Rain, televisions and smells!!

When I was a little girl I spent a lot of time with my Grandmother Fulcher.  She was my favourite
person, and I hers.  She was never afraid to let me know how she felt about me.

I would go to her house in the morning and she and I would sit out in her covered porch and talk while she ate her breakfast.  That was always a nice time for me, as I loved hearing her stories and laughing about all the silly things she had done.  I also enjoyed watching her eat her breakfast.  It always consisted of a cup of coffee and one shredded wheat. She would take her shredded wheat and dunk it in her coffee and take a bit.  I loved that. 

On that porch she told me stories about how her life was when she was younger.  She drew
pictures in my mind with those stories. I felt like I knew the people she talked about, or was there when the tornado ripped through town and twisted the old oak in her front yard.  I loved those laze days of summer, and loved spending time with her.

Usually she had some errands to do each morning, so we would travel all over St. Marys doing this or that.  Lots of times those errands included one or more friends.  She had an assortment of friends that ran the gamut.  St. Marys is a town where the filthy rich live next door to the not so filthy rich, where the poor man picks up his mail right next to his boss, and no one seems to notice the differences.  I find it funny when professionals, like medical professionals say to me, if I should see you out in public I will not let on we know each other.  I came from a town where you can see your doctor in the morning and babysit for him in the evening.  There just wasn’t that distance where I grew up.

We would go pick up parcels for this friend or that friend, or we would drop into Dorothy’s donut shop and visit with Mrs. Eddy.  On these visits I would get to pick out a donut and take it to the back room and eat it while my grandmother talked with her friend.  I loved going there.  I always picked out the 10 cent strawberry filled powdered donut, it was my favourite.  I am sure it was not my grandmother’s favourite as it would make a big mess, but no matter she let me have it ever time.  I loved sitting there eating my donut listening to these two lifelong friends catching up on the gossip and checking in with each other.  For a long time now these two women no longer had husbands at home. Mrs. Eddy had been widowed for several years, and my grandmother had long since lost her estranged husband.  These women took care of each other, watched out for each other in a way that I am not sure exist now.   We never spent much time there, just long enough for me to eat my donut and then off we went to do another job that needed doing.

Not all of our days were filled doing errand and alike, most afternoons were spent at the museum. 

My grandmother along with her closest friend Mrs.Ball started the St. Marys museum.  They
both worked hard filling an old home that was donated to the town for this very purpose, with treasures from the past.  There were rooms filled with WW1 and WW2 items such as bayonets and
helmets and canteens.  I didn’t much like that room, mainly because there was a mask in it that looked very scary.  It was one of those gas masks from WW1.  It had orange glass and this hose that come out of the center of it with what looked like an elephant trunk.  Boy did that scare me to death.  There was also a room that was just like an old school house.  I loved this room.  My grandmother would let me sit in the seats and pretend to do school work. The desks were made of real wood and iron connecting it all together.  The desk tops lifted up, revealing a large space to put your books and other materials.  Also in that room was an original blackboard out of a school that had long since disappeared.  I was not allowed to write on it, but I would sit in my desk for hours it seemed imagining what it must have been like to go to school back then.

My grandmother usually brought our lunch with us to the museum and we would sit in the old kitchen at the back of the building and eat it.  Just before lunch my grandmother would make a big pitcher of really cold lemonade, and put out two glasses for us.  This was not just for our enjoyment
but was also there for the visitors that might come later that afternoon. Then shortly after lunch I would go get changed into my swimming suit and head down the hill to the cadzow swimming pool.  My grandmother could sit on the porch of the museum and watch me if she wanted to, but often she would get busy putting new old stuff into the inventory or dealing with a visitor.  Usually I would swim the rest of the afternoon away, unless it started to rain.

One of those rainy days took us from the museum and back to her house.  It was a pretty bad
storm and there was going to be no swimming and no visitors to the museum.  I was sort of excited about the storm, but most importantly I was excited about watching it from the comfort of my
grandmothers covered porch.

The afternoon grew darker as time passed, and the two of us sat patiently waiting the rain. While we waited my grandmother has a nice cup of tea and sat in her favourite comfy chair, while I sat with my elbow and the sill watching and waiting. We talked to pass the time, and of course I listened but maybe not as closely as usual as I was excited.   Finally there was a very loud clap and down came the water, running all over the hot streets.  The smell of rain on a hot summer day, when it hits the pavement and starts to evaporate has been etched into my memory since childhood.  There really isn’t anything like it.  We watched as the sky lit up here and there, and listened to loud rumbles and cracks shaking the house and all its contents.  I loved it, we were both electric with excitement.  We were both enjoying the light show so much that we weren’t paying attention to anything but what was happening outside.  All of a sudden I smelled smoke!!  I said to my grandma, “there’s smoke coming from somewhere” at which point she jumped from her chair and hurried into the house, me right on her heals. We both ended up at the living room doorway at the same time and watched smoke come out from the back of the television set.  She quickly went to the phone and called the fire department and within a couple of minutes the house was surrounded by countless volunteer firemen.  They searched the house and discovered that the meter on the outside of the house had been hit by lightning and that led to the television catching fire.  It was small, thankfully, but very exciting.  To this day I still smell the fumes coming from that old black and white set, along with the smell of hot summer rain.  It’s funny how those things stay with you forever.

That day will always be in my memory, not just because of the excitement, but because it represents what I had with my grandmother.  She cared for me in a way that I just totally trusted her, anything could happen on her watch and I knew she would always keep me safe.  I am so lucky to have had such a wonderful woman in my court back then.  She moulded me in a way that no one other person has, until Zeb.

In 1979 a month after returning from a 6 week trip to England and the Isle of Man my grandmother was crossing the main street of St. Marys doing some more of those errands I had mentioned earlier, only this bright sunny Oct. day was different than any other day had been or would ever be again.  On this sunny day, while hurrying across the street a cube truck came down the street and struck my grandmother, knocking her off her feet and into the air landing 8 feet away.  Three weeks later, after her brain swelled and she lay in a hospital bed with tubes and breathing machines, my grandmother walked from this world into the arms of God and physically left me forever.  I miss her as much today as I did than, and will always have an empty spot in my heart.