They marauded for the tasty sweetness Johnny usually doled out like Halloween candy; plastic cups filled with creamy vanilla ice cream. The four cousins gobbled the treats with small wooden spoons every time Johnny made good on his pledges to hand them over. They pitter-pattered through Grandma’s house regularly as youngsters. The humble abode had one floor with three bedrooms at one end, an inviting kitchen inside the front door and a warm living room that stepped down into a large enclosed porch added to the house in the nineteen seventies.
The delicious aroma of breakfast often wafted from Grandma’s kitchen, never more mouth-watering than when her homemade sausage gravy and biscuits spilled over the side of an old cast iron skillet. Fresh ingredients for every meal imaginable, Miller High Life, and half-filled milk jugs with missing tops were crammed in the refrigerator. The linoleum floor was worn from three young men hustling to and from football practice all through high school. The legions of teammates stopping over to their home away from home also left an unmistakable path in the old kitchen floor. The pattern was pure seventies, yellowing squares with a blurred floral pattern, the perfect size for a grandchild to traipse through without touching any lines and losing the game of balance he played in his head.
The window over the kitchen sink looked out to a small suburban landscape accented with an enormous oak in the middle of the tree lawn, shadowing the yard and the street equally, littering helicopters that provided hours of adolescent entertainment. The towering oak was a reminder of days gone by, of the stories Johnny told of cowboys and Indians, of hunting through the northeast Illinois wilderness long before Chicago became the megalopolis famous for meat packing, city fires and gang wars. The tree was as much home as Grandma’s warm hug, it was our very own Giving Tree, made famous by Shel Silversteen and brought to life in Grandma’s front yard.
Above the kitchen table, a giant bay window framed countless lightning shows, better entertainment than anything on television for the curious, scared, wide-eyed cousins. Retreating into Grandma’s arms, learning to count between the lightning and thunder, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three-one-thousand . . . JUMP!
The attached garage, where Johnny kept his heavenly treats in the spare fridge, housed good quality American cars throughout the years. The cousins often piled into a parked Oldsmobile and played on the cloth seats, making believe they were in faraway lands, jumping from front to back to elude dragons, bad guys and the occasional swipe of another’s hand. The garage was littered with an aspiring carpenter’s tools, a lifetime of knick-knacks and even the eldest son’s family during desperate times.
The family often gathered in the living room where the focus was on each other rather than the television. During the coldest Chicago winters, a kerosene heater glowed in the middle of the room, radiating heat and keeping the room as warm as the hearts of those inside it. Grandma tapped the keys of a baby grand piano as Johnny sprawled out in front of the couch on a hodge-podge bed of old couch cushions. He smiled at the intense gazes the cousins wore as we listened to Grandma’s slow music. After the console TV died, her sons replaced it with a modest upgrade and perched it on corner mount hardware on the far wall. The television usually came on when Grandma wanted to watch Wheel of Fortune, the cousins were ready to settle down and watch cartoons, or Johnny had an itch to see the last American Cowboy, John Wayne. Johnny sat the cousins in front of that TV on many dreary nights to scare them with black and white Lon Cheney movies or a Bela Lugosi classic. After the kids moved away, Grandma and Johnny would wait up in that living room to the wee hours of the morning, when the families would return home for the holidays after hours on the road. The late night hugs, after driving all night through Midwest snowstorms, warmed us more than the kerosene heater ever could.
Double doors opened off the living room and one step changed the warmth of the living room to the barren solitude of the back room. Cold gushed from the door to the patio and seeped in through the sliding glass door. Furniture was noticeably absent in the back room, save the youngest son’s king size waterbed. It was difficult to move away from the comfort of that house, that home. Each year, as if Jack had planted a bean in the shag carpeting, a Christmas tree magically grew in front of the sliding glass door. Suddenly, the frigid room transformed into a glowing oasis of holiday spirit. The room, dim and sullen most of the year, rivaled any carnival midway in sparkle and mysticism on Christmas morning. The carefully decorated tree shrunk the room, as did the cousins’ growth spurts year after year.
To the eager cousins, Christmas morning never came fast enough. One after the other they stirred from sleep, only to be disappointed that the twilight on morning had not yet broken the snowy December night sky. Every year the four cousins raced to the back room to discover what Santa brought the night before. Without exception, they dove headfirst into a sea of presents, speckled with specially wrapped gifts in shiny department store window decorating paper, a staple of Christmas at Grandma’s house. The paper was as constant as the company. Johnny acquired it at one of the stores he cleaned at night; the roll was a thick as the old oak out front and always hid the best presents. Twenty five years later, Christmas still isn’t exactly right without it.
Outside the sliding glass door, a tall wooden slat fence guarded Grandma and Johnny’s stake in the world and protected the cousins as they played outside in the sacred, grassy yard. Grandma’s garden was overgrown and peppered with lost matchbox cars and MIA G.I. Joe dolls. The small concrete patio supported a worn out picnic table, weathered by years of sun and rain and topped with ashtrays and beer can tabs from long nights and early morning. A rugged Weber grill stood stoically in the corner, chipped and grease laden from searing thousands of pounds of Chicago beef. Two generations of kids played on the rusty swing set in the corner of the yard and occasionally the cousins camped out in a small tent, smack dab in the middle of their own Garden of Eden.
Back inside, the family made the modest house a welcoming home. Thelma, the matriarch of the small Midwest family was a strong willed mother and gentle grandmother with an infectious smile and a laugh reflective of her youthful personality. She was quick to pucker up as soon as she saw the grandbabies, the wrinkles around her mouth showing her age even if the excitement in her voice contradicted them. In contrast to the suburban life her grandchildren would know, Thelma was raised in the rural Midwest during a simpler time. Her father tilled land until the day he died and Thelma exemplified his farmer’s values and simplicity. The cousins learned to be honest and to enjoy the subtleties in life from Thelma, traits she picked up as she sat on her father’s lap on a faded green tractor. Her oldest son would venture back to the farm with his new wife and baby boy while he searched for a starting point in life. The cousins inherited the family work ethic and someday they would bubble with pride thinking of their country roots. Years later, in the dairy aisle at the grocery store, one cousin would insist on buying only pure horseradish. Look at the ingredients; horseradish root, salt, vinegar. Anything more was unacceptable. His affinity for the blend arose after seeing his father and Great-Grandfather emerging from the farmhouse basement, arms extending like zombies to keep the smell from further scalding their nostrils and crying like babies after a session of grinding the root for the morning’s breakfast.
