Exchanging Grandma

GRANDMA ADLER

The Matriarch to her children - fairy grandmother to her grandchildren - May 1950

New to my blog? To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive.

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We all had at least two, a maternal, and a fraternal grandma. Some of us called her granny, others grams, nanny, bubby or some special name, often a term of endearment. Some of us didn’t call her anything, because we never knew her.

My three younger brothers and I had one of each; one we knew, dearly loved and adored, Father’s mother, Grandma Adler, and one we never knew. Unfortunately, our Mother’s mother died the year I was I was born.

By war’s end, Grandma Adler had been widowed nearly 10 years. Until her death, she was the family matriarch and as close to a fairy grandmother as a kid could want.

She was revered by her three children. Madeline, my father’s older sister, my dad, Walter, and Bert, his younger brother were, out of love and deep respect, beholden unto her. Father’s siblings lived in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, Aunt Madeline, Uncle Eddie and their two childrenlived, just down the hall from Grandma’s seventh floor apartment in Squirrel Hill. Uncle Bert, Aunt Edith and their two sons about ten miles away in Canonsburg.

In 1934, Dad, a bachelor for the moment, ventured south to Clarksburg, West Virginia, 120 miles further south of Grandma Adler, to start his business, Wally’s Workingman’s store. Within a year he brought his new bride to the town. Over the next ten years, she would present him with four sons and Grandma with four more grandchildren.

In those years, getting to visit with Grandma for more than a day or so was challenging. Following World War II, after closing his store Saturday night, dad often piled the six of us into his 1938 Buick and head northed for Pittsburgh. Until 1948 he was on a waiting list for a new car. It was a three hour trek, often through rain, snow and fog, up and down the narrow, winding roads that traversed the hills of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania.

After three hours in a car with four boys, no one was more pleased to reach our destination than our dear haggard mother, the matriarch-in-waiting. And no one was more pleased to see Grandma Adler than her loving daughter-in-law, Marion. But those visits were painfully short, as we had to venture south the following afternoon so, on Monday, the older boys could return to school and dad to work.

But there were several times a year when we could have Grandma Adler to ourselves and for a week or more. It was when she came south to visit us and stay at our home. However, getting her there was a challenge.

There were three options:

1. Coming by train. This would get Grandma within 20 miles of Clarksburg. Because Mother didn’t drive, dad would have to leave the store to pick her up, something he didn’t like doing when the store was open. And Grandma didn’t want him to leave the store. She seldom took the train.

2. She could fly. But the high cost of flying aside, flying in those days in a two engine, tail dragging DC 3, was at best risky. The fact the flight stopped two times on that short journey added to the anxiety of flight, not grandma’s, but her children’s. Our fairy grandmother was, among other positive traits, an adventurer and loved taking risks.

3. Driving her to Clarksburg. This became the travel mode of choice.

Father and his brother Bert came up with a simple plan; exchange grandma half way between the two cities. On a given Sunday, Uncle Bert and his family would pick up Grandma at her apartment. They would use the time to have a nice visit as they journeyed south. In the meantime, Dad and his brood would head north, with great anticipation, to meet the southbound Adlers about half way in Mount Morris, a small town just north of the West Virginia border.

It amazes me to this day how the two brothers, without the convenience of modern communication, always managed to arrive at the designated pick up point within fifteen minutes of one another. Exchanging Grandma offered another benefit; during this rendezvous the families could visit with one another. This process later often evolved, during our summer vacations, a cousin exchange as well.

Our return trip, with seven in the car, was often challenging. In the early years baby brother Bob would get sit on Grandma’s lap, lucky kid. Later, as her sons grew up, Mother would make the sacrifice and stay home, ostensibly to prepare Sunday dinner. I suspect her sacrifice was made to enjoy a bit of piece and quiet.

Soon her husband, children and Mother Adler would arrive. She knew, for the next week or so, her sons would be on their best behavior. Fairy grandmothers have a way of making that happen.