The transformation of my grandfather started off when Ralph, as an Irishman in Grand Rapids -a one dirt road town -proudly full of all the ugly prejudices of his kind, set up with his accounting degree, as narrow as one could be.
He made my mother put every penny she had in the bank. Each week she took her nickel allowance with her to the bank. She had done this as long as she could remember maybe eight years straight. But then -in 1932 -the bank closed, all the money was gone.
For my mother it was a lesson, the lesson, in saving money. For Ralph it was even more dramatic.
The bank was closed, all his lifetime of savings was gone, his job was gone. And then the bank, still closed demanded he pay his property tax and when he couldn't they took the house. This happened all over western Michigan, and all the Irishmen were now renters or homeless. They were all out of home, job, and money. But not out of children...
Ralph, still prejudiced and narrow, ended up in Massachusetts with the family. He was back in the army which I'm sure he felt he had seen the last of in 1918. He insisted that my mother go to a close by Catholic girls school, not Amherst where she wished to go, which was 15 miles away.
Her older brother brought a friend home from Berkeley, a very tall and very very thin man in a bright green silk suit and yellow sunglasses. This was not a man Ralph had ever seen the likes of. He had a degree that Ralph had never heard of. This man asked my mother to marry him and she said yes.
The war had just ended and apparently this man had been important in it...but how? It didn't make sense to Ralph. This man wasn't in the army. He had been threatened by them when he tried to join. My mother moved with this man, who she didn't really know, 2500 miles away. Life was not done with Ralph. We will talk more about the man in the bright green suit. And of the artists who "came out of the ground", and of Ralph's transformation -next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment