Eileen and Larry Somers

Larry liked candy and would often offer it to others. Some of his favorites were my least favorite, though. He liked circus peanuts - those orange things reminiscent of styrofoam. He also liked chocolate covered cherries. One Christmas, at least three different people gave him a box for gifts! As he passed them around for others to "enjoy," most of us declined. Another favorite of his were the classic Hershey chocolate bars. The full sized ones! Some of us are a bit more particular about our chocolate and don't enjoy the Hershey milk chocolate. He loved buying boxes of chocolates - Russell Stover or Whitman's - for our mother. Then when she ate them, he commented on her eating too many chocolates . . . As Ann reminded me, he also liked ice cream bars. The ones with vanilla ice cream and the hard chocolate shell. When I was little, I would go through my Halloween candy and take out all the Bit O' Honey and the icky orange and black wrapped maple ones...

Approximately forty years ago, my mom and dad bought this table used. (At least, I believe so. I don't know that they ever bought brand new furniture . . . ) My mom liked garage sales and bargains. When Louise inherited the house and everything in it, she had two or three tables of her own. "Get rid of the ugly one that none of us ever liked anyhow!" Well after three and a half years, it's done. Ann didn't want to see a piece of history go, so I took photos for her. (Ann adds: Louise remembers that Eileen felt terrible when she used bleach to clean the table and it left a mark.  Also: I don't know how many people stubbed their toe on the leg extensions.  Ouch! )  Louise adds that the white spots were actually from when mom was trying to clean something else on the table and the bleach leaked through the cloth it was on. Here they are:

One of the things I heard a LOT in the late 70s / early 80s: "Watch your tone of voice!" I would snarl back, " What tone of voice?" I had so much attitude! When I was older (young 20s), I apologized to my mom for how awful I had been as a 13-year-old (and 14, 15, . . . ). She just laughed. "Seriously, mom. I was such a brat. I'm so sorry for how I talked to you." She shrugged it off. I think she was waiting for me to experience that with my own children. Alas, she didn't realize that my boys were very different than their mom had been as a teen. None of them was ever as awful to me as I was to my own mother! I'm glad I apologized to her when I did. Even though we had another twenty or so years together, I feel as though my ability to reflect and appreciate only grow with my own aging. I can now better understand how she could be so sanguine about my youthful awfulness.

My (Jeanne) sister Louise gave me a box of stuff last week. Our mom was a prodigious saver -  partly a product of being a Depression-era baby and partly the packrat/save everything just-in-case/ you never know mentality that some farmers and teachers just seem to develop. The box was mostly full of Star Tribune newspaper clippings on various topics that interested our mom during the 2000s. Some of the handwritten things caught my eye, though. They're not really "worth" hanging on to. I have other, more meaningful examples of my mom's handwriting. But they do provide some clues to things that in retrospect, I wish I'd been more tuned in to what my mom was dealing with in 2006.  I remember when she was having some trouble with getting up and walking. (Dealing with arthritis in my left knee at the age of 53 makes me more cognizant of the fact that my mom didn't struggle with these issues until her 70s!) This note caught me off guard. It was a concern of h...

I don't remember the why behind these names, but as kids we had them. Ann was "Cookie," Louise was "Toosie," and I was "Poopsie." I don't remember whether Tom had one or not . . . I'll have to ask my siblings. I remember liking my nickname until one of my Canadian uncles thought it was "Poopy." I was soooo upset! I kept correcting him - "It's POOP-SSEEE!" No child wants to be called Poopy. That's just gross. I'll have to add to this entry once I've queried my older siblings about their memories on our nicknames.

Jeanne's story: Once when I was in high school and a bunch of my friends TPd our house, mom insisted that I collect all the "perfectly good" toilet paper and put paper grocery sacks of it in the bathroom. She took away the rolls of TP until we had used all the outdoor stuff first. She hated wastefulness!

Told by Tom as told to him by Larry: Grandpa paid Al and Dad fifty cents per rat to kill rats in the barn. That was a lot of money back then! That's how much damage they could do. So Dad and Al got busy and soon rid the barn of rats. But the boys wanted more money, so they went to friends and neighbors barns and killed more rats, bringing them home for the bounty. Unbeknownst to grandpa, he was paying to rid the entire neighborhood of rats!

Told by Tom as told by our dad: Grandma Somers had chickens and the neighbors had chickens, but didn't fence them in. The neighbors' chickens ate the meal put out for grandma's chickens. So grandma lamented to dad about feeding the neighbors' chickens all the time. Dad asked for extra eggs from grandma and said he would take care of it. The neighbor boy was a friend of his and when dad went the next morning to gather eggs, he was pulling two or three eggs out of each nest. He commented to his friend, "These chickens are very prolific!" The boy went home and told his mom and the next day, the neighbors put up a fence.

Told by Tom: Grandma Somers wanted a rock garden in her yard. (According to our mom, going to St. Quentin back in the day was like going into the wild, wild, west with dirt everywhere. There were no flowers, no trees, no grass. Our grandma liked beauty and had the only house with greenery.) Dad didn't really want to build a rock garden, but he wanted to make his mom happy. He told grandma that he was going fishing with his brothers and then he had to go to work. He would pick up some rocks in the stream and put them in the trunk of his car. He got home from fishing and grandma had had a load of rock dumped off in the yard, but dad had to go to work. So grandma had our Uncle Al make her the rock garden. Uncle Al didn't care, and grandma knew it. She knew Larry would do a more careful job, so when she saw him again she asked him to come out and look at the job Al did. She asked dad, "So what do you think?" Dad didn't want to work on it, so he said, "I think h...

Mom was frustrated with me (Tom) for Lord knows what. She was trying not to swear, but she said "You big ass!" I took it and changed my name to Ubigass Somers for a while, which she did not appreciate. People do not like to have their words turned against them. One time, Christine, Samantha, and I went down to Florida to spend time with mom and dad. Mom was trying to be the good hostess and kept apologizing for the temperature - that it was so cold out. We were coming from Minnesota in the winter, and even though the wind was blowing it felt like 70 degrees. When the wind stopped blowing, it was hot. The girls wanted to go swimming. Mom said, "Make sure they put some shit on so they don't get burnt." (She intended "sunscreen" with that.) I went along with it and said, "Girls, make sure you put some shit on so you don't get burnt." "Yes, Dad.We'll put some shit on." While driving to Canada, our route took us past "La...