Cleaning Out the Parlor: the Last of Too Many Stories

In the parlor almost everything was known, and the only surprises were the faded flowers found pressed between the pages of the books. It is known that flowers meant much more in those days, and for a longer time, a remembrance of a happy occasion – an occasion not to be forgotten. Some of the flowers were roses.

The flowers had been put there so long ago that even Grandma could not remember where they had come from, or how they had gotten there. “Was that the one I got in Chicago? On the Navy Pier?,” she asked her daughters. “You remember, the summer we were there? Visiting Jo?” Or had the flowers been put there by her Mother, Marie, when her Mother was still young. Perhaps living in the old country? An accompanying photo didn’t look like it had been taken on the Island, after all.

So sometimes no one knew or remembered why the flowers had been put there, but other times there would be a message written on the edge of the page where the flower was found, by the person who had put the flower there, written in the old language. A bit of a clue?

We asked Grandma about the messages written in Danish, would she tell us what they said? She looked at the script and took a second to read it although her Danish was not all that good. She looked at us and said no, she would not be telling us what the messages were, what they said, what they meant. The messages had been personal and private between her Mother and Father when they were young, she said, as we sat on the floor at her feet. They were messages that we should not know about, or be able to understand if we knew. Grandma had smiled when she read the messages, and for a brief moment she had looked past us at something that was not in the parlor. Perhaps to a different time. Then we all knew what the flowers had meant, and why the flowers meant enough to be saved. “No, you can’t know this, unless you find someone else who reads Danish.” she smiled, “It”s a secret.” The Aunts had both sighed and giggled when they heard that, they were old after all, teenagers, and thought they knew things about life no one else knew. But I was sure of only one thing, I knew I had had a close call. I had nearly heard about love stuff, phooie!

As time went on, I was finally allowed in the parlor by myself. I had become a trustee you see, and word went out that there was nothing I could hurt in there. I began to spend long hours in the parlor during the summer looking at books I could not understand because they were written in Danish, or some other language I did not understand, like English. I didn’t know how to read yet, you know, but was picking up a few words here and there. So I confined myself to looking for pictures in books that had few. There were not many pictures in the books in the parlor, and some had none at all, so I had a hard time understanding why people thought books were all that good. Just give me something with a lot of pictures, like a Life Magazine. That was a magazine right up my alley, especially one that had a picture of that Veronica Lake from far away Hollywood. I knew enough about life to know a good-looking woman when I saw one.

Soon I began to notice that things in the parlor were disappearing, and it became easier to walk through the parlor to the dining room table. The books and bookcases disappeared, then the piano and the overstuffed chairs, the cabinets and small tables. I never saw the things as they disappeared and didn’t ask where the things went or why, after being told by a stern looking Aunt Lue, “That’s none of your beeswax.” Beeswax? Now that was a new one for me, what was Beeswax, anyway? But I guessed I was on dangerous ground regardless of what beeswax was, and I figured it was not wise to ask where the things had gone. I would operate in the dark as usual, the last to know anything. But I missed the piano most of all, the day it left.

Grandma said she didn’t really like the old things that much anymore. Oh, they were all right in their day, but now everything needed to be polished and dusted all the time, which was a lot of work and tired her out. A lot of elbow grease went into that, she said, and she didn’t have all that much grease left to spread around. “You know how that is, don’t you? Would you like to do it? Dust and polish everything? You can, you know, I’ll show you how, and I’ll watch you do it just to make sure you get it right.” Grandma was tiring out, and was always asking me those questions about anything that needed doing. Questions I could not answer. I didn’t know what elbow grease was, anyway. I’d look in the attics, and perhaps I’d find some there. Perhaps I’d find it with the Beeswax.

But the house needed to be kept open which took money, and by then Grandma had lost two husbands and had little income. She had bad luck with the husbands, and had used up the only two that had been allotted to her by whoever did the allotments. But her second family, those known as half-this, and half-that’s, were still in school, or could not be married off because their young men were at war. So the furniture in the parlor was let go, piece by piece.

At last there came a time when the parlor was finally empty of everything with one notable exception, the beautiful dinning room table with its matching chairs and its crocheted table cloth had stayed in the parlor for a longer time. It stayed until the very last minute, but then had finally disappeared along with everything else. I went into the parlor one afternoon to sit at the table to look at pictures and do some important coloring, but the table had gone. I hope it can still be found on the Island, which is where it belongs, after all.

Then the war was over and the Aunts started to leave, going to their own houses to make their own homes, finally married off. Aunt Lue was the first to go, marrying just plain Bill of Wisconsin Rapids, a man who spent the rest of his life making paper, and being nice to everyone he ever met.

Then I was left with only Aunt Helen for a short time. Aunt Helen had worried about being the last to leave. It could be said that she was not the pretty one so was harder to get rid of, but it has to be reported that Aunt Lue was not the pretty one, either. No, Aunt Helen was smart and had a sharp tongue like her Aunt Jo, but at long last someone came by and snapped her up, a lonely sailor home from the war. Wally, of the Island. Wally would spend the rest of his life wanting to go to the next place that sounded good, and being gruff to everyone he met unless they liked trucks. But he would become a life long friend to all who had earned him.

Uncle Don left after coming home for a short visit after the war. He had seemed mad at everyone and hard to talk to by anyone when he got home from Europe, and soon went back into the Air Force and got married. I suppose either of those things could have made him mad.

But then Grandma left too. One night she finally used up all the life that had been allotted to her. It should be said that it had been a life full of grace, but it must be said that it had not been a life of ease. It had only been a life that was typical to many Islanders in those days. She got up when it was still dark on most mornings, and went to bed when it was dark most of the nights of her life. One of her few luxuries was a rocker to sit in when she listened to the radio, and a bed warmer in the winter. She let me carry the bed warmer up the dark stairs some nights after I became trusted, and the glow of the coals would light our way, “I’ve got it, Grandma. Can you see OK?” With both of us in our nightshirts, down to the floor.

While I knew her she was a seamstress, and sewed dresses for women of the Island. But she had not asked for much, I suppose, and probably had gotten far less than she deserved. That was the style of the day, the way of life on Washington Island for most. But I doubt many Islanders would have traded their lives with anyone else, to be in any other place, or any other time.

By then the house was nearly empty, and the empty parlor became my bedroom until remodeling of the house started, and I slept where the piano had once stood. But soon the wall between the parlor and living room was torn down, and I was back upstairs in Grandma’s bedroom with my brother who got the aunt’s bed.

So finally the parlor had disappeared like everything that had been in it, and became part of a much larger living room and a new downstairs bedroom. Who had parlors anymore, anyway? This all happened after we bought the house from Grand Aunt Jo from Chicago, who by then was bringing up boxes of Melt-a-Way candies each summer, if the weather was cool enough so the chocolate would not melt on the bus ride from Chicago. The house received a new basement, but the old cellar was left in its place as an important reminder of the past. I remember the house as it was, and I remember the parlor, best of all.

Not that long after most of the remodeling of the house on Airport Road was finished, a death in the family caused the house to be cleaned out again, and sold again, to the consternation of all of the Aunts and Uncles. All were angry, it has to be said, including Grand Aunt Jo from Chicago. She couldn’t believe it, she said, that she would never be able to visit the house again, so she was the maddest of them all. Of course you should understand that Grand Aunt Jo knew the house when she was a child, when the house was young, and had lost more memories than any of the others. But the family never returned to the Island again, at least all together.

I took Aunt Jo’s complaint, and the complaints of all of the others in turn as I visited each of the relatives at various times. After all, I had become the one most logical to complain to, because I was there when the house was sold.

Aunt Lue had turned into a special case. She had surprised me by saying that now she hated the Island and everything about it, and would never return, and it’s true that she didn’t until late in her life. She said she had to go to visit the graves with Aunt Jo from Chicago, who had become too elderly to travel alone. But then she admitted that she had been wrong about the Island and had enjoyed the old places, and could not wait to return. But I don’t think she ever did.

But it is important to understand that the house had been left in good hands, for others to enjoy, and another family grew up there with their own stories. The house has changed but not really changed that much, still recognizable but not quite the same, and certainly better than it was before. A maple tree is gone from the front yard now, the one that used to rub and bang against the house near Grandmother’s dormer window in a hard blow, planted too close to the house by her Father and Mother, Lars Peter and Marie. Grandma had always wondered if the tree should stay, or go.

The houses I knew as a child are still there in the old neighborhood, along with a few new ones that have sprouted up. But all of the houses in these stories are now old, all over a hundred I believe, so the new houses have a way to go to build their own histories. But all the old neighbors are also gone, Allie Arendt, Ole and Caroline Erickson, Andy and Myrtle Justinger, and last but not least, Vernie Richter.

And all of the relatives and the dog who lived in the house on Airport Road are also gone, including Grand Aunt Jo from Chicago. But all their stories have been told as I remember them, and are mostly true, at least in my mind.

So there is probably no big happy ending to the stories, there are only happy memories of people who lived and grew up on Washington Island. As far as these stories are concerned, it’s as my Grand Mother Carrie Jacobson Stover Johnson would have said, “That is all there is to that, there isn’t anymore, at least for now.”

Last of a series by Dave McCormick

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