My Pike Grandparents

Some in our family call her Grandma Nell. To me she was Grandma Pike, and what a Grandma. There was so much mystery about those two people that were whiter than anyone I had ever known. In my memory all of the farmers and their kids had deep tans in contrast to the skin on our visitors from Salt Lake City. They had come to help us on the farm. Once they moved a trailer in by our house and started to live there, the strangeness was replaced with discoveries of the many new ways grandparents could love and teach their grand kids.

In their trailer there were so many things to amaze and delight. The bobble headed red velvety bull, the music box on the shelf above their bed, the red glass dishes she let us eat from, the single metal glass we all drank from on the sink, and the grease can that stored bacon drippings all year so that Grandma could mix it with ashes to make soap outside. Later, there would be a fancy blue glass container that held the pills (lemon drops.) Eating one became a ritual part of each visit.

Grandpa planted a garden and grew peanuts among other things. He was a carpenter and we were amazed at the hand tools he used on projects that fixed up both homes. He told us a story of how he once hand fed a squirrel a piece of bread in hopes that we would eat our sandwiches with a little more finesse.

Grandma taught us to embroidery line drawings copied from coloring books. I am sentimental about so little but I treasure the sewing box I inherited from her. She pieced the blocks into quilt tops and we learned how to quilt without tying. She always had some sewing project going. We were horrified the day she ran the machine's needle through her index finger nail. When my cousin came to play she let us draw our plans (we couldn't read or write yet) of all of the adventures we would have that day. My tomboy ways and long hair led to painful weekly bath times where tangles were taken out with a comb before cream rinses were invented. Grandma started french braiding my hair every morning to calm my screaming and some of my wild appearance.

Grandma was Grandpa's third wife. Dad's mother was the first wife but this is the only one I knew. Their routines showed their love for each other. She would never eat before Grandpa came home. He often took her, and sometimes me, with him when he road the ditch so they could spend time together. I was intrigued by the bent tines on the pitchfork with the long handle he used to clear the weeds from the head gates. As we sat waiting in the dusty red Dodge Dart, Grandma would let me circle all of the words I knew in the Reader's Digest she brought along to keep me occupied. There was never bickering. In Grandpa's memory Grandma never spoke a word of gossip.

When Leda came along she was given Grandma's name and her heart. As Leda started to speak she called the babbling French poetry. I can still see her slumped over "sleeping" in the middle of reading a story to her. I later found out Grandma had mild seizures. It helped me understand why she never learned to drive a car.

They lived in Salt Lake in the winter time. Because Grandpa was a convert, he had many ancestors to find and help receive temple ordinances. They would walk to the genealogy library from their home on Center street to find names. They even took a trip to Canada to visit his mother's relatives and find out more about them. He shoveled snow for the neighbors and fed them from their little garden. He would sit for hours reading with the special chair desk he made so the book wouldn't shake with his Parkinson's disease. Together they lived what they believed and taught me with their example.