Grandmother And The Chair

We all called her “Grandmother.” In reality, she was my father’s grandmother and my great-grandmother. Anne Matilda McCaleb (née Farrar) was born on May 8, 1887 and died February 3, 1983 at the age of 95, just a little over four years shy of her 100th birthday. There was never any confusion among the family when speaking of Grandmother because both of my parents’ mothers were called “Grandma” and only Anne McCaleb was afforded the full-blown honorific, “Grandmother.” I’m not sure how that happened and I’m not really sure it matters.

What I am sure of is that I was a lucky young man because until I reached the age of 18, I was fortunate to have both my maternal and paternal grandparents and a great-grandmother still alive. More fortunate still, I was able to grow up with ample opportunies to get to know and enjoy all of these wonderful people. In light of the fact that tomorrow is Mother’s Day, I thought it would be appropriate to share a funny story about my Grandmother that happened when I was about 11 years old.

I encourage you to click on the picture to the right and take a closer look at this regal lady of the South. The straight line of her lips that might make her look stern is softened by the openness of her face and the warmth of her eyes. If you were fortunate enough to know her as I did, you would perceive the spark of mischief behind that face and you would know that this was how she looked just before a smile.  I looked closely at this photograph while preparing it to be published on the Internet and I have to believe that she would have been amused by the Internet and would enjoy reading this story almost as much as I am enjoying writing it.

Grandmother was married to Sidney Brisco McCaleb, Sr. and spent much of her life on Smithland Plantation in Kingston, MS south of Natchez. I never got to know my great-Grandfather since he died just a couple of years after I was born in 1965. To my knowledge there is only one photograph of me with both of my great-grandparents and I was just a baby at the time. Grandmother suffered from hip problems which apparently is a family problem that several of her children and grandchildren have inherited. Grandmother was in her 70’s when Grandfather died and because of her hip problems she was pretty much relegated to being in a wheelchair most of the time. She faced her disability and her loss with the equanimity and steadfastness of a grand dame of the South but by the early 1970’s she decided to close her home in Kingston, MS and live with her daughter Ella and her son-in-law Calvin in their home outside of Houston.

My parents now live on the land that is known as Smithland along with several of my aunts and uncles. Interestingly enough, Grandmother’s son, Sidney McCaleb, Jr and her daughter, Ella now also live on this land. The old home that Grandmother kept for so many years before she “broke-up housekeeping” is still standing, though it has fallen into disrepair and is only the shell of what it once was. 

There is an oilwell on Smithland Plantation and the money earned from the oil along with her social security gave Grandmother a comfortable life with her daughter and she was able to begin a habit that stuck with her until the end. Each year around the beginning of summer, she would board a plane headed for California where she would visit for a couple of weeks with her son, Sidney, Jr. and his wife and children. At the end of her stay, she would board another plane headed for Washington, D.C. where she would stay for a couple of weeks with her daughter, Anna Belle and her husband Johnny. When that visit was concluded, she would fly to Birmingham to spend some time with her daughter, Jo and her husband, Pete, and their children. And then, when the time was right and because Natchez, MS didn’t have an airport, Grandmother would board yet another plane and fly to Jackson, MS where my parents and I would pick her up and she would spend a couple of weeks in our home prior to having us drive her to Natchez to stay with my Grandma, Mary Louise Tarver and my grandpa, Roy Howard Tarver. At the end of her time with them, we would return to Natchez, pick her up and take her back to the airport in Jackson to fly the final leg of her journey back to her home in Houston. She used to say, “As long as the oilwell keeps pumping, I’m gonna keep flying!” The well kept pumping and she kept flying until she died in 1983.

Most of my memories of Grandmother start around the year 1975 after I was 10 years old. I barely remember her in a wheelchair, because sometime around the age of 85 she had her first hip-replacement surgery. As soon as she was recovered from that, she had the other hip replaced and went from being wheelchair-bound to being able to walk across the floor with two cups of coffee and not spill any. With her renewed mobility, and her spirits high, I believe she began to enjoy life a lot more and old age became a badge of honor for her. At the time of her death she was already planning her 100th birthday party!

I mentioned earlier that Grandmother’s face concealed a mischief that made her delightful to be around. One particular pleasure that she enjoyed after getting “ball-bearing hip-joints” as we used to call them occurred at the airports. During the mid to late 1970’s airport security began to tighten a bit after some hi-jackings and now people were having to go through metal detectors prior to boarding their planes. Grandmother loved to go through the detector and not tell anyone she had metal hip-joints just to make the alarm go off. She said it was because then they would have to “frisk” her. Apparently from the stories I heard, she like to do this alot.

One of the things I remember most about Grandmother other than her spunk and high-spirits was her addiction to reading. She was a voracious reader and constantly had a book that she was half-way through. It must have been a trait that she passed on because all of her children were heavy readers and I have also been blessed with that gift as well as an interest in writing. Her trips to visit all of her children were made for the obvious reasons: she loved to spend time with them, she loved to visit, and she loved to travel. But one less obvious reason that she made all those trips was she was out of books. She always left Houston with a bunch of books packed in her bags and she traded with everyone along the way. By the time she returned to Houston she had a whole bunch of new but slightly used books to read in the coming year.

It could be argued that Grandmother was reading to improve her mind, for science has shown that you must continue to use your brain as you grow older or brain function will diminish, but I reget to inform you that I don’t believe that was why Grandmother read books. You see, my Grandmother was addicted to romance novels. All kinds of romance novels. The stuff women take to the beach with them with pictures of hunky guys on the cover with torn shirts holding a damsel in distress in his arms in the middle of a rain storm. I remember sneaking peeks at those books and they were pretty intense. Today, those books would probably not get a PG rating if they were turned into movies, but at the time they were my Grandmother’s favorite entertainment. Perhaps, just perhaps, they were also a form of travelling for her. A chance to visit places she’d never been or to do things she’d never done. Whatever the reason, I do remember the book trading process was pretty well complete by the time she reached our house and she never was more than an arm’s length away from her book.

I also remember her black creepers. Grandmother never left her bedroom without being dressed, having her hair in place, wearing her “grandma stockings” and black creeper shoes. I can’t remember if they were laced up or not, but I suspect they were not. I remember the soles were flat and made of soft rubber and being black they went with everything she wore. I called her stockings “grandma stockings” because they were what you would expect and sometimes they were a little loose. But because she always wore a dress, she always had her stockings on. There may be family members who can shed more light on this particular subject, but for now I’m writing about my memories and my memory of Grandmother always included her stockings and her black creepers. I know you are probably wondering why I’m fixated on this particular subject, but hang with me on this because they play a big part in this story.

I suppose that I was given a great gift by growing up in Jackson and Pearl, Mississippi; for living in those places put us directly in Grandmother’s flight path on her annual journey and it made it possible for me to get to spend a great deal of time with Grandmother. She was as regular as the seasons and as soon as school was out, I knew it wouldn’t be long before we would get the call from Aunt Jo in Birmingham that she had put Grandmother on the plane there and she’d be landing at Jackson’s airport about 1 hour later. I can’t remember how I felt about it at the time, I suspect that I was like most kids at that age who dreaded older people staying in their home, I hope that if I was like that, I didn’t say too much about it to my parents. Once she arrived at our house though I know I enjoyed her company and now that I’m older I know that I miss her often.

Grandmother was a great story teller, didn’t mind having a conversation with a child and she was a pretty good cook too. She was especially good at making something good out of not much at all. I remember her taking all the leftovers out of our refridgerator one year and making a soup that I remember not so much for how it tasted, but for the fact that she threw in some macaroni and cheese left from a previous meal and the elbow macaroni bloated up and became huge in the soup and that was the first time I ever had noodles in a soup that wasn’t chicken soup! One year she came to our house and noticed there were wild blackberries growing on the fence behind our house and she told me to go out and pick the blackberries and bring them to her. I did so and soon I smelled the wonderful odor of a blackberry cake baking in the oven. All of the blackberries sank to the bottom so when she turned out the cake the blackberries became the topping. I will never eat a blackberry tart or pastry without thinking of the cake my great-grandmother made for me that day!

As I said, most of my memories of Grandmother seem to start around 1975 after I turned 10 years old. I believe this particular incident occurred in 1976 when I was eleven and though I’ve talked to my mother about the timing, I can’t seem to narrow it down any closer than that. Based on where we lived at the time, it seems about right. We were living on a street named Ramada Circle in the Forest Hill area of South Jackson, MS and I believe this was the summer between my 6th and 7th grades. We were living in one of the nicest homes I remember us living in at the time and it was a light brown brick home on the top of small hill because we had a steep driveway. Inside was a big fireplace and what I though was plenty of room to be a kid. My father and mother were both working hard to build their fledging auto-repair business in Pearl, MS some 20-30 minutes away from our home and in truth I was a latch-key kid. After school each day, I’d ride the bus home arriving around 3:30pm where I would do my chores (most days) and watch “The Gong Show” and “Dark Shadows” repeats and wait for my parents to get home usually by 5:30pm. It was a different time back then and it was much safer for a 10 year old kid to be left alone. I was an only child and didn’t have any brothers or sisters to argue with or fight over the television and I was pretty happy with the arrangement. At least from what my mother tells me, I was a fairly responsible kid excluding the time I tried to wire up my bikelight to 120 volts with a cord off an old lamp. Or the time I “accidentally” shot my best friend in the butt with my bb gun. Or the time I tried to jump a ditch with a 10-speed and crash landed and bent the rims on my relatively new bike. Or the time I…….but I digress.

We had decent furniture, but there was one chair that we owned that was kind of a trick chair. It was covered in naugahyde that was supposed to look like real leather, but the older the chair got, the more orange it got. I don’t really know that color it was when it was new, but I definitely remember that it had an orange tint to it. The chair was deep and wide and very comfortable. It wasn’t a recliner, but rather it was mounted on a base with five feet that stuck out in a star pattern. Over the years the springs had worn out and unless you were careful and made sure that the back of the chair was resting on against one of the feet, it was possible to get too comfortable and the chair would turn over backwards leaving you on your back.

When Grandmother arrived that year, Mom and Dad both explained to Grandmother about the pecularities of the chair and warned her off telling her that she should not sit in the chair for any reason and that she should stick with the other chairs or the couch. While Mom and Dad and even me were around and in the room with her, Grandmother complied with our instructions and she didn’t try to sit in the chair. However, as I said earlier, Grandmother had a mischievious and rebellious streak in her and I believe that it began to eat at the 88 year old woman that there was any chair anywhere that she should be forbidden to sit in. Several days into her visit, she began to plot her chance to try out the naugahyde chair. It was too inviting, it looked too comfortable, and by God it was off-limits which just incited her even further.

It was a sunny day when Grandmother put her plan into action. I remember the sky was blue with white billowy clouds. It was hot outside and I spent much of the day inside with Grandmother in case she needed anything and because frankly I didn’t like hot weather. Besides, I had been given the responsibility to look after Grandmother and it just wouldn’t do for me to be outside riding my bike somewhere when I had to take care of her. It was getting up towards lunch time and I told Grandmother that I was going to the kitchen to fix us some sandwiches for lunch. She was sitting comfortably on the couch reading her latest romance novel when I walked the 20 steps from the living room to the kitchen on the other side of the wall. I had gotten most of the fixings out and was starting to make our sandwiches when I heard this “WHUMPPPFFFF!” sound from the living room and then silence. My first thought was, “Oh my God! Grandmother has fallen!” and I immediately rushed toward the living room.

As I entered the living room through the doorway that joined the breakfast nook with the living room, I was confronted by a sight that brings a smile to my face everytime I think of it now, but at the time it was all I could do not to panic. I saw the bottom of the orange naugahyde chair with the five footed base looking like a star and rising just behind were my Grandmother’s legs covered with wrinkled and loose “grandma stockings” topped off by rubber-soled black creepers pointed directly at the ceiling.

I rushed to her side and fell to my knees beside her and touched her arm thinking she was dead because her eyes were looking straight up and said, “Grandmother? Are you ok?”

She blinked and turned to focus on my face and asked, “Can you help me up?” Relieved that Grandmother was still alive and that I wouldn’t be blamed for killing my great-grandmother, I struggled to lift the chair back up to it’s upright position, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t lift her and the chair. She was not a small woman, but I knew she was old and frail and I needed to get her back up as soon as possible. I considered calling the fire department or the police, but since she seemed ok, I thought that might be overkill. All I really needed was a little bit of help to lift the chair and then everything would be ok. My heart was still pounding and I tried hard to think of what to do. It was the middle of the day and all of our neighbors were at work so no one was at home.

Then suddenly, I remembered my friend’s dad worked nights and they lived across the street, so I told Grandmother to be still and I would go and get help. I got to my feet and ran to the front door and opened it to a blast of hot air and saw the blue sky with white clouds when from behind me low and soft I heard my Grandmother call my name.

“Paul?” she called faintly and then again, “Paul?”

I froze for a second thinking that now she really was going to die. Perhaps it was a heart attack. I’d heard of family members who had passed away from heart attacks and now my own heart was racing again. I turned around and rushed back to where she lay on her back with her feet still sticking straight up in the air and fell to my knees once again and bent low so I could hear her words clearly in case she was giving me her last request. Oh, I just knew this was it. “88 Year Old Grandmother Dies While In The Care Of Her Great-Grandson Of A Heart Attack After Falling Backwards In A Chair,” which was a long headline I know, but it would probably make the front page. Worse yet, how would I tell my parents?

“Yes, Grandmother, I’m here, are you ok? Is there something you need? What can I do?” I told her hoarsely.

“Could you turn down the corner of the page I’m on in this book? It’s a good book and I don’t want to lose my place” she replied.

Stunned by her simple request and relieved that she didn’t appear to actually be dying, not that I would recognize that anyway, I turned the page down, got up and went across the street to get help. Our neighbor was home and after I explained the situation, he put on some shoes and followed me back across the street to my Grandmother with her legs still up in the air. I don’t know if he smiled or not when he saw her, but between the two of us, we got the chair upright and pulled Grandmother out of the chair and got her back to the couch. After he was satisfied that she was ok, he went back home and I finished fixing her lunch.

Not much was said about Grandmother And The Chair that night. I don’t know if Mom and Dad had a talk with her afterwards about doing what they told her not to do. I know that I would have probably gotten a lecture or a spanking if I had done something they told me not to do. But then again, perhaps they chose to let the experience be the teacher. What I can tell you is that we never had to worry about Grandmother sitting in the orange naugahyde chair anymore and in the end she outlasted the chair for she continued to visit long after the chair was gone.

There are many things I wish I could remember about Grandmother. The older I get the more precious the memories of that time with her become to me. Grandmother was a great wit and storyteller, a good cook, a loving great-grandparent, and my summertime friend. I believe there is a Heaven and somewhere in it is my Grandmother’s mansion. I also believe that in at least one of the rooms in that mansion, Grandmother has an orange naugahyde chair that she can sit in any time she wants.

Happy Mother’s Day!