Mrs. Fitz's Story Emporium

Several things about being a granddaughter are fun, among them remembering sweet things about grandma, and being connected to her other granddaughters who can remember things I forgot.

Grandma Janda had a cherub face, perhaps in part from being the baby of her family. She looked cherubic her whole life. I don’t recall her ever noisy or demanding; but then I saw her when such things would not show up.

Grandma Janda had a way to be virtuous that I envied then and I envy now. She prayed. She was a terrific prayer. Sometimes when you thought she was sitting there and listening to what was going on, she was actually praying the rosary or just having a solo chat with God, saints, too.

Grandma Janda had a great head of hair, lots of it. This largess morphed from a chubby back bun into a stunned beehive style somewhere in the 1960s. Her baby face with really BIG hair on top of it gave her an interesting look that was hers alone; a woman and child in one. Which she was.

The women who raised me shared a suspicion of sparkly, yet were drawn to it. This meant that indulging in sparkles and rhinestones and festoonery was reserved for Easter hats and the occasional formal event.

Easter-hat-shopping assumed remarkable and multigenerational import. It was valid excuse for a trip to Sears Roebuck. It was a rationale for spending an afternoon in the company of women only. It was fun without a purpose, other than fun.

Sears Roebuck understood all this and responded with largesse for the masses. Weeks prior to the holiday celebrating the triumph over death, three or four huge tables were piled with hats like bouquets on a pyre. Whilst my Mom and her sisters tried on hats, my cousins and I indulged in sparkle-hunting: lots of rhinestones and the occasional feather fell off the hats and landed in corners of the tables. We became adept at collecting these tiny castoffs and pocketing them. What we intended to use them for, I can’t recall but having little sparkly things was satisfying.

Less satisfying was the actual purchase of a hat, since Mom picked it. I understood her confidence in knowing what to choose. I just didn’t care for her criteria. She sought age-appropriate bonnets. I wanted rambunctious and flamboyant. I wanted sparkles. I suspect she did, too; but was too well bred to say so.

In our Elmhurst ranch house basement, Dad housed his outboard motor in the way-back part of the space where few of his three children ever ventured. This may have been deliberate in the sense that his outboard motor was one of the few things he owned that had nothing whatsoever to do with us.

Raising a family in the Chicago suburbs after World War II was pretty communal, going by my experience as one of those raised. I don’t recall Dad using our car for solo road trips. I don’t recall Dad having any space known as a man cave. I don’t recall Dad using the kitchen at all.

But he fished, sometimes alone. Rarely alone, but sometimes. On these occasions he woke up in the middle of the night. He fetched his motor from its subterranean storage. He packed it and himself in the car. He sallied forth to the north suburban chain-of-lakes where there was bait and rowboats and men with beards, not known in Elmhurst.

Such days were rare, evidenced by Mom’s stunned look in his absence; but I think they were important to him. I think he loved that outboard motor.

My Grandma Janda mothered six children in Chicago, worked for Sears Roebuck & Co., prayed her rosary, worshiped the Chicago White Sox and baked houska bread.

Making houska became, in her later widow years, what you might call a cottage industry; except she didn’t sell it. She made lots and lots of butter-braided houskas and gave them to her children and her children’s children.

Over time she specialized. For some grandchildren, she made houska without yellow raisins because that’s the way they liked it. For some sons-in-law, she supersized houska because these fellows were on the larger side of their species. For special occasions she doubled output because generosity seemed appropriate.

Baking houska isn’t the only memorable thing Grandma Janda did. It may not be the best thing she did; but it ranks right up there.

Living in Illinois is like living on a tablecloth. It’s flatter than a credit card. There are few, if any clumps, divets or elevations, excluding the Kahokia Indian mounds protruding here and there. We make up for this with a populace known for clumpiness, divet-ness, and an elevated sense of importance. Our only sense of closure, of boundary, lies in the scary fact that corny IOWAns live just west of us; and we are NOT them.

We have no sense whatsoever of being one with the land, since the place is like a big stretched canvas. Thus, we build any which way we like – no turrety houses hanging for dear life onto the streets like San Francisco, no caves carved into Buttes. No. If we want a kickin’ ranch, or a stiff colonial, a little Mosque on the prairie, or a geodesic; well, we just put her up.

Architecturally, Illinois comprises remnants. We are a remnant state. This fact contributes to the significance of sports and politics, which are just about the only concepts that bind us.

I like things in threes. So tidy. Here’s three facts I like that have little or no relation to each other:

1. This month (Feb.’12) Russian scientists popped through 13,000 feet of ice and reached Lake Vostok in Antartica. This lake has been encased for, oh, about 25 million years.

2. Ulysses S. Grant, 18th U.S. president (1869-77) got a speeding ticket for running his horse and buggy wild on the streets of Washington, D.C. whilst he was chief executive.

3. The site on which our condo now stands once housed Chicago’s Merry Gardens ballroom and dancers came from all over the place to have a toe-tapping good time.