Their friends called them Margaret and Harrison. Margaret was born Margaret Louise Walker. Harrison was really Carter Harrison. Kate, Ruth, Eugenia, Harry and Mildred called them mom and dad. To my sisters, cousins, and me they were Grandma and Grandpa Barner (AKA Poppy).
They lived in Kentucky where my mom and Aunt Ruth were born. They had a two-story Georgian style brick farm-house in the country just outside of Smith’s Grove.
Mom was born in the family home in 1920. Aunt Ruth followed two years later. The house was heated by large fireplaces located in each of the main rooms. They had an outhouse, got their water through a pump, and kept their food cold in a small cave a few yards from the back door.
Ruth and I had the opportunity to visit the homestead twice. The first time the house had been abandoned and was in disrepair, stripped of is original fireplace mantels, wood trim and grand staircase. Years later, we revisited after it had been restored by a distant cousin. He was able the hunt down, restore, and return much of the original woodwork, including the staircase. He furnished it with pieces from prior to the Civil War which was when it was originally constructed.
Grandpa raised cash crops and had several animals. When Mom was four years old, the animals developed hoof and mouth disease. Grandpa killed all of his livestock, burned their remains, and took his two daughters and wife north to Michigan.
Grandpa found work and they lived on a series of creamery farms around Mt. Clemens. Years later, my dad teased Grandpa that he moved from farm to farm “each time the rent was due”. Ultimately, Grandpa started his own business and settled into a house in Detroit on Phillip Street.
That’s their first home that I remember. We had family gatherings there. We celebrated everything. Christmas, Easter, and everyone’s birthday. Everyone included the five siblings, their husbands and wives, and ten grandchildren. (Two more were born after Grandma died.) Grandpa ran his business, Barner Heating, out of that home and its garage.
I always considered my mom’s parents to be my rich grandparents and my dad’s my poor ones. I knew nothing of their income other than the fact that Grandpa Barner had his own business, and Grandma Barner wore red nail polish. She’s the only woman who I knew that wore nail polish all of the time. She wore a mink stole in the winter and the mink still had its eyes and claws. Grandpa wore a suit to most gatherings and smoked a pipe with cherry blend tobacco. They were always well dressed. That all seemed rich to me.
While many of the women that I knew wore “house dresses”, I never saw Grandma Barner in one. Instead, she had a “maid” that cleaned her house each Friday. I met two of them – Sadie and Lola. They were paid a wage, lunch, and bus fare. If we happened to be around for lunch, we ate in the dining room and Sadie or Lola ate in the kitchen. We ate the same food – just in different rooms. Before mom learned to drive, she took my sisters and me on the train from Royal Oak to Detroit and Grandma picked us up at the train station. We always made the trip on a Friday, and that’s how I was introduced to Sadie and Lola. Grandma served fried fish and fried corn bread on those Friday dinners because Dad and Mom were razing us as Catholics. It’s the only time that I’ve had corn bread prepared that way, and I loved it.
While many grandmothers baked cookies, ours painted in oils and embroidered elaborate works. She taught my cousins and me how to embroider as well. She began her painting with “painting by numbers” and then moved on to painting beautiful pieces of china. They are wonderful pieces of art that even an untrained eye like mine can appreciate.
They moved to another home in Detroit on Troester. Grandpa bought the house from a family friend. The house had a fire in the upper apartment and their friends lost their son and daughter-in-law because of smoke inhalation. The friends didn’t want to live in the house any longer, so they sold it to Grandpa and Grandma and they had the home repaired. The house had two built-in safes. The largest one was located in a cupboard in the walk-in pantry and the second was in the living room behind a false piece of floor trim. I didn’t know anyone with a safe, and they had two. This confirmed their wealth for me.
Not long after they moved from one house to the other, my mom received a phone call from Grandpa early one December morning. Grandpa awoke in the morning and Grandma had passed during the night. They determined that she died because of a heart attack.
One key memory that sticks with me was that Grandma was a fan of an afternoon game show whose name I can’t recall. The show provided rewards to home contestants that had dollar bills whose serial numbers matched those shown on the show. While helping Grandpa reorganize the house, Mom found one hundred one dollar bills in a drawer of an end table that set next the Grandma’s favorite chair.
She was only fifty-nine when she died. I was eleven. Our family Christmas gathering in 1958 was a somber one. That first Christmas night was interupted by a “no heat” call from one of Grandpa’s customers. He wanted every family to enjoy Christmas night so we loaded up his truck, and my cousin, Gene, and I joined “Poppy” on his call.
TBC
Nice