My Mom the Humorist, Part 1

Thinking about the path each of us takes to reach adulthood, to be a functioning member of society, many factors come into play like personality type, place in birth order in the family, and the time period in history in which a person lived.  Other factors include the family of origin, siblings and parents, and what issues predominate in that home.

In my home, we did a lot of camping and backpacking. We also had a van and travelled a lot during the summer.

Each of my parents was an only child.  We had no aunts, nor uncles or even cousins.  Both parents were introverts, one a chemist and the other a math teacher.  These were disciplines that introverts could thrive in. Their home was a quiet place. But then a gradual change occurred as they had five children and that family of seven became its own microcosmic society.

In this place, Mom wielded great influence.

Her daddy was one of four big, tall men born of Irish blood.  Grandpa was an alcoholic who became angry easily, and there were times he came home and threw the dinner plate across the room.  He caused terror in that little home for mother and daughter. Grandma turned to sedatives to calm her down and was addicted for years, before the medical community realized that those drugs were addicting.

My grandparents made candy in their kitchen and sold it door to door to make a living during the Great Depression. They also sold cooking oil.  At that time, oil was only sold in large containers. So, they bought smaller jars, poured oil into them and sold the smaller containers door to door.  This made access to cooking oil financially easier for homemakers.  They did whatever it took to put food on the table.

Later, Grandpa got a job at Reynolds Metals and it provided a steady income. This was the home my mom grew up in.  Grandpa and Grandma loved to identify the birds that came to their feeder, and they greatly enjoyed this shared activity. He was known to us grandkids as a funny guy, ready with a joke or half a roll of Lifesavers whenever we would visit.  He died of tuberculosis, made worse because he was unable to give up drinking.

Grandma was the daughter of a Lutheran minister who himself died from the flu after going out in a snowstorm to baptize a recently dead newborn. The belief in that particular Lutheran sect was that a child would not go to heaven if it was not baptized.  Such was the dedication of Great Grandpa that he gave his life away for the sake of that baby.  He left a wife and four daughters in Great Falls, Montana. When Great Grandma died a few years later, her daughters moved to Portland, Oregon where they all got jobs at Lipman-Wolfe, a large department store, in the early 1900s.  Grandma got a job, because, while one sister was a good worker and well liked, she had a hard time waking up in the morning.  She would put an alarm clock inside a cooking pan in hopes that the morning rattle would be loud enough to wake her from a deep slumber, but it proved not to be. Grandma had no such trouble waking, so she got a job on the strength of her ability to get her sister to work on time.

Sometimes, good fortune comes in unusual ways.

My mom, Pat Pearson, was not only the chief, cook and bottle washer as she liked to say, she was also the humorist. She loved music, had a beautiful voice, and would sing around the house, while making dinner or doing the laundry.  She wore sneakers and slacks, or dresses and jackets. Her clothing choices had a quiet flair.  She was also an intelligent woman. Starting at Reed College six months early at age seventeen, she wowed them with her good looks, winning a beauty contest her first year. She also enjoyed mountain climbing.  My parents got better acquainted during their college years by going on climbs together.  When she graduated with a degree in math, she promptly married my dad who had graduated with a degree in chemistry.

I admired Mom greatly.  She often could make a difficult situation better with her wit and calm demeanor.  When a glass of milk would spill at the mealtime table, rather than give an admonishment of “you kids ought to be more careful!” like Daddy might, she would say, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk”.  Then, she would bring a wet rag to the table to clean it up and call the dog to lap up what was on the floor. She exuded such a casual calmness that made even mistakes fun!

Another thing I remember about her, besides the singing, was her dedication to keep up with the hand sewing, mending the clothes.  She never really loved cooking but in her opinion, it was a necessity to feed five hungry children.  She enjoyed the quiet work that was needed to do hand sewing.  I remember seeing her there almost every evening, sitting at one end of the couch darning Daddy’s socks or a worn shirt or dress. Clothes got worn out or torn from living every day, but, nothing got thrown away that had not been mended a few times first. The four daughters in our family wore hand me downs, though my brother as the only boy, was off the hook.  We could not be too concerned with staying perfectly in fashion because we did not have the money for it. But, with mom’s mending skills we could at least have neat, clean clothing to wear.

I remember my mother’s singing.  She often sang when making dinner. Among her favorite songs were those popularized by Elvis Presley. These included Please Release Me, Blue Suede Shoes and Heartbreak Hotel. Along with singing around the house, she shared her humor and view of life with her five kids.

One of the entertainers of the 1950’s that she liked was the satirist Stan Freberg, who had a radio show in 1957.  He had a great ability to poke fun at songs, characters and TV shows of the time.  You could have heard one of his more famous satires of soap operas called “John and Marsha”. In this piece, John and Marsha spoke passionately to each other using just the others name.  There was dramatic music in the background throughout and ended in a climactic way.  It was funny because it was over the top drama and drove the point home that though soap operas displayed a lot of passion, they were not realistic.  Since then, John –Marsha’s were popular in high school drama classes.

To be continued…..