Blanche Fisher
This is about my great-grandmother on my dad’s side. She was my granddad’s mom (I think). It was fun to read through. I received this from my Aunt Mary Ann (my father’s sister).
Blanche Fisher
by Arta Johnson
When I knew
my grandmother, Blanche, she was renting a small two-story house on Memorial Drive and 3rd Street NW. The Bow River
ran along the south side of Memorial
Drive. From
the sidewalk that paralleled the raid, a long pathway leading up to the door of
the house, which had both a basement underneath of it, and a gable on top of
the main floor. I had already figured out that my father didn’t really approve
of women who wore a lot of make up, nor of those who painted their nails. And so it was with great interest that I went
upstairs in that house, to watch my Aunt Elaine paint her nails, to watch her drawing
the scarlet nail polish carefully down each finger nail, blowing on it to help
the drying process. A vivid memory, her
deep red nails and the cream she rubbed onto the backs of her hands and up and
down her forearms.
Grandmother
had long hair, long gray hair braided and wrapped around her head, severe
looking to me. When she brushed out that
hair, it was full and rich, flowing down her back. She used full strokes of her arm to get to
the bottom of that waist length, wavy hair.
Then back up it went, into those severe plaits.
At Christmas
time, Grandmother had a scene on a buffet: eight reindeer running across the
top snow and her Christmas cards stacked in the sleigh behind the deer. I was not allowed to play with them.
One day she
was in the kitchen cooking, something that smelled so good. I must not have
been allowed in the kitchen for I remember asking her from the door of her
living room, what it was she was making.
“Chums for meddlers” she said. I
am sure I saw popcorn balls, or puffed wheat balls. I thought she had some kind of mystery going
on and that they must be for a surprise later on. I didn’t get any of them. Since then I have often wondered what chums
for meddlers means.
My
grandmother had a beautiful contralto voice, one that was stage worthy. And I used to have the wooden case for that
music that she sang all of those years.
For Christmas, I passed that wooden case on to you, Catherine. At any rate, I don’t know where this memory
comes from, for I could not know it first-hand, but Blanche did not like to
lend her music. Other readers have
misconstrued this statement, thinking that I am saying Blanche was selfish. I read her reticence another way. She had little discretionary income. Some of that income she invested in new sheet
music, which she sang to serve others.
That is the loss she regretted.
Read knowing how poor she was, and how expensive music is.
My father
used to tell this story about Blanche’s voice.
She often sang in church, a deep rich contralto voice, but she never
spoke in church. When Doral was in the
Bishopric, he asked her to speak in church rather than sing. “Oh, I can’t do that.” She said. He persisted.
She accepted. I wish I could remember the name of the talk
she gave, for he told this story often.
Perhaps her name for the talk was “Women in the Bible”. At any rate, Doral conveyed his amazement
whenever he told this story, his wonder at her the hours she had spent,
gathering so much material out of the Bible, using only the subject: women.
When Blanche
died my mother inherited three items that I know of: Blanche’s wedding ring, her rocking chair and
the music case. When Doral’s and Wyora’s
possessions were distributed, Grandma Scoville’s music case was one of the
items left at the end, for the taking. I
transported it home where it housed music by the piano for many years. One day Suzanne Truba came to my house, went straight
to the music case, rubbed her hands up and down the scratched and gouged sides
of it and said, “I love antiques. Where
did you get this one? What is the date
on it? Look at the workmanship. The
tongue and groove shelving.”
I had been
thinking that it was about time for the music case to be retired to the back
alley, to the garbage, to tell the truth.
“Oh, it is nothing”, I said. “When
you no longer want it, Arta,” she said, “Call me.” The 100 years of markings on the aging music
case, took on a new beauty to me.
As to the
other two items in that inheritance to my mother, my daughters and I wore the thick
gold band off and on, depending on whose finger it fit at the time, until the
band was lost. The other item, the rocking
chair had thick wooden slats, and the rocking chair runners had been replaced
many times over the years. As soon as
they were repaired, it seems another child stood on the runner for a ride and
it broke again. When I had more children
and furniture than room in my house, and something had to go, I gave that
rocking chair to my sister, Darla.
Life could
not have been easy for Blanche. She had
eight children and was widowed when her husband fell from scaffolding in the
sugar factory in Raymond. She was paid
$50 compensation, if I remember the figure correctly from my father’s telling. And if I do not have the correct figure,
still I do remember the tone of his voice when he would tell that story:
compensation — $50 to a widow and her children for their loss.
My mother was
not 24 yet, when her father died. Wyora was
the second child in the family, so there must have been a group of teenagers
that had to make their way into the world with Blanche as their single parent. Blanche’s sister, Bertha, was married to
Woolford Shields, a farmer with livestock.
Woolford would kill an animal in the fall and give some of the meat to
the Scoville’s. That is Doral’s story
too, a story that went along with my introduction to Ian Shields, my Mormon
friend in Salmon Arm, who is the grandson of that man.
Blanche
became a practical nurse. I don’t know
how. And I don’t know anything about
where she worked and when. I can
remember the shock I felt when my mother told me that Blanche said it was OK to
have weak tea if you were sick, that it would settle your stomach. I knew that couldn’t be right, no matter how
sick a person was. My mother tried to
explain that it was all right by saying, well, it was very, very weak tea.
I don’t know
if Blanche was more or less severe with her children than her neighbours. Keith joined the navy when he was young –
probably at 16. About Elsworth, her
other son, many times Doral told me that on Christmas day she made him go out
and shovel the snow off of the walks. I
don’t think I ever held that against Blanche.
I understood Doral to be telling me a fable that was springing from a
grain of truth, that there are some rules that can be relaxed to bring the most
happiness possible to everyone, and that it is a parent’s job to do that.
Doral also
told this story of Blanche – at a birthday party a beautiful cake was prepared
for her. She was reticent to blow out
the candles, but the guests at the party prevailed on her and she did it with
such gusto that she blew out her false teeth.
Doral did
think Blanche put too much pressure on her children. When he married Wyora he felt she had been
bossed all of her life, and made to do the household drudgery. She ground her teeth at nights and Doral said
she couldn’t make a decision – not even about which pillow to buy at the store,
without asking someone’s advice. He
wanted her to be as free as possible, and encouraged Wyora, always supporting
what she thought should be done. What do
you think, Wyora? And then that is what
he would help her do.
Sorry about
this story going “off” Catherine, but one memory leads to another. My mother was the ultimate of compassionate
service, giving of their means and her energy widely. I never heard Doral complain about the time
she gave to others, nor about the cost or the means to do so. He stood quietly behind her, supplying her
with a car, the gas and total freedom, and while there is no designation called
Mr. Relief Society, surely he was that.
But back to
Blanche. I do remember her babysitting
Earl and me when we lived in Crescent
Heights. I do not know where my mother and dad were,
but Blanche prepared a carrot and raisin salad.
I told her I did not want to eat it.
I must have had a sixth sense about how that would taste to a four year
old. She made me eat it anyway, and
after a few bites, I gagged and threw up.
When I did, I can remember thinking something like, just what I thought
– I knew I didn’t like this. Now my
grandmother really knows I don’t like this.
But she berated me for throwing up.
I must have got in trouble from her, and so I didn’t like her much. When I had my own first baby, my mother said
to me, “Arta, are you giving her enough little drinks of water during the
day? My mother used to say to me of you,
Wyora give that poor little thing a drink of water.” When Wyora told me that anecdote, this was the
first time that I thought that Grandmother Scoville might have liked me in any
fashion.
When Doral
built Wyora the cabin at Shuswap lake, one of the first things I heard her say
was said, “Oh, look at the beautiful cupboard, this lovely cabin. How my mother and father would have loved
visit here, Doral.”
(To be continued : — and as a postscript, my googling to
find the meaning of chums for meddlars has only brought me this: There is an old saying, "Layholes for Meddlers" – which might mean "Traps for
Nosey People". A "Layhole" could
come from "Laying in wait" to trap someone and "Meddlers" are people who get
involved in things that do not, or should not, concern them.
There is a similar saying, ‘lay o’s
fer nosy meddlers’. “Lay o’s fer nosy meddlers is the diminutive of ‘lay overs
for nosy meddlers’ - as in laying a cane over someone’s hand or back for being
nosy.)
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