“Walnuts” by Ian Brumbaugh

        I sit on the front porch with my Great Grandmother, just another one of our daily traditions. Every Sunday I come to her house and we would have dinner, followed by the warm, brisk, and a refreshing cup of freshly brewed, stove top tea. After eating G.G’s famous spaghetti and meatballs, I maneuver her wheelchair through the messy kitchen. Of course, G.G. worries about cleaning up the mess, but I tell her that I would clean up later. Once we reach the threshold the next challenge is get her over the lip of the front door and wheel her out on the front porch and place her in her usual spot. We sit for a minute to catch our breath, and gaze across the small half an acre corner lot of Altoona, PA. I tell her I’m headed to go brew the tea but as I head to the screen door, I feel the prune like hand and the arthritic fingers engulf my arm. I look down to reveal under her withered glasses a pair of careworn eyes.

        She says to me, “Oh don’t worry about the tea just yet dear, I just feel like talking.”

         Being an avid lover of G.G.’s stories I remove my thumb and pointer fingers from the door handle and eagerly sit in the chair next to her. We talk about how she met my Great Grandfather, and how she managed loving him even after her 6 visits to the emergency room, and working in the shoe factory, topics that seem to make her upset. She then asked me how school was going, and I begin to tell her that in school we are learning about the Great Depression.

        “You know I grew up during the Great Depression?” G.G. explained

        “No I didn’t. That’s so cool! Well not cool but, you know what I mean! Do you remember anything?”

        “Well I was very little at the time… and getting older doesn’t make        remembering things any easier!” she cracked a grin, “but there is one thing.  When the depression started my father lost his job at the rail road, so he picked up two part time jobs as a milk man and paper delivery man. He covered the morning and evening delivery routes for the entire city of Altoona. I remember Dad wouldn’t get home until late at night because my sisters would sit on our twin bed and wait to hear his work boots shuffling across the floor of our old house on 3rd Ave to make sure he was home. Anyhow, time seemed to fly that year because Dad lost his job in mid-September, and the next thing I knew it was almost December. Winter was in full swing that year as well, there were 2 blizzards that year, and Dad still managed to get up before the crack of dawn, slip on his work boots and out the door he went. Christmas was right around the corner, and we knew that we wouldn’t be getting much, so the only things my brothers and sisters wanted was a Christmas tree. Somehow, Mom and Dad managed to get one Christmas Eve, which we decorated head to toe in popcorn and raisins threads we made ourselves. After we were done decorating, Mom and Dad told us it was time for bed and up the flight of stairs we went. The next morning we woke up and walked down stairs to reveal no presents under the tree, as expected, but something caught our eyes hanging from the branches of the pine. Walnuts! Walnuts, tied with perfectly pressed red ribbons dangled from the tree. We ran to the tree and plucked them off and began unwrapping. There were twelve walnuts, so we divided them up so that each of us received two. We unwrapped them to reveal brand new quarters, 1935 quarters! Looking back at it, Dad probably had to work about three weeks just to afford to do that for us…”

 

She looks at me with a small tear dangling from her eye, like I imagine the walnuts dangled on the memorable Christmas morn. I grab her a tissue and she motions away the tear of a happy childhood memory. “So Dear,” she looks up from her tissue, “when you go into school tomorrow, tell your teacher that story. Teaching about the Great Depression focuses on the negative, but for as bad as it was, happiness still managed to survive.”