Cathy's Memories 

Grandma Lundwall and All, by Cathy 

 I first remember seeing Grandma Lundwall when Aunt Nancy brought me over to see her when I was 5 and she lived in a tiny, little house out on Ice Lake Road with Aunt Inga, Grandpa’s brother's wife.  If I think really hard, I can hear Grandma's high-pitched yet gentle chuckle when she spoke with Aunt Inga--I think it was in English.  (Later on, I remember Aunt Nancy having Grandma's sisters over to her cottage on Chicaugoan Lake and that they were all speaking Swedish, even Aunt Nancy!  I think it was there that someone told me my name was "Katrina" or "Katrinka" in Swedish.)

Back to the little house, though, I remember there being one room that seemed large to me but was probably actually quite small and that it was both a kitchen and living room, and off to the side was a bedroom (there may have been two bedrooms, though) and a tiny bathroom.  I remember a big table off to the side and two rocking chairs that faced the front door.  I think there was a steep stairway to a loft upstairs, though I don't think I ever spent the night there or was even allowed up there.  

I am grandchild #9, there being Davey, Nancy Adele, Gerald, Roger, Ron, Ted, Eugene, and Doris ahead of me, so spending the night with Grandma in that tiny house was probably never an option, at least not in my spot in the lineup of grandkids.  I remember the house was very clean, very plain, with hard, wood furniture.  

Outside the house there sat a little shed, alongside of which was a metal washtub where Grandma would collect rain water with which to wash her long hair (more on her hair later).  

At least once, Janet and I crossed Ice Lake road to pick tiny, wild strawberries for Grandma--I wonder how many we actually brought back to her, as I do remember vividly how wonderfully sweet they tasted and how Janet hunkered over a little patch she had discovered, telling me to go find my own patch.  I like to think Grandma may have given us each a sugar cookie for our efforts when we got back.  

I think it was there in that little house I saw Grandma roll out dough for cinnamon rolls on that big table and watched her dot the dough with butter and then sprinkle it with cinnamon, sugar and walnut pieces before rolling it up and cutting it.  The powdered sugar frosting on the finished product was light, not overloaded like Cinnabon's but more like Ikea's.  Those are my memories of Grandma in the little house on Ice Lake Road.

I should probably interject at this point how I ended up in the UP with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Rhiney at the tender age of 5.  So, my story necessarily starts in Chicago, where my mom (Margaret) and Aunt Violet moved to after Violet graduated from high school.  I think this must have been in 1935.  My mother graduated from high school the year before Violet and hung around waiting for her for a year before they set out for Chicago together.  

They worked at various jobs during those years.  One of my mother's jobs was working as a housekeeper, and Violet worked as a telephone operator, I believe.  

So marriage, babies Roger and Ron happened before the war took my father away.  I'm not sure if Uncle Steve was in the service or not or just where he was at the time--oh, he must have been home because then there was Ted, born in 1944(?).  Anyway, our father apparently came home from the war damaged (PTSD they call it now) with an alcohol problem that would soon tear our family apart.

Before that happened, though, along I came in 1947 and then Paul in 1950.  The divorce happened, and Mom went to work full time as a comptometer operator.  We lived on South Drake Street in Chicago at the time, and our landlady upstairs from us filled in as daycare provider for us.  

Summers with us out of school, though, were difficult for our mother to manage, and so my mother called upon her sisters back in the UP to help her out during those times and sent us up to Michigan for the summers.  Aunt Nancy would meet the train in Channing and then, days later, would bring Roger up to Trout Creek to stay with Aunt Doris and Uncle Dave and the boys.  I would stay with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Rhiney, and for the first few years, Bud and Mary Ann were there also.  Maybe this sounds like a sad little story, but really, it wasn't.  

Truly, I felt so loved, protected and cherished that I didn't get homesick unless I left Aunt Nancy's home to stay overnight at a friend's house next door or even at cousins'.   Times during the day with Mary Hartley (the friend next door) and with cousins from time to time were just so much fun that I didn't have time to feel homesick then.  

There were times out in the backyard at Janet Jean's, making tents out of blankets on Aunt Joyce's clotheslines, putting up with Lloydie and Georgie; times at Aunt Janet's where we rode bikes around and went down to the school to slide down the fire escape (Carol would always generously offer me Ruth Ann’s bike to ride); picnic times when Aunt Violet and family would come up for a few weeks (or was it days?--summers were so long then) and stay in a rented cottage.  I don't remember Aunt Alice and Uncle Earl there for picnics until the later years.  

I especially remember the picnics, though, when all the relatives--Uncle Ward and Aunt Margaret (her hearty laugh set the tone for the day); Aunt Doris and Uncle Dave (how many fish did Eugene have by the Fourth of July?); Uncle Ken and Aunt Rose and their toothbrush-tasting little boys; Uncle Marlin and Aunt Madeline and their little ones) would arrive in the morning and excitement was definitely in the air.  

We did our summer treks for five years, Roger and I.  I think Paul came up the last year and stayed with Aunt Janet and Uncle Bill.  It really didn't hit me much that I was away from my mother until I arrived back in Chicago at the end of summer and would again hear the Chicago trains clickety-clacking and the whistles blowing at night.  What soothing sounds those were!

As I was about to enter the 5th grade, my mother moved us all back to Stambaugh from Chicago, and Grandma (and, for a while, Uncle Ray) lived with us.  My mother bought an old two-story house on 2nd Street in Stambaugh that needed fixin' up, and so Aunt Janet and Uncle Bill as well as Aunt Joyce and Uncle Lloyd went to work on the inside with paint, wallpaper, and probably many tools making the inside livable and also pretty.  

They had plans to paint the outside later on, but this was not to be as everyone's responsibilities shifted when the mine took Uncle Lloyd's life the winter of Janet's and my 6th grade year, leaving a huge, devastating hole in our family.  

We lived in that house on 2nd Street for three years.  I think Grandma was there for two of those years.  During that time, I see in my mind's eye Grandma in an old-fashioned bib apron covering a print dress, thick hose on her legs at all times, those black shoes with stout heels that she always wore.  She seemed to always wear a "broach" in the V of her dresses.

I think she must've helped my mom a lot with housework and keeping an eye on us, especially that Paul kid (I still love to tease my little brother), who was a very busy little boy.  It was also my job to keep an eye on Paul, a responsibility I often shirked.  I remember Paul'd be bouncing around the house doing kid things and Grandma'd tease him that he was "wound up like a screw."

I remember Grandma sitting on a chair in the kitchen, fixing her hair which had never been cut (why in the kitchen, I don't know--my own mother would never allow me to comb my hair in the kitchen for fear of getting hair in the food, of course), leaning over slightly from the waist left and right to braid first one side and then the other before twisting the braids around her head, securing them with hair pins.  Sometimes she would put on a hat over all this, before going to church probably, and then she would poke sharp hat pins through to her braids, though for a while I would cringe, thinking that she was getting awfully near her head with those.

One time, Grandma asked me if I could thread a needle for her, which I could do so easily in those days.  She told me that she thought I was going to grow up to be a seamstress.  All this because I could thread a needle.  I'm still waiting for that to happen.

In later years, I can see Grandma sitting in a chair in the living room, cutting carpet rags or playing solitaire.  She began to grow vague and far away as "hardening of the arteries"/Alzheimer's took the life in her from her and from us.  I will always miss her kind, gentle ways.