April 23, 2013

A couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon with two cousins. We shared stories, including ones about our mutual grandmother, Ira Ethel (Zachry) Hargrove, who was born on April 23, 1896, somewhere in Georgia. To her friends and family she was Et. To her 10 grandchildren she was Nannie.

Anxiously awaiting news about the birth of my great niece.
Catherine should be born sometime today.

There were 11 brothers and sisters in her family and my grandmother was the second oldest. She decided at an early age that she wanted more than the farm had to offer her. She wanted to get away from Georgia, so she took piano and violin lessons that she would later teach to others for a fee she pocketed. Although she told people she grew up on a plantation, her father was actually a share cropper and the entire family worked in the fields with him. During cotton picking season, my grandmother would go back to the fields after everyone else was done to pick the little bits of cotton left. She would sell the cotton and pocket the money. When she had enough money saved, she took a train to Galveston. At that time, which was probably in the early 1920s, Galveston would have been a great city. It must have been scandalous for a young woman to ride the train by herself from Georgia to Galveston! In Galveston went to work in a shop. I don't know how long she lived in Galveston, but at some point she became terribly ill. She might have had tuberculous as that was common at the time. Unable to work and with no more money, the shop owners sent my grandmother back to Georgia on the train. Once back on her feet, my great grandfather arranged her marriage to Clyde Hargrove because he was the only man in town with a car. She admittedly never loved him and their's wasn't much of a marriage, although they had three children: Sue Beth who was born in 1927, Peggie Jane (my mother) who was born in 1929, and Clyde Hargrove, Jr. who was born in 1934. I only remember meeting my grandfather once. He was living with his mother, not my grandmother, in Temple, TX. My grandmother cared for elderly people in her house in Bryan, TX, until she was older than the people she cared for. After that she made the rounds living with different brothers and sisters or her own children. Sometimes she took babysitting jobs or taught music lessons to support herself and pay for her room in a boarding house. Finally her children had to place her in a nursing home. She died in 1976. Now we realize that she probably had Alzheimer's Disease, but at that time it wasn't diagnosed. It's interesting to me that she was buried next to her husband that she never loved.

Today I'm creating jewelry. A few more comments from my conversation with to my cousins. We all agreed that our grandmother might have been born in Georgia, but she was no peach! We all remembered stories of her being cruel to us and others. For example, she told my cousins Santa wasn't real. We also remembered our mothers telling us that their mother was the worst. She didn't really take care of them. She was a terrible cook. She'd take groceries and gifts people gave her and return them for the cash. All she really cared about was herself and money. There's a lesson here. My grandmother was always unhappy because she wanted more than she had. While there's anything wrong with being ambitious, we should be happy with what we have and not drive ourselves crazy about what we don't have.