Tag: Marianne Jones

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How My Father Quit Smoking

What is the first things you think of when you think of your parents? My thoughts are of Grain Belt beer and Chesterfield cigarettes.

As a pharmacist, Dad worked long hours. He often closed the store at 10:00 p.m. We were happy on those nights when he was home by 6:00. He worked every other weekend, with no days off in between. 

On the nights when Dad didn’t need to stay late at the drug store, he stopped at North Liquor Store in North St. Paul on his way home. There he would buy cases of Grain Belt Premium in white bottles and cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes. I can only imagine how good that beer tasted after working long hours. How much he enjoyed those cigarettes!

As the oldest child, my job every morning was to fix the coffee in the percolator, turn on the stove, and make sure the coffee was ready for my mother when she got up. I was probably about seven or eight years old. I liked being responsible. I especially enjoyed being the first person to get up in my house. School started with Mass at 8:15. 

My other early morning task was to put the empty beer bottles back in the case and clean the ashtrays that were overflowing with cigarette butts. It wasn’t hard. I liked counting the number of beer bottles before I put them away. Twelve beer bottles and two ashtrays were usually waiting for me as I tidied up the living room, checked on the coffee, and told my mother it was time to wake up.

I had graduated from school and was living in Denver, when my mother called to tell me that she and Dad had “quit everything.” No more beer. No more cigarettes. 

“What happened? How can you do that?” I asked.

“Dad went to the doctor and the doctor told him he was worried about his liver.”

When Dad came home and told Mom the doctor said he had to stop drinking, my mother said that if he couldn’t drink, she wouldn’t drink any more either.

“But if we have to stop drinking, we have to stop smoking, too. The two go together. I can’t imagine not having a drink if I’m still smoking,” she announced.

My father wasn’t all-in on the decision to stop smoking. The next night my mother said that she was going to go to a six-week class to help her quit.

“That’s good,” said my Dad. “But I’m going to stay right here and keep smoking while you are in class.”

After six weeks my mother came home. She was no longer smoking, but my Dad was smoking as much as ever.

“Ok, that’s it,” my mother told him. “I can’t be around people who are smoking, so you have to quit now, too.” And so, just like that, he did.

My father, who was almost six-feet tall, never weighed more than 145 pounds during his Grain Belt and Chesterfield days. When he quit those habits, he started making bundt cakes and gained thirty pounds. 

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The Woman Who Lived In a Little House

My mother, Marianne Jones, grew up in North St. Paul, Minnesota. Her father, my grandfather, was a huge, strong German man ~  the oldest of eight children. His parents were early pioneer farmers in St. Paul. When his father died at an early age, my grandfather was left in charge of the farm and the younger children. He valued hard-work and saving money. He was a distant, loud, often difficult man.

Grandpa and Grandma were married when he was twenty-six and she was eighteen. He started a successful sauerkraut and pickle factory that same year, but his heart wasn’t in it. After sixteen years of running the factory, he sold the business and bought a farm. By this time, he had six strong sons and two daughters, including my mother, who was the youngest.

My grandmother was the sixth oldest of ten children. Her brothers were fun-loving, charming, and often irresponsible with money, which infuriated my grandfather. My grandparents argued a lot of the time, usually about money and raising children.

My grandfather worried constantly and was a harsh disciplinarian. My grandmother was in poor health, and often worn-out from cooking, cleaning and raising eight children. Although there was always enough food and warm clothing, the children learned to look elsewhere for attention and affection.

My mother reported  that her early life was good, however, because she enjoyed being with her brothers and playing with all the animals on the farm. She liked to roam the fields and pretend she was running away from home.

When my mother was ten years old, her older brother, Frank, age sixteen, died of a ruptured  appendix. My mother wrote: After that everything seemed to change. Frank was a sensitive, intelligent boy whom everyone loved. My mother grieved a great deal and my father became morose. He seemed to feel that everything was against him.

As was typical at that time, my mother’s family never referred to this tragedy.  My mother felt especially guilty when she remembered that one time she took a nickel from Frank’s piggy bank. 

My mother was a good student. She loved being in school plays and had a beautiful singing voice. She was outgoing, with a good sense of humor, and she had a lot of friends.. She remarked that she could have done better, academically, but knew that college was out of the question for her, so she concentrated on having fun instead.

This is my mother’s memory of meeting my father: When I was seventeen, and a senior in high school, I met the man I was to marry. He was playing his trumpet in a three-piece combo in one of the local hangouts. I can picture him now as I saw him then ~ on a platform high above us, magnificent in his black tuxedo with a blue cumber bun, blowing his trumpet and setting the pace for the Saturday night celebrators. I was out with his best friend and we were making our last stop of the evening. Is there a fate that destines our future? I think so. Is there love at first sight? I know there is. This particularly beautiful human being was the answer to my prayers.”

My father’s family was very different from my mother’s. Dad was raised in a middle-class family, in which every child went to college. My mother’s family were farmers, often with dirt under their fingernails. My father’s family were gentle people, while my mother smoked cigarettes and swore like a sailor (but never in front of my grandparents!) Dad was emotional, and cried easily. My mother wouldn’t shed a tear.

My parents loved each other and never argued. My mother appreciated that my Dad worked hard and gave her a good life, filled with thoughtful gifts and trips to interesting places. But she knew that my father’s family never truly accepted her. The fact that my personality was more like my father’s and not much like hers, created friction between us.

My father died when he was seventy-nine and my mother was seventy-five. From that day forward, she considered herself old and frail. She went to the doctor and asked for handicapped license plates. When the doctor said, “Marianne, I don’t know what your handicap is,” she answered, “put down that I’m old.” She was younger than I am now!

Mom taught me a lot. She taught me to work hard, to cook and to sew. She had an exceedingly fine mind for politics. She loved watching the news, especially CNN and C-Span.

Mom was supportive when I told her I was moving to Denver. She came to visit me every year and my boys spent summers in Minnesota while they were were growing up. Mom was excited when I told her I was moving to Mexico, and twice she came to visit me while I was there.

My mother died of pneumonia at the age of 96. She knew she was dying. She told her doctors to take her off antibiotics and let her die in peace. By the time I reached her, she was already unconscious. I hope she was able to hear me when held her hand and told her I loved her. I always will.

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Here Comes Santa Claus

Christmas in Minnesota was a mixed-bag. Although my childhood seemed normal at the time, now as an adult, I’m not so sure.

My parents had two different approaches to Christmas. My mother didn’t like Christmas at all, for very good reasons. Every year she told us kids the same stories of her childhood in an attempt, I suppose, to make us appreciate “how good we had it.” 

Mom grew up poor, on a farm with six older brothers, including identical twins, who teased her unmercifully. On Christmas Eve, the twins would go outside with their shotguns telling my mother they were going to shoot Santa Claus out of the sky.

“Here he comes,” Len would shout, as my mother cowered in the living room.

Bang! Bang!!  

“We got him!” Ray would yell. And they stomped off the porch and ran into the yard, pretending to search the bushes for Santa’s body, while my mother sobbed in my grandmother’s arms. From then on, my mother never trusted Christmas.

My father, on the other hand, grew up in a middle class, suburban family. He loved Christmas. He loved buying and wrapping presents, He loved sending and receiving Christmas cards. And, most of all, he loved Christmas music. 

Dad was such fun at Christmas. I can still see him hanging giant silver snowflakes from the ceiling in the living room, to the chagrin of my mother who didn’t want people to focus their attention on the ceiling before she had a chance to wash it. Dad patiently hung tinsel on the tree, one strand at a time, while the rest of us “helped” by tossing handfuls of tinsel at the tree, hoping it would land on the branches.

We always celebrated Christmas Eve with my mother’s family ~ Grandma Hunt, Aunt Fran and my cousin Lori. Occasionally we would go to Aunt Fran’s house for dinner, but usually my mother made a big dinner for all of us before we opened gifts and went to bed.

One year Aunt Fran said she was bringing “the baby Jesus” to our house for dinner. We didn’t know what to expect, but I was hoping for a real baby. Instead, Aunt Fran showed up with a young Black man, Elija, who had just been released from prison. I had never seen a Black person before in snow-white Minnesota of the 1950’s. The man was quiet and pleasant. I wonder what he thought of us. We never saw him again.

I remember gifts I got as a child, mostly dolls and ice skates, coloring books and art supplies. The best gift of all, however, was the year my father came home from work on Christmas Eve, with a kitten in his pocket. The kitten was crying outside the drug store when my father locked up for the night. Dad didn’t have the heart to leave the kitten there, meowing in the snow, so he brought him home. Because Dad had already left the store (and, of course, no one had a cell phone back then) my mother was as surprised as we were. I’m not sure she was pleased.

The best Christmas memory, the one I will never forget, however, is the year Santa Claus actually came to our house on Christmas Eve and delivered our toys early, before we had to go to bed. 

As Santa turned to go out the door, my Dad said, “Santa, do you have time for a shot and a beer before you go?”

“I sure do, Bob,” said Santa, as he sat down at our kitchen table. 

Dad opened two bottles of Grain Belt and poured a shot of bourbon for both of them. So much for milk and cookies. Ho Ho Ho! It was a very Merry Christmas, Indeed.