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GAZETTE STAFF / NEW YORK CITY
Fiction: Grandma Stella
-a story of hope-
by Ernest Barteldes
randma
Stella has always been an example of strength to me, which I have always
admired. At 88, she is still energetic and extremely lucid, and her
cheerful and homely manner shows no hint of a woman who, for as long as
she has lived, has always coped with tragedy.
So it was after the September 11 incidents that changed the history of
the city where I live in - New York - that I decided to, as soon as I
could, get a breath of air and see Grandma Stella in our native Kansas,
where she, along with my grandfather, who is still going strong, have
built the unbreakable towers that make our family ties.
I took a few days off work and flew down to Kansas City, where I took a
rental car and drove down to Lawrence, a small but thriving city that
lives around KU and their brave Jayhawks.
Ironically, I was the only Baxter kid not to go to KU - I earned my
degree abroad, and later moved to New York, hoping to start a Master's
course some time in the future.
It was after an hour's drive that I parked outside Grandma's driveway
and hugged her as I noticed that she'd be waiting for me just outside the
front door.
"Nice seeing you again, Grandma", I said as I smelled the scent of
freshly brewed coffee that had drifted from the kitchen.
"Nice to see you well", she said with her firm, sweet voice. "Come on
in and I'll give you a cup of coffee, granny style".
"I knew you'd be all right, " said Grandma while I sipped her strongly
brewed coffee, unlike the kind that are served in delis around Manhattan.
When I inquired her why she never worried about my personal safety after
the attacks - a time when all the telephone lines were clogged up with
relatives from out of town, she said, "You know, my experience has taught
me that no news are good news."
I smiled as I thought how she would be right - her long life is a clear
example.
Grandma Stella was born Stella Hays, who came from a from a typical
Kansas family - her father had been a banker, and her mother took care of
the house. "That's how things worked out back then", she would say. She
was the sixth and last child of her family, which had been marked by
tragedy early on.
"I had an uncle on my father's side who responded to President Hoover's
call for arms", she told me once. "He was the first one of our own to
leave his life before his time was due," she added with a sigh.
I once saw a yellowing picture of Harvey - Grandma Stella's only memory
of that long-gone relative. Dressed in full gear, he posed next to a young
Red Cross ambulance driver - the same who would, several months later,
take him in agony from the scene where he was hurt. He died in the
hospital just 18 hours after that.
"That's Ernest Hemingway in that picture", Grandma boasted to whoever
she showed it to.
"He wasn't much of a writer then. He'd written a few stories for the
Kansas City Star at that time, but of course the war changed that. "
I asked Grandma how her father had taken his brother's tragic loss.
"He was devastated", said Grandma. "He never overcame Harvey's death,
and he took up drinkin'. I guess whiskey became second nature to him for a
while after the war."
"Dad's drinkin' took a terrible toll on all of us, but thank goodness
Mom was strong enough and kept us together during that time."
"Mom moved back to her parent's farmhouse in Topeka and told Dad to
sober up or forget about us - even if that meant taking up a job in order
to support us."
"One day Dad came up to the house, begging Mom to come back home", she
recalled. Mom then went outside, and, from what I remember, she told him
to choose which love of his life he wanted to keep: the lady in the bottle
or his wife, and then left him outside wondering about the decision that
would change his life for better or for worse."
"Dad eventually sobered up and came back, but I guess their
relationship was never the same. After all", she laughed, "they never had
another child after I was born. "
Her mother learned from her family's ordeal that one should never give
in to grief. "Self-pity is too destructive", she always says, and it is
better to look at things from a more practical side and to see the
positive side of life. "At least that's how she taught us to live our own
lives."
It was a sunny summer day in June 1937 when Stella Hays became Mrs.
Otto Baxter. "They thought I'd be an old maid since I only got married
when I was 24 - most of my high school friends already had kids by then -
things were so much different back then."
Grandpa was a recent graduate from Harvard when he returned home to
take over his father's grain processing business, which wasn't doing all
that well after the 1929 Wall Street Crash, like so many others around the
nation.
"We didn't have much of a honeymoon. We just took a train to New York
and spent a few days there. Otto didn't want to give a bad example to his
employees (many of whom were related to him) in such a bad time for the
country, and he soon returned and buried himself in his work."
"Our firstborn, Otto Jr., was born two years later, shortly before
Hitler invaded Poland. John, your father, came a year and a half later,
and then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor."
"Your grandfather was drafted and was later commissioned to a Navy ship
on the Pacific front. It was then that our family had our second brush
with tragedy."
It was in the fall of 1943 that my grandfather's letters stopped coming
in. Grandma then received a visit from Navy officials to tell her that her
husband was "missing in action"- meaning that he could have been killed or
had been taken as a prisoner. They told her that there was little they
could do but hope for the best.
She then remembered the lessons of her childhood, and tried to get on
with life the best she could.
Whenever the kids asked about their father, she would simply tell them
about letters and heroic feats that only existed in her imagination as
news came in from the front.
At night, as she went to bed, she forced herself to sleep as she
struggled to believe in the stories she'd made up while trying not to give
in to her worries and her grief.
In order to supplement the family income (and also to get her mind off
everything), Grandma took a job at the library at The University of Kansas
- which she held until the end of the war. The kids stayed at her mother's
home, who was more than helpful in cheering up the kids.
I never knew my great-grandmother,
Barbara Hays. From what I've heard, she had a tough character, but she
also knew how to deal with people. "A simple walk around the Town Square
could be a wonderful experience of discovery and a lesson in history that
could not compare to anything else", my father used to say. "That's how we
coped with dad being away and with mom working - by exploring our every
day streets. "Grandma Stella must have inherited much of that, for she has
an incredible storytelling talent - the story of an "accident" my
grandfather had with Korean spices in the mid-sixties is amusing to hear
every time - even though it has been heard several times.
An atomic bomb ended the war in the Pacific, and that led to the
release and discharge of the POWs who were in the hands of the Japanese. A
telegram later told the Baxters that their son, now a war hero, was alive
and well, and my grandfather returned home in the second week of October,
1945 as he received his discharge from the Navy.
Their third baby boy, who was named Franklin in honor of the man who
conducted the country for more than twelve years and had recently passed
away - was born on July 14, 1946 - almost exactly nine months later to the
date of my grandfather's return from the war.
Their final bundle of joy was Juliet, who was born in 1953, when
Grandma Stella was almost forty.
Juliet was instantly Grandma's favorite (although she never admitted to
that) . The house had been filled with boys, and now she had her little
girl to pamper and spoil - actions that she'd later regret as years went
by. But for the time being, everything was bliss. Her husband came back
home alive, and business was great with all the exports of grain to
Europe. The country was working again, and nothing seemed to beat the new
American pride created by the post-war generation that would be later
known as the Baby Boomers.
Although the fifties were the beginning of a time when the world seemed
to go crazy with the birth of rock and roll, life seemed not to change in
Kansas - in fact, little has changed even today. As I enjoyed the last few
leisurely moments of summer at my grandma's porch, I noticed that even the
house a few blocks away where I had spent my first years of life in during
the late sixties and early seventies had scarcely changed - it seems to me
that someone just swapped the name in the mailbox and everything else was
left in the same way.
Dad and Uncle Otto did join a rock and roll band that played gigs in
High School. Dad played guitar and sang, while his older brother sat in a
stool behind the drum kit. From that band, only the instruments survive as
mementos of that era - The drumkit is in my grandpa's basement, while I
inherited my dad's Gibson.
Things eventually moved on, and as the sixties dawned the elder Baxter
boys went to college, while the younger kids grew up in what seemed to be
a stable, loving household - at least for the time being.
The sixties came with Camelot - a dashing, young Bostonian who came as
a promise of change in times of trouble brought in by the Earl
Warren-enforced desegregation laws in The South. A new war was beginning,
and a new era had dawned - when communism was suddenly a threat to
America.
After President Kennedy's assassination Vietnam started for real. The
streets were full of protesters, and Bob Dylan was one of many voices who
opposed to the war - which would influence many young college students.
When President Nixon bombed Cambodia, several student organizations
rallied the campuses in protest, and authorities were called in to keep
the order. In Kent State things got out of hand, and National Guardsmen
ended up firing on the students in the incident that would go into history
as the Kent State Killings.
Among the dead was senior student Frank Baxter, a passionate member of
a local antiwar student organization.
As many middle-class youngsters of his age, he'd escaped the draft by
going to college. His school of choice was Kent State, in the Ohio
heartland. As he met the more political students on campus and got
influenced by all the antiwar anthems and songs, he decided that he had to
do something to stop the war and "bring the boys back home".
His passion grew stronger and stronger, and more than once Uncle Frank
spent the night in jail for civil disobedience.
Most of the college students were then basically ignored by the
government. However, protests became more violent, and later authorities
quit laughing and took them seriously.
All of a sudden, a faraway war that had generated so many opponents
throughout the world hit home, and the Baxters, who'd sent their youngest
son to school, now had to perform the daunting task of burying him.
All the remaining members of the family gathered together for what
would be the last time in years to lay their fallen member to rest. Dad
and Uncle Otto grabbed a guitar and sang, in tears, one of their younger
brother song, The Beatles' "Revolution", which the British band had
released an year earlier - ironically, a song of peace for times of war.
Ironically, Frank was conceived as my grandparents, in their own way,
celebrated the end of a war. All of a sudden, a promising young man was
mowed down by his own fellow Americans as he fought to preserve the same
peace that had brought him to the world.
TO BE CONTINUED
Ernest Barteldes is an ESL and Portuguese teacher. In addition to that,
he is a freelance writer whose work has been published by The Greenwich
Village Gazette, The Staten Island Advance, The Staten Island Register,
The SI Muse, Brazzil magazine,The Villager , GLSSite, Entertainment Today
and other publications. He lives in Staten Island, NY. He can be reached
at ebarteldes@nycny.net
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