Here's to Lula

I've been thinking about my grandmother today.  Not the one who died last month, but the one who died in 1985.  My father's mother.  I always thought of her as kind of namby-pamby.  She was older than my other grandmother, and not nearly as much fun.  Also not really into the grandkids.  There are pictures of her from high school and she looked old even then, with the finger-waves and calico dresses.  I only recently understood about her, though.  She was born just after the turn of the (last) century and lived in a little town with a bunch of relatives in Wisconsin.  She was one of like seven girls.  The only other names I can remember are Veda (who later married Pink) and Blanche, pictured below on the right.  In this photo Lula (on the left) was only about 50!

Anyway, she had it pretty tough.  She got married and had a little girl named Ruby.  Several years went by and they had a son (my dad).  Ruby was at least ten years older, I think.  My "grandfather" ran off when dad was just an infant (with the secretary from the garage where he was working, if my childhood memories are correct.  He landed in eastern Iowa.)  So Lula was left with two kids; my dad was born in 1936, so it was the throes of the Great Depression and she did the best she could.  I'm sure she probably had a high school education, but nothing more.  She worked at the big dairy in town for a long time.  My dad had all kinds of little jobs to help make ends meet.  There were aunts and uncles around (especially Uncle Paul, who was like a father to my dad) but it still must have been incredibly hard.  She never got divorced and thought of herself as still married, so of course she never dated anyone else.  Eventually my dad did a stint in the Army, and afterwards they both moved to Lyons Township in Illinois.  She moved to Mount Prospect at some point, but when I was pretty little, she moved to Kokomo to be near Ruby and her family, where she lived until she died.
I was thinking about those visits to Kokomo, mostly.  Trying to learn stick shift; at some stop sign in Indiana somewhere, with a big truck downhill behind me (probably laughing his ears off) while I popped that clutch over and over.  She lived in public housing, on the second floor.  There was, of course, a huge flight of stairs that she fell down at least once and broke her hip.  I remember sitting at the top of those stairs, eating, listening to the grownups talk (mostly about other relatives).  I'm sure she looked forward to those visits (even though my mother didn't like going) and she probably really splurged on all that meat and stuff.  I can't imagine how much harder it must have been for her as a single mother than it was for me.  I at least had Murphy Brown as a role model! {insert eye-roll here}

So in her honor, this weekend's menu will include:

• Pot Roast with potatoes, carrots and onions (overcooked)
• Puffed Cheetos
• Cream Soda
• Brach's Pick-A-Mix (if I can find it anywhere!)