The photo to the left is of Grandma Sarah picking beans with her twin sister Janet’s second son Neil. It is pretty descriptive of a lot of my upbringing. Neil and I were both second sons of about the same age and spent a lot of time together at Grandma Jenkins’s (Grandma Sarah’s mom) and Aunt Janet’s house together for overnight stays and the like. More importantly though, it is a reminder that my generation and the generation before that grew up as a family that harvested crops by hand as manual laborers on farms. In my case, it was mostly beans and strawberries, but a lot of other crops in the previous generation (cherries, hops, etc.). Grandpa Milo’s family worked as migrant farm workers every summer during the harvest seasons of his youth. Grandma Sarah picked strawberries and beans in the summers of her college years (and before) to help pay her way through pharmacy school.
I probably should not tell this story in public, but it is so iconic in terms of how I think about my mother, I just cannot help myself. Both Grandma Sarah and I graduated from Oregon State University. In 1973, I moved into a student co-op directly across the street from where Grandma Sarah lived when she started at Oregon State in 1948. I wrote about that place and its connection with Ted Bundy the serial killer in a previous post on this blog. Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah lived in Newberg when I started school and I often caught a ride with friends to go back home for weekends. Grandma Sarah would then drive me the 60 miles back to Corvallis on Sunday afternoon after church. We would always stop in Monmouth on the way to eat lunch. I have been at that J’s Family Restaurant a lot of times not only for this, but because it is the same restaurant where our dear friend, Susan Rodriguez worked while she was getting her degree at what is now Western Oregon University as well as a good place to eat on the way to watch a Beavers game.
I need to give this story a little context now to diminish the trouble this will cause me. Grandma Sarah had a wonderful uncle who always went to her house for Christmas while she was growing up as a young girl. He smoked cigars and she associated the smell of those cigars with some wonderful memories she had as a child. So, when the mood struck us, we would buy a couple of REALLY cheap cigars (Swisher Sweets) and smoke them together while we finished our drive to Corvallis. She would get that twinkle in her eye that everyone who really knew her has seen when she was about to say something or do something just for the sheer joy of it even though it might be a little bit off in the eyes of those who were a little to uptight or ungracious. I LOVED those trips. They were our thing. I was talking to Aunt Julia last night and she reminded me that she had actually been there one time with us and we bought THREE cigars. I am glad she was there and can confirm my story because I think there are a lot of people who might not believe it if I did not come from someone with a little more credibility than myself.