes, she said, but I have my doubts. My grandmother was appalled to discover that her beautiful earrings were courtesy of Macy's and Monet. My grandfather was appalled to discover that it mattered so much to her.

They broke up and before the year was out both had married other people.

Grandma El's wedding to Grandpa Les - she looks so sad, doesn't she?

The rivalry between El and Mona, however, intensified.

El & Larry at my 1968 wedding; Bess refused to attend

Grandma in her 70s; her life force comes right through, doesn't it?

In 1982 my grandfather took a mutually agreed-upon hiatus from his fifth marriage. He was 86 years old and living a comfortable life in Rossmoor, a retirement village south of Princeton. Unfortunately he and Bess were rubbing each other the wrong way and they decided that a separation was the way to go. In typical fashion, my grandfather took nothing but the clothes on his back, his NY Mets baseball cap, his books and photographs. He moved back to Elmhurst, about four blocks awayfrom his daughter and son-in-law.

And about ten blocks away from El and Mona.

You know that old saying, too close for comfort? This situation defined it and it brought out the worst in everyone. What should have been z happy time of reunion and re-discovery turned into an utter disaster.

Grandma Bess called me two and three times a week. "What's your grandfather doing?" she would ask me, sounding angry and fearful and all shades of emotion in between. "Has he seen THAT WOMAN?" THAT WOMAN, of course, was my eighty-two year old Grandma El. God only knows what she would have done if she'd known about Mona.

Mona seemed indifferent, but Grandma El glowed like a schoolgirl every time she saw my grandfather. I'll admit that I once again entertained fantasies of seeing the two of them walk off into the sunset together. But life was just too complicated for such a simple, satisfying ending. There was too much history between them. Too much history between the lot of them.

Now picture a dinner table in Elmhurst, Queens. Picture a celebration. I'd sold my first book. I was thirty-one years old and flying high. My small-but-volatile family had gathered to toast my success and the champagne was flowing. There's a photo of El and Larry sitting next to each other at the table. They're in the same pose they'd been in thirteen years earlier at my wedding, huge smiles and twinkling eyes and a sense of rightness about them that maybe only I could see. (I've been tearing the house apart looking for it. I promise to post it when it shows up.)

Mona was at this dinner too. Maybe it was the champagne. Maybe it was a lot of other things.. Whatever it was, she began to talk. She pitched her voice low so only I could hear. "He wanted to make sure she was taken care of," she said, referring to her father Bert. "He told Larry to take care of Mother. She was still young and he wanted her to be happy."

"I don't get it," I remember saying to her. "He wanted Grandpa Larry to find someone for Grandma?"

"Find someone for her?" I can still hear Mona's bitter laugh. "He wanted him to sleep with her."

According to my aunt, in 1948, the year my parents were married-- four years before I thought anything had happened between them-- my Grandpa Bert called his wife and his son's father-in-law into his sick room to give them his blessing. "Take care of her," he told Larry. "I don't want her to be alone." Did he suspect something had already developed between them and he was trying to tell them it was okay? Or was it wishful thinking on his part, a last-ditch effort to keep the two sides of the family together after he was gone?

Either way, Grandpa Bert's time was almost past, while Grandma's was just beginning.

PS: I'm Barbara Bretton, author of CASTING SPELLS, and you can also find me here and here and here.