Sibling Assisgnment 2018.13: There Were No Bad Memories With Grandma Woolum

Christy, myself, Grandma Woolum and Bill outside her front door at her house in Spokane.

Our Grandma Woolum had a November birthday, so Christy gave us the following sibling assignment: Write about good memories with our grandmother”.

The link to Bill's writing about Grandma Woolum is here, and the link to Christy's writing about Grandma Woolum is here.

I don’t have any bad memories about our grandmother.  I am fortunate.  I only have good memories.

Grandma Woolum lived in Spokane, Washington, when I was growing up.  Spokane is about 80 miles from Kellogg.  We often took trips to Spokane to visit grandma.  I remember spending a lot of time in Spokane at Grandma Woolum’s house growing up.

Grandma didn’t have a huge house.  On her first floor there was only one bedroom and one bathroom.  She slept in her bedroom, and, if we stayed, Mom and Dad usually slept on the hide a bed in the living room.  Sometimes I was on the roll a way bed in the living room, and sometimes I would share a bed with Grandma Woolum. 

Grandma had an apartment in the upstairs of her house.  If she had renters, we wouldn’t use the upstairs of her house.  But if not, sometimes we would have access to the upstairs for staying up there, or using the bathroom and bathtub.  Grandma’s bathroom and bathtub on the main floor were very small.  But as a child, I didn’t mind.

A lot of my memories about Grandma centered around food.  Grandma often made fried chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes and gravy.  For a long time a remember this really old refrigerator in her kitchen with a very small freezer section.  Eventually she got a more modern refrigerator in her kitchen.

Grandma liked to bake banana bread, and always seemed to have some on hand to eat.  She was also famous for Wrigley’s Doublemint gum.  That seemed to be her favorite flavor.

There was a wood stove in Grandma’s kitchen.  She didn’t burn wood in the wood stove.  She burned Presto Logs.  I remember going out to her garage occasionally and help break the Presto Logs into smaller pieces, so they would fit in her wood stove.  We would also bring the presto logs onto the back porch so they would be more easily accessible for Grandma to get to during the winter months.

Grandma always made me feel very special.  She always wanted “sugar”….which meant lots of hugs and kisses.  I was happy to give her some sugar. 

Grandma was very small in stature.  When she was a young girl, she had an accident and fell down some stairs.  Her back was never treated properly, so she developed a hunchback.  But I never thought of my grandma as having a deformity.  That was just the way she was.

Grandma had a lot of hardship in her life, but I never felt like she reflected a woman who had a life of hardship.  She and her husband Lance left the Kentucky/Tennessee area when she was young and made their way to North Idaho.  They had four children.  At some point in the marriage, Grandpa Woolum left Grandma. It was now her task to raise four children on her own.

Her oldest son, William, enlisted in the Navy during World War II.  He was killed in a battle in the Pacific Ocean.  I know this was always a very big loss for Grandma.

Being a single mother was uncommon in the 30’s and 40’s.  But my grandma was tough.  She survived raising three boys and one girl.  Eventually, the air in Kellogg caused by the Smelter Smoke from Bunker Hill was too much for my grandma’s lungs.  So she decided to move to Spokane where the air was a bit cleaner. 

I always knew her as my grandma who lived in Spokane, who always seemed thrilled by our visits, and who always showered me with nothing but love.