Take off your hat, I want to stand up.

Chapter 14 Granny Blair.

Chapter 14 Granny Blair.

Jessie Adelia Blair.

Jessie was originally a Campbell, from the old Scottish clan in the old country, she hailed from Ontario as a youth, grew up in a family of nineteen. It absolutely boggles the mind and creates ire in my sensibilities to fathom a family of such grand nature. It would follow the younger would not hold the older in anything but a distant name.

Jessie was a quiet homebody who looked out for her kin the best she could. Grandpa was a bit of a drinker, gambler and skirt chaser in his younger days, but came around to be a passable father and keen eyed businessman in his middle term of years. They conceived three girls and a boy. The children were close by any standard yet they grew closer to their parents as everyone aged. My mom, being the baby was tolerated with the most leeway and tolerance, she was a free spirit that had no bounds to her good nature.

I remember Jessie as a haggardly women who had gently used her youth. She was being transformed into an elderly grandma with no perception of who she was, what she had become or any notion of reality. We tended to avoid her, she had a mole on the corner of her face with a long white, thick hair protruding out into general space. If you got too close it would get you, just you. She also smelled like an old person, a combination of pears and crushed strawberries masked with rose water. She always wore clean dresses, with a perpetual apron affixed around her waist. As far as grandmas go, she was what we knew.

One of the tales mom would relate about her mother involved wash day. Jessie had an olde style wringer washer and no dryer. She would hang the family laundry out on the line to dry in the wind. As the story went, Jessie was washing the winter to spring laundry in the cellar. At a brief moment in the washing process grandma leaned into the activated ringer. The moment she knew she was in trouble it was already far too late. The ringer squeezed her left tit and pulled it deep into the mechanism. Yikes, is what I thought.

She was in pain, trapped and alone. She suffered for an inordinate amount to time. Hours later Grandpa Blair came home after work to a dark, oddly quiet house. Then he stepped down the back wooden stairs. He called out in a tension filled voice, Jessie? Jessie are you there?

Out of the darkness came the sound that could best be described as a wounded animal. She howled in as much pain as she felt, she also howled in delight, she was found.

The following week granny invited us over for supper, but it was really to show off her brand new washer and dryer. She truly bonded with the modern age.

Grandma Fulton, my dad's mother was our other granny she was more of a business professional. She would not go out of the house without her best Sunday going to meeting clothes, hair done just so, hat, gloves, fashion scarf and beads of pearls arming her against the perceptions of others. Bookends for grandmas, that is what we had. They were complete opposites, our beloved grannies, relatives, what can you do?

We did not know Jessie very well, by the time we were aware we had a granny Blair she was already gone someplace else. This is how it happened.