Making Do

By Christine M. Bouch in honor of her grandmother, Virginia Giardini. Birthdate: May 12, 1894

     In the summer of 1946 my grandfather arrived home on a hot summer evening with a battered, black 1930 Ford pickup truck. My grandma was ecstatic. She would no longer have to hitchhike to town. The truck's tattered bench had springs erupting everywhere through the cloth. Grandma mulled over the problem for a few minutes, raced into the house, grabbed a kitchen chair, tossed out the bench, and squarely placed the chair behind the steering wheel. If you were a passenger, you either stood and held on or found your own seat.

     My grandma made do in other ways. When my sister, my cousins, and I stayed at my grandmother's farm, we started chores at 4 a.m. Breakfast was at 6:00. Everyone who stayed at the farm had Cream of Wheat to eat. No matter what, there was no changing of the menu. Chores continued to lunchtime, followed by housework. Around 3 p.m. we would have afternoon tea. Grandma poured hot water over the same tea bag for three or four days. Before she took her first sip, she would pull out her brandy flask and pour a generous amount into the cup. Her other hand would reach into her right dress pocket to pull out her rosary beads. Fortified, she would walk over to the telephone, which had a party line, quietly lift the phone to her ear, and update herself on the private lives of others. She had few pleasures. One of those was bananas, her treats, which she hid from us. As she listened to the neighborhood gossip, I would quietly rummage through the pots and pans in the pantry foraging for these snacks, bananas. Grandma had exceptional hearing and knew precisely where I would go while she was on the phone.

     Despite long days and hard work, Grandma managed to get her rest. Early afternoon naptime meant the boogieman. Grandma told me if I got out of my chair he would kidnap me. I never really knew who the boogieman was or what he looked like, but I would be too afraid to move from the chair. After naptime it was a trip to the outhouse, which was in back of the farmhouse. The unpaved path to the outhouse cut through tall grasses and Queen Anne's Lace. The small building was two-feet wide by six-feet long, just enough room to sit down and leaf through the Montgomery Ward catalog. This catalog served to inform us of the latest household items available, and also, when crinkled, as toilet paper.

     After my grandfather died, Grandma would travel to town by bus since she could not drive. She would take me into every store, try on all the dresses and shoes on the racks, and not buy a single item. She always wore her a blue and white polka-dot dress to town. It was the same dress she wore the next day and the day after that. I cannot remember her wearing any other dress. At four in the afternoon, we would walk to the bus stop. She would give me a quarter that she had saved from returning glass bottles at two cents apiece and send me on my way home.