Snoopy and the Red Baron

I remember one specific Christmas episode with my great-grandmother Leta Eckman. I’m not sure exactly what year it was—1971, perhaps. I was seven then. Whenever it was, I was old enough to walk to my grandparents’ house on my own—with permission.

My dad’s parents—Vivian and Ed—only lived about four blocks away from us. With permission, my siblings and I could go over there at any time, since we didn’t have to cross any busy streets. (My mother’s parents lived about two miles away, so a bit too far for a young child or children to walk alone. That grandmother also worked, so she wasn’t as accessible.)

As a child, I rarely went to my grandparents’ home on my own. Usually I was with my younger sister Michelle, but this time I was alone. Maybe she was too young to go with me yet, or she was just doing something else.

We had permission to simply enter the house without knocking, as if it was our own. (This was standard for both sides of my family at the time.)

So I walked in the house that Saturday or Sunday afternoon and called for my grandmother who was in the basement. This boded well for me. My grandparents had a finished basement room for entertaining, complete with a built-in bar. If I had timed it well—i.e. arrived before 3:15 p.m.—my grandmother would let me have a glass of root beer, cola, ginger ale or even Fresca. This was a special treat and perhaps the reason I went over in the first place.

The back door of the home led directly from a small landing down the stairs, so I went right down to visit with my grandmother (and get my glass of pop). While I was with her I learned that Grandma Eckman was upstairs, and I should say hello. Also, could I get the bathroom towels for her so she could wash them?

Grandma Eckman was sitting at the dining room table. From the kitchen I couldn’t see what she was doing, so I trooped right in there. Well, maybe I knew what she was doing, but I walked in as if I didn’t. In retrospect this is a little surprising, since I was a big snoop. You see, she was wrapping Christmas presents.

“Hi, Grandma!” I said nonchalantly, as I walked from the kitchen into the dining room. (Now, I had to walk through the dining room to get to the bathroom, so it wasn’t as though I was just snooping.)

Her reaction was quick and forceful.

“Get out of here!” she ordered, spreading her arms over the table as if to cover the presents closest to her. Of course, that didn’t work very well at all. She had presents everywhere, including stacked on two chairs, which I could easily see. Some were wrapped already; others were simply decorated with ribbons and bows.

But she scared the crap out of me, and I immediately dashed into the hallway. Well, not so immediately that I couldn’t take a quick survey of the room.

While it was only a guess, I suspected that one of two unwrapped games stacked on the chair was for me. It was called “Snoopy and the Red Baron.”

Actually, there were two of them, both unwrapped. One could only be for my brother Jeff and/or me, and the other most likely for her other great-grandson-- Christopher Demski, who is my age.

What I remember second most (after the present) was just how much she intimidated me. How strong and forceful she was. I stood in the bathroom with the towels for a few minutes, not knowing what to do. I was both excited (about the present) and scared of her. How could I get past her and back to the basement to her daughter-my grandmother?

After about sixty child-hours, she called to me far more gently, “Jerry, your grandmother is calling you. You better see what she wants.”

This was my permission, so I slinked through the dining room without even looking at her. I am positive she was watching me, however, her eyes and force of character pushing my head in the opposite direction of where she and her gifts were.

Oh, and my brother and I did get one of the “Snoopy and the Red Baron” games for Christmas. She wrote “Merry Christmas, Jeff and Jerry. Love, Grandma Eckman” in magic marker on the lid of the box. We played that game a lot!

Smoking

She'd just stop. That was it. How hard could it be? She had self-control. She didn’t really care that much about smoking anyway. She only started to keep her former husband company in bars. She only continued because she knew there was something alluring about a slender woman with a cigarette, and she liked being alluring. But she was too old to be alluring any longer, and besides, she didn’t go to bars any more. She rarely smoked, anyway.

Most importantly, the smoke seemed to irritate her new grandson, and she wanted to get to know him. While she feared she wouldn’t have patience with older grandchildren, she still liked babies. She had three young grandsons, and the first two had breathing issues that kept her from holding them very much. The new baby also seemed restless when she pulled him close. Having recently lost her husband she just couldn’t bear that he seemed irritated.

Hell, she didn’t like the after-smell herself. Sometimes when she came home to her house after being out for some time, she could smell stale cigarettes in the air. And she was a meticulous housekeeper. She cleaned and emptied her ashtrays as soon as she finished each cigarette. Still, the smell still lingered. She never really noticed it so much when she lived with Richard (who also smoked), but now that she was in a new house and on her own, the smell was aggravating.

So she decided to stop.

Doing so, she learned, was neither easy nor hard. “It had its moments,” she would say later.

Of course, she didn’t quit instantly. Instead, she began to quit by setting up a rule. She would only smoke in the kitchen with the window open and the oven fan going. This, at least, would keep as much of the smell out of the house and off her as she could. And since it was a cold, harsh winter, she didn’t want to keep her window open very much.

However, she could still smell the stale smoke in the air, even after having thoroughly cleaned her drapes and furniture. So she moved into the basement when she wanted a cigarette, again turning on a fan to diffuse the smoke.

While she was still a healthy and capable woman, even at age 68, going up and down a flight of stairs every time she wanted to light up and for no other reason was annoying, especially when she awoke in the night, lonely, with the craving pulling at her. She would crawl out of bed in the dark, don her heavy bathrobe, trudge through the quiet house, retrieve the cigarette pack and lighter from the kitchen drawer, stumble down the stairs into the cold basement, fumble for the fan and light switches and then light up.

One night in April, she just couldn’t do it. She had been up too late celebrating her birthday, her head ached, her legs hurt and there was a wicked draft. She simply rolled over and went back to sleep. A couple of weeks later she realized that she had stopped smoking altogether.

And that, she was fond of saying, was that.

Found money

My father's mother--my grandmother Vivian--died suddenly when I was 12 years old. She had entered the hospital for hip replacement surgery, which went very well. But on a Friday morning, several days after the surgery, she shared that she was having difficulty breathing. Shortly after she lay down, she fell into eternal slumber. A blood clot moved into her lungs.

Naturally, this was tragic for my family, leaving us all floundering for a while. As a wife, mother and grandmother, she ferociously worked to maintain a solid and stable family. This makes sense; her own parents divorced when she was a girl, she moved with her mother (my great-grandmother Leta) several times through nearly a handful of step-fathers and then lived with her father from high school to marriage.

As many women of the time, she was the master of her house, particularly the interior. My grandfather, of course, was the master of the lawn and garage. They shared the responsibility of the flower and vegetable beds.

When my grandfather and aunt (only 22 at the time) went through my grandmother’s personal things and the rooms and storage areas of her domain, they uncovered several tins and containers of money—change and bills—that she had hidden in various places around the house.

Prior to this, we knew that she had a couple of places where she kept jars of primarily pennies – her bureau, the dining room hutch and the linen closet, specifically, but this stash of cash all around the house was a surprise discovery. They found money jars (and plastic baggies) in the pantry cupboard of the “fruit room” (an unheated room in the basement for food and other storage), laundry cupboard, flour canister, spice cabinet, hall closet, guest bedroom closet, her closet (in a shoe box), her craft closet and an upstairs storage closet. (My grandparents’ home had a single second-floor bedroom that was used by my father and uncle when they lived at home.)

Nothing in her relationship with my grandfather indicated that there was any distrust in their relationship, giving her cause to have her own money, just in case. He may not have been the easiest man to live with, but he believed in their marriage.

However, Vivian was a child of the Depression, which may account for her hidden savings, at least partly. Perhaps she adhered to an understanding that it is always good to have some cash at home, just in case. (My grandparents were financially secure, and both were extraordinary money managers.) She may also have learned to hide her money when she lived with her father. While I am not positive of his financial state, I do know that his second wife was an alcoholic, and it is quite possible that the step-mother appropriated “found” money for her addiction, since that is common for such persons. Or it could be that having grown up in several unstable homes with her mother (four husbands from age eight to 15), Vivian learned that she needed to keep an emergency stash. Whatever the reason, she did it.

There wasn’t a lot in each location, but the total was several hundred dollars.

Grandma's Game

I grew up playing cards. Like many children I learned how to play Go Fish and Old Maid at a young age. When we played Old Maid, we didn’t use specialty cards, we used a standard deck, removed the Queen of Diamonds and let the Queen of Spades be the Old Maid. We didn’t, ironically, use the joker. For some reason, it always had to be the Queen of Spades.

Maybe because we also learned how to play Hearts. In that card game, the Queen of Spades is the highest scoring card, and also the one no one wants.

As I grew older, but still a child, I learned a flurry of other card games – Rummy (a few variations), Hearts, Crazy Eights, Kings-in-the-Corner, Solitaire, Poker, Blackjack, Tripoli, Nerds, Bullshit, Fan Tan, Muggins and Euchre (three variations, including Bid Euchre). I’m pretty sure I played Cribbage, too, but that one I have forgotten. When I was in seventh grade, my friends Glenn, Todd, Jeff and I used to play Euchre every day at lunch.

But as a child, we had a special card game that I learned from Vivian, my dad’s mother. We played it every holiday and at every other occasion we could talk her into playing. This was a big family act. Everyone would play, and it was a simple enough card game for my younger sister and I to play just as competently as everyone else. Plus, my grandmother let us keep the pennies we played with. Yes, we could also use poker chips, but playing with pennies was far more fun for a young child.

I don’t know where my grandmother learned the game, but her mother – my great-grandmother Leta – also played with us, as she always spent her holidays with us. Since Leta came from a family of card players herself, it is quite possible she taught her daughter the game.

Here’s how it goes:

It requires two decks of cards shuffled together.

Everyone puts a penny in the “kitty.” The dealer shuffles. (I also learned how to riffle shuffle at a young age. My sister and I practiced it until we got it and quickly became proficient. Grandma Eckman was proficient at this, but pretended she didn’t know how to do it. She mostly used the overhand shuffle.)

The dealer distributes five cards to each player, who lays them out face up in a line. The best poker hand wins the kitty.

That’s the first part of the game.

The next part is a kind of redistribution of wealth. The dealer turns over the first card. Let’s say it is a Five of Diamonds. “Five puts in one,” dealer says. This means that every other player who has a Five of any suit in her hand must add a penny to the kitty. The dealer than turns over the second card—such as a Queen of Hearts—and says, “Queen puts in two.” All players with a queen in their hands must add two pennies to the kitty. This goes on through five.

Following this is the inverse. The dealer turns over a card, say a Nine of Spades and says, “Nine takes out one.” Any player with a nine of any suit in his hand then retrieves one penny from the kitty. The dealer continues in the same way as the “puts in” step, only by calling “takes out” for four additional cards—i.e. through five.

Sometimes the kitty runs out of pennies. When this happens, the dealer must boost it with pennies from his own personal stash.

The final step of the card game has the dealer turn over one card at a time on a count: first card = “one;” second card = “two;” third card = “three;” and so on up to “thirteen.” When the card matches the count—for example a Seven of Clubs on “seven,” then every player except the dealer adds that number of pennies to the kitty.

At the end of this section, the dealer then collects what has been deposited in the kitty. This is the end of the hand, and the deal then goes to the person on the left.

In our family, we played this game for hours.

Journal Entry - Guitar

Here's another journal entry:

In 2006, my maternal grandmother Dee Curry told me that “she always wanted to play the piano but never was able to. She said that when she lived with her cousin, her family had a player piano. Her cousin would play that, but never knew how to play [piano] either.

“The most striking part of this, however, is that she did learn how to play the guitar, as an adult. ‘Either Bill or Phil [her sons] bought me a guitar. Your mom has it,’ Grandma told me. ‘It has a hole in it. I still have the books around here.’

“I was astounded. I don’t think I ever knew that, but I love the notion of my grandmother playing the guitar and I love that she can still surprise me with more depths of character and information about herself.

And following is how I considered using this bit of real-life information in the story of my great-grandmother Leta Eckman’s life:

“Going through her stuff, after her death, characters find some music books—maybe guitar books. Did she play the guitar? No one knows. No one at all. It’s not in her diaries or in anyone’s memory. There’s no guitar. She used to like to sing along with the radio, but everyone does that, right?

“Someone remembers her singing him/her to sleep. ‘Or maybe I remember her telling me that.’

“’She sang in the church choir,” someone else says, “but that didn’t last long. She started carrying on with the choir director.’

“’Is that the fellow she was trying to help figure out if he was gay or not?

“’Could be.’

“’But did she play the guitar?’

“’Well, look at these marks in the books. They look like her handwriting.’

“’And is George her teacher?’

“’Is there some man involved? Then maybe she only pretended to be interested in music to connect with him.’

“Maybe, but here’s what I like to believe.

“Since no one knows for sure, I can just put it together based entirely and completely on circumstantial evidence. Or even, as my skeptical sister would say, the evidence I chose to give credence to. Anyway, she liked to sing, and she sang pretty well, but she never had the opportunity to pursue music—and she transferred, at least mostly, her music dreams into her sex-life. She definitely was creative there.

“Then she had an opportunity to try later in life, but she was insecure and shy about it. Secretly, she bought a guitar and hired a guitar teacher. Maybe she even went to a music store for lessons. She did this on her own—alone, so no one would know. Maybe she was planning on surprising everyone some Christmas or at a family dinner. But something happened, and she never was able to play. And she put the books away, for the most part. Maybe she hoped some day to play again. But she got rid of the guitar.

“And that was that.”

My nineteenth birthday, part two

During my winter break, freshman year of college, I visited Grandma Eckman in the senior home twice, once before Christmas and then on my birthday a few days after the holiday. It was a cold, snowy day, and I found her wrapped up in bed. But she roused herself, and we were headed into a nice visit, or so I thought.

She didn’t have her false teeth in her mouth, which made her voice seem a little slurred and kind of freaked me out a little. I could see they were in a glass on the nightstand.

I was feeling warm in my winter coat, and her room was about eighty degrees. Actually, having been there for about ten minutes already, I was starting to perspire. I unzipped it and then laid it on the chair.

In those few moments, she had somehow put her glasses on and teeth in. I don’t think I let on, but I was relieved.

“Now, turn around, turn around,” she instructed, her hands lightly fluttering in the air. “I want to get a good look at you.

I started to comply, but she interrupted me.

“All the way around,” she coaxed, raising her hand and circling with her index finger.

I confess that I felt both foolish and a bit proud. How many 19-year-olds get “sized-up” on a regular basis by an inquisitive great-grandmother.

“You gained some weight, I see,” she noted.

“They call it the ‘freshman ten’,” I explained. “The all-you-can-eat cafeteria. The food isn’t always great, but—“

“Don’t interrupt,” she snapped.

She was staring hard at me, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

“Walk to the door and back.”

“What?”

“Don’t argue with me. Just do it.”

“But I—“

“Just do it.”

So I obeyed, feeling more self-conscious than I felt in the gym shower.

“I thought so,” she mumbled, “just like Dale.”

“What?” I asked. No one had ever compared me to my great uncle-her son.

She looked hard at me.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“No, not really,” I answered.

“You will.”

And that was the end of that. She never brought up what she meant again, and mostly I forgot. We had other things to talk about that day. I wanted to share with her about my new life in college—living in the dorm, making friends, classes, changing my major from business to theater, having a role designed for and by me in a mainstage play and all the other excitements attached to my new college-student life.

She listened, or at least seemed to, for about 30 minutes. Then I saw she was getting tired and excused myself.

As I was putting on my coat, she asked me one last question. “When am I going to see you again?”

“Well, Grandma,” I answered in the vaguely hopeful, overly explanatory way that I would develop into an artform, “I don’t know if I will be here at Easter, since it doesn’t coincide with my spring break. And I’ll be looking for a summer job somewhere, too. I need to earn some money to pay for all this fancy education.”

I immediately felt guilty, but at the same time I didn’t want to make a promise that circumstance wouldn’t let me keep. While I intended to see her at the next available opportunity, I didn’t know when that was, and I feared putting any specific idea or time into her head.

“Okay,” she said.

She was used to disappointment, but she didn’t want to pressure me.

“I’ll keep writing to you, though,” I said.

“Good. Love your cards and letters,” she agreed.

She was already falling asleep, so I quietly finished, whispered a quick “I love you,” and was out the door.

It wasn’t until I was in the car, my well-worn orange Chevrolet Nova, that I realized I never told her about so much of how my life was changing, nor about how confused I was about my own evolving feelings. And what did she know about me that she wasn’t telling? What did she mean about Uncle Dale?

And then I began to think about my economics professor. While I was frequently confused about his convoluted presentation of macro-economics, GNP, supply and demand and so on, I truly thought that the man had the most kissable lips I had ever seen. And then there was Curt, a fellow student and actor whose body aroma always made me swoon a little. Unbeknownst to them, these two men lingered in my mind, and their presence stretched into all of my organs, sometimes so much that I felt like someone else was inhabiting my body.

Then my stomach growled, and I realized that I was hungry, and once I returned to my parents’ house, there would be lasagna and chocolate cake and brothers and sisters and fun. My focus immediately changed, and I stepped on the gas.

My nineteenth birthday, part one

My great-grandmother knew me. I don’t know any better way to put it than that. On my nineteenth birthday, I stopped by for a visit. I was on break during my freshman year in college. Having been born during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I was always on break for my birthday.

She was in her late 80s and doing poorly at the time, and I am not sure whether or not this was because of the holiday season or whether she was just getting tired of living. I found her in bed. This always signaled a short visit, but I didn’t mind. As she noted when I visited before Christmas, I already had one foot out of town, and she was correct.

This would be my last extended stay in my hometown for many years. I had already started to pack up my bedroom, so my mother could turn it into a sewing room—really, a sewing room. Yet this wasn’t an obligatory visit either. I wanted to see her, if only for  a few minutes, partly out of filial duty, but partly because I enjoyed talking with her.

When I first walked in, I couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep. She was still and it was quiet. She never liked the television. She rarely watched, and when she did, she had no problem turning it off or leaving the lounge to visit with company instead. So the television was off, and the room had a quiet that tapped me gently on the shoulder to warn me to be gentle.

“Grandma?” I said softly. I waited a moment, but when she didn’t stir, I called her again, this time a little louder. While she moved a bit, she still didn’t respond or turn toward me. I called again, actually at the same level.

Sometimes I envied the nurses in the care center. When they entered a resident’s room, everyone in it and in anywhere nearby knew it. They strode in like a gust of wind, their voices and gestures filled with confidence and energy. Where I—and many others—seemed to merge with the atmosphere—the nurses brought their own with them. Sometimes I wondered if we were simply being gentle or timid.

I walked around the bed. Grandma Eckman was lying on her side, facing the opposite wall. If she was asleep, I would leave. I couldn’t see disturbing her.

“Why are you out driving in the snow?” she said with a raspy voice.

“Oh good,” I said with relief in my voice, “you are awake. For a minute there, I wasn’t sure if you were.”

“Oh, I’m awake,” she said. “I hardly sleep at all any more.”

I wasn’t sure if she was going to turn to face me or not. I could not tell the difference between her deciding to stay put or just gather enough energy to turn over. After all, she was nearly 90 years old.

“Are you uncomfortable?” I inquired.

“Honey, I’m always uncomfortable,” she answered and moved just a little bit.

I was relieved. I really wanted to speak with her and not a bundle on a bed facing away from me.

“It’s snowing,” she said again to remind me that she had previously asked why I was driving in it. Her mind sometimes was sharper than I expected.

“It always snows on my birthday, it seems,” I answered. “I like it. Last year, we had a big snowstorm, but this year not so much. Besides, I really wanted to see you. I have to go back to college in a couple of days.”

By this time she had moved enough to look at me.

Even though she was in bed and had been there for a few days, she looked exhausted. Having heard her speak several times over the past ten years about how close she was to “meeting her maker,” as she put it, I rarely thought about any of her illnesses or relapses as the final one. Of course, she always thought this was the end. Then again, most really sick people do, whether they have the flu or something like cancer.

“It looks like you’re having a rough day,” I said.

“A couple-few rough days,” she replied.

A little of the fire was back.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she nearly snapped. “I’m old.”

“Old?” I scoffed playfully. “You’re not even ninety.”

She rolled her eyes at me, and I laughed.

“I saw that.”

She strained a bit to roll fully onto her back and then she raised her bed to sit up some more. I gestured toward her.

“No, don’t,” she ordered. “I don’t need any help.”

I obeyed.

Once she raised herself, she began to appraise.

“Take that awful coat off,” she ordered, as if she was asking a child if he washed his hands before eating. “You look like an eskimo!”

To be continued.

Journal Entry - Who's at the Door?

LIke many writers, I begin writing projects by scribbling notes, memories, ideas and experiences into my journal. (I’ve been keeping one since I was a senior in high school.) Some would call them my writer’s notebooks. Once I think, after several notes, that I am in the midst of a potential project, I begin to title my notes, so that when and if I return to my journals after the project has launched, I can find them. As Grandma Eckman was a living part of my life for twenty years, I have made many journal entries. Here’s one:

“Yesterday’s Bible lesson theme was about calling – what does God call us to do or be. In the gospel lesson from John (1:43-51), Jesus calls Philip, who brings along Nathanael. And the Old Testament lesson was 1 Samuel 3:1-20. This is when as a youth the prophet Samuel is called by God. However, he is young, inexperienced and at first doesn’t know that God is calling him.

“In fact, at first, he thinks he is being called by his master Eli, the high priest. Even Eli doesn’t understand initially, because both are asleep when Samuel receives the call.

“So—what struck me in this yesterday was something that’s been happening to my grandmother (not Grandma Eckman but Dee Curry, my mother’s mother). She’s 92. She doesn’t always sleep well. She spends a lot of her sleep time, more worn out (“I’m just worn out,” she said to me yesterday) than awake or asleep.

“However, at her age, I wonder if much of Grandma’s sleep is more like how I was in the hospital after my jaw surgery. Still under the effects of anesthesia, I could hear nearly everything. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I wanted to sleep it off. I would close my eyes, feel like I fell into a deep sleep and wake up. The clock was right in front of me. Only ten minutes had passed.

“But I wonder if this is how Grandma sleeps. She hears things and gets confused by them. There is a train of thought she has created to having a neighbor—a man—calling or knocking on her door or window. When she answers the phone, he sometimes talks to her (she says) or not. There’s no one at the window. And no one at the door when she opens it.

“Maybe she opens the door, maybe not.

“But when she first told me this, I encouraged her strongly to never answer the door in the middle of the night. Further, I told her she shouldn’t answer the phone. Only those who knew her would do either—and NEVER in the middle of the night. This disturbed me.

“Until yesterday when I began to consider that Grandma may be receiving messages from God—telephone calls, a visitor at the door. These could be—well—death. She doesn’t know. And she’s not ready yet—or maybe she is. She says she’s not.

“In Grandma Eckman’s case, she fought death, too. But she fought everyone. She was different. Her death—I think she may have been afraid of death. After all, she had kind of a wild life. Maybe she saw death as one of her husbands and felt it might be hell.

“Further, Grandma Eckman converted to Catholicism after she moved to what we called Little Sisters of the Poor. What if she started confession—talking to her priest? How would that have affected her? Guilt? Penance? Just wondering.”

Billy Graham, Part Two

Although not much of a television watcher, my great-grandmother watched The Billy Graham Crusades religiously, usually on a Saturday night. Even though she did not come from a conservative Christian background (first Reformed, then Lutheran and finally Roman Catholic), Graham’s charisma, his preaching and the music pleased her, so she watched.

Graham’s story is also intriguing, particularly his combination of fundamentalism and compassion. This drew audiences all around the world. Over a period of 50-plus years beginning in 1957 and via the growing medium of television, he drew millions of viewers and followers.

Rev. Billy Graham not only beamed into people’s homes, but would also broadcast his show live to packed auditoriums and stadiums, where audiences would behave as if he was right there in the room with them. Once satellite transmission became possible, he went international: 1) in 1989, he preached from London to more than 800,000 people gathered at 247 "live-link" centers throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, as well as 16,000 sites in 13 nations of Africa; 2) in 1990, from Hong Kong he preached to an estimated 100 million people at 70,000 locations in 26 Asian countries; and 3) in 1991, a Buenos Aires satellite mission reached 5 million people at 850 locations in 20 countries.

By the 1960s, Graham was a world-famous celebrity. He created his own pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and appeared as a guest on a 1969 Woody Allen television special. During the Cold War, he was the first evangelist of note to speak behind the Iron Curtain by addressing large crowds in countries throughout Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. An opponent of Apartheid, Graham refused to visit South Africa until its government allowed attending audiences to sit desegregated. Then when it agreed in 1973, he openly denounced the segregated political system.

A true evangelical, Graham was interested in fostering Christianity around the world. In 1983, 1986 and 2000 he sponsored, organized and paid for massive training conferences for Christian evangelists from everywhere, the largest representations of nations ever held until that time. In 2000, over 157 nations gathered in Amsterdam. At a revival in Seoul, South Korea, he preached to more than one million people at a single service. He appeared in China in 1988.

Still, Graham remained devoted to his followers and would-be followers in the United States. On September 22, 1991 Graham held the largest event he ever led in North America on the Great Lawn of New York’s Central Park. City officials estimated over 250,000 in attendance. In 1998, Graham connected with scientists and philosophers when he spoke at a TED conference.

He was a featured speaker at memorials and services after American catastrophes, such as the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, the September 14, 2011 prayer and remembrance service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and a special "Festival of Hope" in New Orleans with his son and successor Franklin, which was held on the weekend of March 11–12, 2006, after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

On June 24–26, 2005, Billy Graham began what he has said would be his last North American crusade, three days at Flushing Meadows in Queens, New York.

However, like a true celebrity, Graham has never really retired, merely cut back to making specific personal appearances, including meeting with President Obama in 2010.  President Obama was the tenth U.S. president to have conversed with Rev. Graham, dating back to Harry Truman.

One final note: As a guard against even the appearance of wrongdoing, Graham had a policy that he would never be alone with a woman other than his wife Ruth. This has come to be known as the Billy Graham Rule. “There’s a man dedicated to his wife,” Grandma Eckman used to say with a tinge of scorn in her voice.

Billy Graham, Part One

Being Christian was an important part of my great-grandmother’s existence. In her later years, she converted to Roman Catholicism. This was because she was in a senior residence managed by the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic order, and wanted not only to worship, but also partake in the worship. During this time (the 1970s), ecumenism was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today, so she basically had no other choice.

However, she watched with great attention the television broadcasts of the “Billy Graham Crusades.” Like many people and over several decades, the preacher’s dynamic nature, clarity and charisma enraptured her.

According to Wikipedia, Graham was born in 1918, raised as a Presbyterian and became a Southern Baptist as a teenager during a series of revival meetings. After graduating from high school in 1936, he went to Bob Jones College (yes, the one that is now the infamous Bob Jones University), but for only one semester. It was too formally strict for him. Graham then transferred to the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College of Florida), but eventually graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois, with a degree in Anthropology.

All during this time, however, he was preaching wherever he had the opportunity. While at Wheaton, for example, he became the preacher at a nearby United Gospel Tabernacle and also had other preaching engagements. Upon graduation, he focused on his preaching

While serving as the pastor of a small church in Illinois, Graham took over a failing radio broadcast program, officially re-launching Songs in the Night in January 1944. But he left the show after only a year.

During the late 1940s, he started his evangelism crusade as a traveling preacher for the new Youth for Christ International (YFCI). In 1949, he put up some circus tents in a parking lot and presented a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles. This revival introduced Graham to the nation, particularly because he caught the attention of media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Although the two never met, Hearst was attracted to Graham’s combination of patriotism and conservative values, which aligned closely to his own anti-communist viewpoint. In 1954, Graham was on the cover of Time.

In 1950, he launched his radio program, “The Hour of Decision” which ran weekly (for 30 minutes) until (50 years).

According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Graham’s successful use of television began on Saturday, June 1, 1957, while leading his annual summer crusade at Madison Square Garden. The first live broadcast posted an 8.1 Trendex rating, which translated into approximately 6.4 million viewers.

Those first telecasts were quite simple. A sizable chorus sang familiar hymns, George Beverly Shea sang "How Great Thou Art," a celebrity or two gave a testimony of the power of Christ in his or her life, Rev. Graham preached and hundreds of people streamed toward him when he offered the invitation at the conclusion of his sermon, “Just As I Am” serenading them. Remarkably, Graham has stuck to that same basic formula for nearly forty years. Sometimes his shows were not live, however, and he never broadcast on Sunday mornings. Usually, he was on Saturday nights, right after “The Lawrence Welk Show,” making it a full night of television for my great-grandmother, and anyone she was babysitting.

But I digress.

To Be Continued.

Television

Grandma Eckman didn't watch much television, or at least I never saw her and she rarely talked about it, which pretty much leads to the same conclusion. She had one in her duplex, and of course, the television in the lounges of the nursing home were on constantly. She sometimes had a television in her room there, which I suspect belonged to her current roommate. (As she lived there a long time and all rooms were double-occupancy, she had many roommates.) I can’t imagine that she watched these televisions all that much either, as the design of the rooms had occupants across from—and not next to—each other.

But she could definitely hear the television, and I recall that sometimes this irritated her. She liked her quiet.

After she moved into the nursing home, she spent a lot more time at her daughter-my grandmother’s home. When my grandfather was there and not engaged in mowing the lawn, working on the car or fiddling with some electronic device in his basement workshop, the large living room television was on. Like most men, and particularly men of his generation, he primarily watched baseball, football, basketball, “The Wide World of Sports” and Walter Cronkite. If the television was on during her time there, Grandma Eckman was usually in the kitchen with her daughter. Now that I think about it, as her son-in-law was not very fond of her, he generally was in his workshop or the yard when she was there, leaving a quiet living room for her and my grandmother to talk and do crafts.

One of the great ironies of this—at least to me—is that as an electronics wizard, my grandfather transformed their standard black and white television to color in the late 1950s, long before most people in our working class town. Furthermore, his television was always in good repair and his antenna always highly functioning. Basically, if something went awry, he could fix it.

So not only did she have access to television at my grandparents’, but Grandma Eckman also had access to clear, highly functional television. Still, she rarely watched. Television was not her kind of entertainment with three notable exceptions.

First, Grandma Eckman enjoyed The Lawrence Welk Show (1951-1982), and while she didn’t watch religiously, she watched regularly.

Second, she loved the Detroit Tigers baseball team, but she rarely watched them on television; she preferred radio. She had two radios in her duplex—one in her bedroom and another in her kitchen. After she moved into the nursing home, she had one on her nightstand. Whenever either was on, it was usually for a game.

While she never broadcast her fervor for the team, never shared statistics or argued the merits of plays or players, she listened to the games religiously. (Here is another family irony: while I did grow up in a Midwestern family of sports enthusiasts, the only other relative who came close to her baseball passion was my grandfather who was himself a Cleveland Indians fan.) In 1968, she was absorbed particularly in the World Series battle between her beloved Tigers and the previous champions and favored St. Louis Cardinals. While it looked like a secure Cardinals win, the Tigers came from behind by winning (narrowly) games five, six and seven.

Again, she mostly didn’t watch any of the games on television, which she pointed out to my grandmother and mother whenever she thought either was letting my siblings and me watch too much. She listened to them on the radio. Television was to her either nonessential or distracting.

Then there were the televised Billy Graham Crusades. Whenever these were on, she was glued to the television, and so was everyone in her proximity. Since she didn’t go to church very much, this was her worship. And, of course, Rev. Graham was magnetic.

The Novel

After a short break to focus my time and energy on Mercy Buckets, a solo play that premiered at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September, the work on Scandalous & Remarkable has resumed.

Now, it is time concentrate on the novel itself. Over the first many months, I pursued research, musing and reflection in tandem with the construction of the novel. That was well and good in the early stages. In the mid-stages, when the story started to gain momentum, little snippets of ideas and new bits of information to be studied were still acceptable to strengthen the concept and style.

At this time, however, the approach is taking a turn. While the entire focus throughout was on the creation of the novel, the focus now is specifically to write it—long patches of narrative and storytelling not necessarily appropriate to the blog format. Nevertheless, the blog will continue. But rather than producing two entries per week (on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as in the past), the format will be one per week—on Wednesdays.

Returning my creative attention (or at least a large part of it) to the novel has required a reflection on what I’ve accomplished so far, where I am and what I would like to do…and yes, I am working on a tentative timeline. I do want to publish the book! While I have enjoyed writing the 100 blog entries (since September 1, 2010), and each—well, most—of the entries have or will be incorporated into the first draft of the book, my concern is that writing the blog will take precedence over writing the novel. (I know of others who have been trapped in this way.)

You see, the blog writing is, in a way, easier. While there are inherent connections, particularly since I have a specific subject—my great-grandmother Leta Eckman—like making a batch of cookies, I can whip up a blog entry in a couple of hours and then be finished. A novel, however, requires continuous front-of-brain thinking.  What has been written and considered needs to be omnipresent in order for the work to maintain its consistency and flow.

Time is of the essence. And I am a part-time writer with a full-time other job (that is also important to me), friends, activities and several theater projects. While I consider myself a fairly successful juggler, I realize that one can throw only so many rings into the air.

So that’s the plan.

100th Blog Entry

Dear readers,

That does sound very 19th century, doesn't it?

This is my 100th blog entry. Over the past eleven-plus months and 200 pages of writing, I have shared with you chunks of research, family stories, musings, history, short stories that are if not 100% factual at least truthful, observations and discoveries about my paternal great-grandmother Leta's scandalous and remarkable life. I hope you have enjoyed reading the various entries. I also hope you are interested in reading the book, once it's finished.

For this entry, I have a kind of puzzlement. On occasion I have had to seriously contemplate how to approach more sensitive material. After all, some of the people in this story are still living (including myself) and a couple of them are quite sensitive about what I’m sharing. It seems to them that I am airing some family dirty laundry, and that by studying and writing about my great-grandmother's life, I am disrespecting her. On the other hand, I believe that I am attempting to honor her by sharing her incredible story.

But lately I have been considering another aspect of the story that could be construed as far more scandalous, and maybe even a bit embarrassing. The information is highly sensitive.

I think there is a family secret, and it seems to be fitting more and more prominently into the novel, or at least into my background work on it.

I am nearly positive that including this information in the story would be met with quite a lot of resistance and not by only the more sensitive members of my family either. Still I am also thinking that to write about it in a more surreptitious way would be dishonest, not to mention obvious anyway. So that is my current dilemma.

This dilemma will need to be addressed at a later date, however.

I am sad to share that for the next few weeks, Scandalous & Remarkable is going on hiatus. This is because I need to focus my creative energies on my new solo play—Mercy Buckets—which is premiering at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September. I want the blog writing to be good; I also want the show to be good. With a new day job in the mix, I don't want to take the chance of either one being less than it could.

However, I will be back, for there is much more to Leta’s story to consider and write. Catch you later.

Marrying Butts, Part Six

Leta could see them across the room, like a pack—her date Mr. Butts, the minister she had a back seat dalliance with and the minister’s overly pleasant wife. She was regretting that she agreed to come to the afternoon lecture on flowers, but she was there, and so were they, waiting for her. She walked over to them, and Mr. Butts handed her a glass of lemonade.

"Thank you," she said, wishing it had a large splash of vodka. She downed it like it did, however.

"We've been talking," Mr. Butts said, "and Dorothy was telling me how she loves African violets, too."

"Only I can't keep them alive," she added sadly. "They just die on me."

There was a kind of pleading in her eyes for assistance, and when Leta turned her attention briefly to the minister, he had the same look for, obviously, a very different reason.

"Are you sure you have the right soil?" Leta asked. "Violets require a specific soil mixture."

"Well..." Dot stammered, looking over to her disapproving husband. "...Reverend?"

Leta was startled, and dismayed. Dot called her husband by his title? What kind of place had Mr. Butts brought her to?

"Of course, Dot," the minister said authoritatively, "you must use the proper soil."

Dot looked at him quizzically, and quickly put her chubby hand to her mouth to signal to herself that she had better not respond. Still, Leta understood the signal. The boorish flower specialist had been the one to insist that one soil was as good as any other for a plant.

Some sort of argument was brewing, and she wanted to be out of there before it did. Mr. Butts seemed to sense the same and suggested that they depart to leave the church folk to resume their day of rest. As they thanked their hosts again for the lecture, hospitality and conversation, Leta and Mr. Butts excused themselves. She shook Dot's limp hand once again, and felt sorry for the other woman, not only because her husband was seeking sexual and emotional satisfaction outside of their marriage, but also because she was devoted to him.

"Shall we get a bite to eat?" Mr. Butts asked her when they were back on the sunshine.

While Leta simply wanted to go home, she said yes. She was hungry, and there was something unusually sincere and present in his demeanor. It made her curious, because he could not have any particular pleasure from the last few minutes with the minister and his wife, which had been awkward at best. But there was, looking at her and exuding a warmth she had not felt so far in their acquaintance.

After the server took their order, he asked her about the lecture, and she replied that she hadn't found the minister that knowledgeable about the subject, at least not more knowledgeable than she, and she never considered herself an expert. He agreed, and shared that the presentation was more of a recruitment tool, to draw people into the parish. When she was in the lavatory, they had applied no little pressure in getting him to return for worship.

"I told him that we were already members of other churches, but it didn't stop them," he said. "I was glad when you returned."

"I don't have much patience with that sort of thing," she noted.

She sipped her tea, its warmth flowing into her body and relaxing her. This day wasn't turning out so badly after all.

The next thing she knew, Mr. Butts had pulled his chair closer to hers and took her left hand in his.

"Mrs. Bassett--Leta," he said, looking her right in the eyes. She had never noticed that for such a fair-skinned man he had very dark eyes. She looked right back at him. "I like being with you, even when we're doing something neither of us much likes. And I'd like for us to be together all the time. As man and wife.

"Now, I know that we haven't known each other very long," he continued, but we're neither of us getting any younger, and before too much longer I'm going to be really busy with the harvest. I'd like you to be there with me. So what I'm asking is if you'll marry me."

Leta was more surprised by her own reaction than she was by Arthur's proposal. She realized that she also wanted to marry him, and so she agreed.

Two days later, she was Mrs. Arthur Butts.

The End 

Marrying Butts, Part Five

The dreaded moment arrived. Leta would have to interact with a man with whom she had frolicked in the backseat of his car, a minister no less, who had just finished delivering a somewhat mediocre talk on flowers at his small church. At this moment, she regretted the moment she first consented to attending with her current beau, Mr. Butts. But here they were. Mr. Butts was introducing her to the minister and his plump and frumpy wife.

"--my friend, Miss Bassett," Mr. Butts said quickly.

Leta offered her hand politely, and the minister shook it vigorously, a little too vigorously. Although he seemed a cool as a cucumber, a glint of panic raced through his eyes, and Leta knew he recognized her.

She had experienced that look once before. He was subtly begging her not to indicate anything that might be considered any kind of recognition or familiarity. Like most men, he didn't for a second consider that she might have as much, if not more than he, to lose.

"How do you do?" she said.

Then she shook his wife's hand.

"Do please stay for refreshments," she said graciously.

"Thank you," Mr. Butts said before Leta could excuse them, "we would be delighted.

Leta gripped her handbag tightly and smiled.

"Come," Dorothy said, guiding the couple to the small table.

"Leta raises violets," Butt said, as they walked.

Leta growled a sigh again, her third for the afternoon. For a man of few words, Mr. Butts was awfully loquacious in this setting.

"Is there a ladies' room?" Leta asked, suddenly terribly concerned about her appearance.

"Why yes, dear" Dorothy said in that annoyingly motherish condescending kind of way.

As Leta entered the small room with it's equally tiny mirror in which she could barely see half her face at one time, she shook her head to no one in particular. No wonder the minister sought female companionship, she thought. Dorothy's personality would drive any kind of passionate man to seek release elsewhere.

Then she stood back a bit. She looked worse than she thought. Her hair was lopsided with a large clump following it's own style, and the bags under her eyes were growing. Plus, her skin looked rough.

"Dammit," she said aloud and then quickly covered her mouth with her hands. She was in a house of the Lord, after all. Such inappropriate language signaled to her that she was fading quickly. She needed to get out of there before her growing irritation—born in sleep deprivation and exacerbated by the situation—caused her to say something she would regret.

She washed her face with a little water, pinched her cheeks and applied a little lipstick. Then she adjusted her pantyhose, hand-pressed her dress and adjusted her collar. She quickly ran a comb through here matted and tangled hair. It would have to do. She arched her back and left the lavatory.

But there they were, the three of them. In those few moments, Mr. Butts had ingratiated himself with the minister and his wife, or vice versa. Actually, she didn't care which. Seeing them Standing in a little clump as they were was like getting pushed by a bully. 

To be continued. 

Marrying Butts, Part Four

Leta and the man she would later learn was a minister had several more drinks and developed a laughing rapport. Before they knew it, the bar was closing, and they were headed out.

Neither actually said a word, but they walked side-by-side to his car, where he opened the door for her like a true gentleman, the door to the back seat, that is.

"Not here," she whispered, standing closely enough to him to mingle their body heat. "Don't you know a place a little more private?"

He thought for a moment and then switched doors.

An hour later he dropped her off across the street from her home.

The memory vanished, and there he was, this same man, only now in clerical collar, talking about perennials at a small church where Arthur Butts, the man she was seeing, had taken her for an afternoon lecture.

She glanced at Mr. Butts. He looked as though he was paying attention, his eyes were focused on the speaker, but his mind could have been anywhere. No, she corrected herself, he didn't have that capability. He was actually trying to learn about flower maintenance.

She looked at the minister once again. He was droning on, but not really saying much of any value, at least not to her. Although no flower expert, she did know that whether kept inside or out, flowering plants required sunlight, water and fertilizer, and African violets special soil.

But at least he was brief, and there were only a couple of questions. He thanked everyone for coming and invited them all to lemonade and cookies before they left, and if they had a Christian heart to drop a donation into the basket near the door. More importantly, if they hadn't adopted the will of Christ into their lives, to consider returning the next Sunday for their ten a.m. service or even returning on Tuesday evening for weekly adult Bible study to learn what God wanted for them.

Then he walked down the aisle and stood at the exit to personally greet everyone.

Leta sighed a growling kind of sigh.

But she couldn't just sit there. Mr. Butts was already standing. There was no way to avoid it; she would have to greet the minister. So she did so the only way she knew how, standing tall and confident, like a woman with nothing concealed.

At first, he didn't seem to see her. He focused his attention on Mr. Butts.

"Welcome, brother, welcome," the minister said, vigorously shaking Mr. Butts' hand. "We are pleased to have you."

"Thank, you, Reverend," Mr. Butts said.

"I hope you enjoyed the lecture," the minister continued.

"Yes," Mr. Butts answered, "indeed we did.

"Let me introduce you to my wife, if you don't mind," the minister said. Then he scanned the small group quickly and called to a coterie of women standing near the corner. "Dot! Dot! Come over here and greet our visitors."

Still standing mostly behind her companion, Leta watched as the frumpy woman from the beginning of the lecture waddle away from the others and over to them at her husband's bidding. Leta felt a lump in her throat. Now what could she do?

"Darling," the minister started to say before she had arrived, "this is Mr. Butts, who has joined us today, along with--"

And with this, he reached around Mr. Butts to greet Leta properly.

To be continued. 

Marrying Butts, Part Three

There weren't enough people in the small parish for Leta to blend into the crowd, but she wished she could. She had not accepted Mr. Butts’ invitation to attend this lecture on a Sunday afternoon to be put in this position. Yet it must be inevitable that she would encounter one of her trysts at some point. That he would be the flower-lover delivering Christian minister was more than she could have anticipated.

Of course, she hadn't known he was a minister the night they met in the bar, not that it would have made any difference. He was charming and highly complimentary of the new brooch she had received from her daughter for her birthday only a month earlier.

"Someone must like you a lot," he said, his voice thick as bourbon, "that's a beautiful bauble you have there."

She liked how he said "bauble."

"Why, thank you," she responded demurely.

"A beautiful bauble on a beautiful lady," he continued.

She smiled and opened her eyes wide so that he could see how blue they were.

For a moment, she thought he might shy away. Years ago, she had stopped batting her eyes. That was the gesture of a schoolgirl, and she was a mature woman. But because of his reaction—he suddenly looked down—she wondered if she had made a mistake. He was a sturdy man, he seemed direct and he held his glass of whiskey as if he was holding a dear friend. These were all the signals of a man who knew who and what he wanted. Yet the timidity of the eyes signaled a much different sort of man.

"Your glass," he said, gesturing just a little.

"Yes?" she responded, almost anxiously.

"It's nearly empty," he continued. She looked at it and observed that he was correct. Then she realized why he looked down, to her hand, her left hand.

"Yes," she agreed.

"That 's not good."

"No."

Then he gestured to the bartender. By this time, they were meeting at the eyes, and Leta was far more relaxed.

"And a lady should never drink alone," he continued.

The bartender replaced her gin and tonic with a fresh one.

"Thank you, Charlie," she said, and he nodded. Then she turned to the gentleman and raised her glass.

"I'm not," she smiled.

To be continued.

Marrying Butts, Part Two

Leta looked disheveled, and she knew it. What she wasn’t certain of was whether or not Mr. Butts, her date for the afternoon, would remark. In any case, she prepared a fictional story about it. The truth would never do, not with Mr. Butts, not if their relationship was to continue to grow. She was waiting outside of their agreed-upon meeting place when he appeared.

"Mrs. Bassett," he said and politely tipped his hat.

"Mr. Butts," she returned, still expecting him to comment on her appearance, but he didn't.

"Thank you for coming."

"My pleasure."

Still, he gave no indication that he saw her disheveled state.

Then he offered her his arm. "Shall we go in?" he inquired.

"Yes, yes, of course," she agreed as she took it.

By this time several other attendees had arrived and entered the little church, so Mrs. Leta Bassett and Mr. Arthur Butts strolled into the sanctuary and took their seats.

Frankly, Leta was surprised when he asked her to accompany him to this presentation. In the six weeks that they had known each other, she would never have guessed that he had any interest in flowers, and most certainly not in botanical talk about them. He was a farmer, but the two were not always related. In fact, none of the farmers in her own family cared at all about flowers.

Still, he asked her, and she agreed to meet him.

When he asked her, Mr. Butts made it clear to her that he had read about the lecture in the newspaper. She figured it was his way of trying to merge their separate lives. After all, he was a farmer, and she a city woman. Leta could only interpret that he was leading up to something.

In contrast to her appearance, Mr. Butts had freshly bathed, put tonic in his hair and wore his best suit. It was a little old fashioned, but Leta didn't mind. In fact, she found his general quiet and seeming backwardness quaint.

They sat near the rear of the little church, not in the last pew but one up. While she wasn't out of place in a church, having attended regularly since she was a child, Mr. Butts seemed more awkward than usual.

A plump woman who couldn't be bothered to fix herself up at all gave a mercifully brief welcome speech and then introduced the horticulturist. As soon as the lecturer appeared from behind a thick red velvet curtain, however, Leta's countenance fell. She had, she realized instantly, not two weeks earlier, experienced a rather passionate dalliance with him in the back seat of his car.

To be continued.

Marrying Butts, Part One

Her hair was a mess. That's all she could think, standing outside the little church, where she was meeting Mr. Butts. She tried to check out her reflection in the glass windows, but the sun wasn't right, and all she had was her silhouette. This grayish black shade of her head with its variety of protrusions and clumps served only as further proof that she was far from presentable.

What on earth were these people going to think of her, looking like she had just been blown in by a cyclone?

She reached for her comb. She would make one last attempt at respectability, but just then she saw him turning the corner. She was out of time, and he would just have to take her as she was.

He smiled brightly. Perhaps he had forgotten his spectacles, she thought. When he drew nearer and actually saw how she looked, he would have a different reaction.

"What happened to you?" he would ask with great concern in his squeaky drawl. "You look like you was dragged through the mud."

"I had a tough night," she would answer.

"What happened?" he would continue, and then she would have to provide a suitable answer, one that wouldn't cause him to walk away right then and there. While she was rarely ashamed of herself, Leta was also, at the same time, discreet. That she was known for having trysts with a number of men was far more vague than including the names of the men themselves. Still, her reputation already preceded her into relationships like the one she had with Mr. Butts. Providing details was more than she ever dared. Now that he was, it seemed, courting her, she needed to exercise more caution. As far as he knew, she had been married three times before the beginning of their romance. Due to a violent, unsafe living situation, she was compelled to divorce her first husband, the father of her two children. Her second husband was murdered, and her third marriage also ended in divorce when she learned he was carrying on with other women behind her back and secretly paying for his drinking and womanizing with the money she had set aside for her children...or something like that.

Ironically, Leta found it very easy to lie to Mr. Butts. Although for the most part, she considered herself a truthful person, even in her looseness, as it were, but in his case, the near-truths and untruths came easily. It wasn't an indication of a strong marriage, if they went that far, but there was something about him that made lying seem appropriate. And in this instance she would have to lie.

She would make it a simple lie. Her neighbor had fallen off a ladder. His wife was hysterical, so she had been at the hospital all night with them. He had a concussion, but he would be fine. She didn't have time to freshen up. She hadn't even been to her own church that morning. She was sorry. She had no way of getting in touch with him, and she didn't want him to think that she had forgotten about their date, so there she was.

Yes, that would suit him. It sounded plausible. He would understand.

To Be Continued.

The condom

My very sexually active great-grandmother only had two children, so I am still considering all the options on just how she never had more. Thus, I did some research on the condom:

According to Wikipedia, “Condoms have been used for at least 400 years. Since the 19th century, they have been one of the most popular methods of contraception in the world.” In Western culture, the first use of such devices was to counter syphilis. In his 16^th century treatise, Italian Gabriele Falloppio describes the condom as a linen sheath that has been soaked in a chemical solution and allowed to dry before use. These cloths were sized to cover the glans of the penis, and were held on with a ribbon. He claimed that an experimental trial of the linen sheath demonstrated protection against syphilis.

From this point on, either penis coverings became more popular or writers and scientists became more comfortable talking about them (or both), for the use of such coverings to protect from disease is described in a wide variety of literature throughout Europe. It wasn’t until 1605, however, when the first indication that the device was being used for birth control rather than disease prevention, went public. This occurred via a theological publication—De iustitia et iure (On justice and law)—by Catholic theologian Leonardus Lessius. Of course, he condemned them as immoral. Then, “in 1666, the English Birth Rate Commission attributed a recent downward fertility rate to use of ‘condons’, the first documented use of that word (or any similar spelling).”

During the Renaissance, condoms were made out of animal intestines and bladder. The first known condoms to cover the entire penis appeared in the late 15th century, when Dutch traders introduced ones made from fine leather to Japan.

Despite several kinds of opposition from legal, religious and medical circles, the condom market grew rapidly. By the 18th century, a variety of kinds of condoms were available and sold at pubs, barbershops, chemist shops, open-air markets and the theater throughout Europe and then America. Of course, due to expense and lack of sex education, condoms were generally used only by the middle and upper classes. It wasn’t until the 19^th century that contraceptives were promoted to those with lower incomes.

Condom use increased tremendously in the U.S. after the Civil War, particularly in response to skyrocketing rates of sexually transmitted diseases. (Oh, those Victorians—puritanical on the surface, but secretly breaking their own rules.) In fact, during this time, sex education classes were introduced to public schools for the first time, teaching about venereal diseases and how they were transmitted. Of course, the primary method taught to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) was abstinence, because the medical community and self-declared “moral watchdogs” considered STDs to be punishment for sexual misbehavior. In fact, the stigma against victims of these diseases was so great that many hospitals refused to treat people who had syphilis.

For decades, this attitude and educational practice continued—condoms were only for bad people who had sinful sex. Yet, “Worldwide, condom sales doubled in the 1920s.” By the mid-1930s, many religious institutions sanctioned contraceptives for married couples and legal restrictions began to be relaxed.

So perhaps my great-grandmother required that her husbands and lovers wear condoms to prevent pregnancy and disease. Yet in her environs—rural and urban Ohio—it seems more apropos that pregnancy prevention would have been left up to her, the woman. I grew up in the 1970s, and even into the present there is a prevailing attitude that pregnancy prevention is a woman’s responsibility.

But all this condom history is pretty interesting, isn’t it?