Grandma Lawrence

My Grandma Lawrence, Eliza Ellen, was known as "Aunt Ella." The first picture is her with my oldest sister, Evelyn. I just love how she is holding Evelyn's little dress down. The second picture is her with my mother. Grandma was probably nearing 80 by then.

Grandma's house seemed about as much like "home" as our own house did because I spent so much happy time there. She was a kind, gentle grandma, and although she kept busy all day she often found time to do special things with me. She was my first piano teacher. I remember sitting on the round piano stool with my legs dangling while she found a box or something for me to put my feet on. Sometimes she would play Chinese Checkers with me on a big old Chinese Checkers board and an assortment of marbles.

When I was three or four my mother had a lengthy sick spell, and my sister LaRae and I stayed at Grandma's for a while. The house didn't have any heat in the bedrooms, so in the winter the beds were piled high with mostly homemade quilts, and every night Grandma would fill rubber hot water bottles with hot water from the big tea kettle (she didn't drink tea) she kept on the cook stove all the time. She would tuck us in bed with a water bottle at our feet. LaRae slept with her, and I slept with my Uncle Alma. LaRae didn't especially like the arrangement because Grandma snored! (Grandma and Uncle Alma probably didn't like it much, either, but they made us feel comfortable and welcome.)

Grandma was a good cook, and she did it all on the old cook stove. She never wanted an electric range, not even in the summer when there always had to be a fire in the stove for cooking and baking. One thing I especially liked was when she cooked new potatoes, carrots, and peas from the garden, and combined them with a white sauce. She made all their breads and rolls, and she usually had cookies in the cookie "basket." She would make the dough and spread it in the bottom of large cake pans. When it was baked and cool she would cut it into squares. Usually she put raisins in it, but sometimes she had chocolate chips, which was a special treat. I loved it when she would cut thick slices of bread, cover them with cheese, and put them in the oven to melt the cheese and toast the bread.

She always had a project going. Her favorite was making patchwork quilts. She could turn a sack full of cloth scraps into beautiful works of art. She also crocheted rag rugs. She would cut long strips of cloth and sew them together, then wind it into big balls like yarn. She had a big wooden crochet hook that she used to make the rugs with. She was an expert semstress, and she did alot of clothing alterations for customers from Cedar as well as made new clothes. I remember her sitting at the old treadle sewing machine hour after hour, then later at a new machine that had a lever she could press with her knee to make it sew.

As far back as I can remember Grandma walked with a heavy limp. Because she never complained or talked about her condition, I don't really know what it was, but I assume it was arthritis in her hip or a worn out hip joint. The last few years of her life she couldn't walk at all, but I never thought of her as "crippled," because she was so alive in every other way. She even took up oil painting when whe was 80, and she won several blue ribbons for her paintings at the Iron Co. Fair.

She and Grandpa raised six children, three boys and three girls. They were interested in and proud of all their children and grandchildren. Grandma was a refined and deeply religious woman, and she set a good example for her family. I will be glad to be with her again some day.