Grandma Miller

My grandmother Avis Miller lived in the little house just down the road from us, on the adjoining farm. She called her place “Woodside Cottage,” and she had a placard saying that on top of her mailbox, and stationary that said it at the top of each page. She was a bit of a romantic (my family will be surprised to hear me say that), and she was probably the first playmate I had as a young child, besides my parents.

Her farmland, about 60 acres, was really part of our farm, because it was indeed adjoining, and my father farmed it all.  My understanding was that she received half of the production on that acreage, after expenses, and that was how she lived – that plus Social Security and a monthly payment from my dad for the purchase of his own 96 acres.  She also had her own little farm of sorts, a nice sized garden and a few chickens for eggs and occasional meat. She had a piano that she liked to play while singing hymns and on which she taught me my first bit of knowledge of reading music. She had a very strong alto or mezzo soprano voice that led the congregation in singing hymns every Sunday morning, sometimes to my embarrassment. When I was very young, she had a wood-burning kitchen stove, a hand pump on a dug well out back for water, and an outhouse. For her generation, these were just normal things. But, yes, she did have electricity. And I was still pretty young when she got running water in the house, a bathroom, and an electric stove.

My earliest memory of her is playing with a little rubber ball, tossing it into her apron as she held it spread out and letting out a “whoop” as she caught it. Then she would roll it back to me, allowing me to do it over and over. That was in her living room, which was brightly lit, with windows facing south looking out at the cherry tree that attracted so many birds, and the vegetable garden beyond. She talked about the birds and how she identified them from their calls and songs, especially the cardinal, which was the state bird and mascot of our local school. She made cake-like cookies that might be called tea biscuits that I loved, and I make them for my own grandchildren today. (They are now called “Papaw cookies.”) I use a Xerox copy of a recipe in her handwriting, on which she noted that it was handed down to her from her great-grandmother McKinney, whose maiden name (I have since learned) was Apgar. And, yes, through that branch of our family tree I am a distant cousin of the famous doctor Virginia Apgar.

Grandma never drove a car, nor even had a license as far as I know. We lived about 5 miles from the town where we did most of our routine shopping, and 15 miles from the larger town where we went less frequently for special purchases or to shop in the larger supermarket. She usually rode along, in the back seat with us kids. Memories of those times include watching with anticipation as she rummaged in her purse for mints or cough drops to give us, and eating bananas on the way home after going to the grocery store. Another, less special, memory is recounted below.

I’d like to say that my grandmother was a loving, generous, and kind person, but some of these memories I’m sharing will tell you that I do not believe that that was always true. With the perspective of time, thinking back on my own memories and stories that I heard from my parents over the years, it now seems to me that she was a bitter woman, widowed in her mid-fifties, who believed that she had been wronged by her children – one (my Aunt Emile) for marrying a Navy man and moving to upstate New York, and the other (my father) for marrying beneath him, a daughter of working class parents from eastern Kentucky ("Democrats!"). I later heard the story that she stated her refusal to attend my parents’ wedding up until the last day, and then conceded to go to the wedding and even briefly to the reception at my mother’s parents’ house, which at that time was just a couple of miles up the road from the church. 

As a very young child, I was oblivious to any tension between my mother and grandmother, but it certainly became evident during a conflict that occurred when I was about 6 years old. My sister Patty was some 2 years younger than I, and she had been sleeping in the living room next to my parents’ bedroom. My parents decided to fix up the empty bedroom upstairs for her, the larger one that had mysteriously remained unused as long as I could remember. My grandmother, who had raised her own children in that house and had moved to the smaller one down the road after my parents were married, was insisting that that room was Emile’s room, to be used by her and her family on their occasional visits. The day that the big row occurred, one of my city cousins from my mother’s side was staying with us, and I remember standing with him in the milk house, watching through the window as my father and grandmother came out of the house and walked across the lawn, with his arm around her shoulder as he spoke earnestly in her ear. She looked very upset and was gesturing forcefully. My cousin said, “Do you think she hit her?” I don’t know who he was asking about hitting whom, nor do I remember what I said in reply. Later I heard the story of what the argument was about, and that the resolution was that my parents would fix up the room for Patty, and that was that. Emile and family would be welcome to stay with us when they visited, some in our house and some in my grandmother’s.

One day, on one of our shopping trips to town, we saw a black person crossing the street. My grandmother pointed at him, laughed, and said to us kids, “What do you suppose happened to that man? Do you think he drank too much chocolate milk?” My mother turned around from the front seat and glared at her mother in-law. “We don’t teach our children to talk like that!” she said. When we got home, she continued the admonishment to never make fun of someone just because they were different from us. And she wanted us to understand that Grandma was not always a good example to follow.

Here's another illustration of how my grandmother viewed people who were different from her. When my oldest cousin, Chuck - four years older than I - was married, it was to a young Jewish woman. Grandma's comment was, "Well, at least she's not Catholic!"

My grandmother was vehemently opposed to alcohol in all forms.  She was an active member of the local chapter of the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), and I imagined her going into a bar with an ax and smashing it up – though that never happened in her case.  It was twenty years after prohibition had been repealed, and I imagine that the group – which I don’t believe included any women younger than 60 years old – did anything more than pray together and complain to each other what society had come to. There was one incident that strongly affirmed Grandma’s views on alcohol, though, when my aunt Emile was involved in a bad car accident caused by a drunk driver, and one of my cousins, an infant at the time, had a bad head injury that caused him to be mentally and emotionally challenged for the rest of his life. She spoke of that often, and who could blame her for doing so.

As Grandma aged and I grew into a young man, I would still visit her often when I came home. When we greeted each other and I asked her how she was, her response was always, “Oh, I’m just an old woman.” In my freshman year of college, I was excited to play for her my recording of my jazz band’s first concert. It consisted of Christmas songs from the Stan Kenton Band’s arrangements. I thought she would like it, knowing how much she loved Christmas music and feeling very pleased and proud of the quality. She didn’t seem very impressed, and I left thinking, “Well, I guess that's because she doesn’t like jazz very much.” I heard later that she had called my parents afterwards, accusing them of neglect in allowing me to play “that devil’s music.”

In closing, I want to get back to a more positive memory of my grandmother. She loved poetry and wrote a bit of it herself. Her father, a teacher and carpenter, had written quite a bit of it, and I have a little booklet of his poems later published by the family. I recall her reading the Rudyard Kipling poem, “If,” to me, and I can still see her smile as she looked at me after reading the last line, “and – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!” After her death in 1976, my parents found and gave to me the following poem she had written many years earlier.

“Holding Grandma’s Hand” (for Tim)

By Avis (Thompson) Miller

I’m just a little feller, not very much past three,

Grandma and me

An’ there’s so much in this big world

That is so strange to me.

So when I go out to the barn

Or just walking ‘round

I like to skip along beside

An’ hold to Grandma’s hand.

She knows the nicest games to play

Mostly just us two,

But sometimes little sister

Can help us play them, too.

My grandma holds her apron out

And I throw in my ball,

An’ when little sister helps us

That’s the most fun of all.

I wonder when I get to be

A man as big as dad

An’ sometimes when I need a friend

An’ feel so dreadful bad

If I can just reach out my hand

An’ find her waiting there

To lead me past the dreadful thing

That gives me such a scare.

And now I am selectively passing along some of our traditions to my own grandchildren. One of my favorite things to do is to sit on the back porch and talk about the birds we hear, while we munch on Papaw cookies. Rest in peace, Grandma. You might not recognize nor even like who I have become, but you are still a part of me.