Hayter article for September 17, 2021
“A Grandparent Story”
One of the best-kept secrets on the continent is Grandparents Day. Up until September 12th of last week, I didn’t know there was one. The thing just popped up. Mother’s Day was made official in 1914, Father’s Day in 1972, and Grandparents Day in 1978. You ask me, special days for fathers and grandparents were established out of guilt. Grandparents Day didn’t even get an apostrophe.
On this year’s Grandparents Day, I sent a congratulatory email to all of the grandparents in Kay’s family and mine. The response was underwhelming.
Kay and I have no living grandparents and none of our children gave us grandkids. No telling how many grandkids we would have if we had had children. We brought nothing into this world, so it is for certain that no one can find anything bad to say about our kids. Fortunately, the rest of the Hayters helped populate the daylights out of this planet. I have a sneaking suspicion that the “…be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” line from Genesis 1: 28, has been done and done.
While I’ve never been a grandparent, I had some in my day. Over the past 40 years, I’ve written about each of them. A couple of you may remember my Grandma Pearl. The other four of you never heard of Pearl. My daddy was the only son of Ed and Pearl Hayter. During the Great Depression, Pearl left Ed and my dad for a better life. That’s a tempting thing to do when practically overnight, your husband goes from being a store owner in Sapulpa, Oklahoma to a sharecropper in Creek County. It’s difficult to keep a store when you know that people can’t pay you for what you give them.
During our two-week summer vacation to Bristow Oklahoma, Dennis, Jill, and I would beg Mom to let us leave Grandpa Hayter’s house because we were so bored. I was too scared to ask Daddy if we could leave, because it might break his heart, and then he might spank me.
When I was young, we got to see Grandmother Pearl on several occasions. She married a few times and had acquired several last names. It’s just weird when you can’t keep up with your grandmother’s name. Pearl visited our family in Pasadena on several occasions. And, my greatest trip ever was when Dad took Larry, Dennis, and me to Tampa one summer to visit her. She was big in Tampa. Took us to a swanky restaurant.
I remember that she visited us in Pasadena shortly after Kay and I got married. Just before leaving, she handed me an envelope. I’m glad she drove off before I opened it. There was a check for $200 in it. Back then, $200 was way above anything Kay and I would expect to receive from… well, from anyone. And, could we use the money! After my first few months working with the Texas Forest Service in Conroe, I sent Grandma Pearl a check for $200 and a nice card thanking her for the loan. A couple of weeks later, I received an envelope containing my check, torn in two, together with a kind note explaining that the money was intended as a gift.
Loosely related to the stories above is one that took me way too long to figure out. I hate that. -- Once upon a time, Faris Hayter married Elsie Teagarden. At that time, Faris’ dad was still single. Soon after, though, he married Nancy. Just as nice a woman as you’d ever want to meet. She was the most pleasant old person in Bristow, Oklahoma. Believe me, I’ve seen ‘em all. There was just something about her attitude and how she understood kids and seemed to enjoy talking to us. She smiled a lot, too.
The weird thing about Grandmother Hayter was the fact that we were told to call her “Aunt” Nancy. She was our Grandpa’s wife but our aunt. None of us caught on, we just accepted it. I assumed that she didn’t want to be called “grandmother”. Well, as you may have guessed, it was the strict Christian upbringing that led to us calling her “Aunt”. Seems Ed and Nancy had each been divorced. I knew that Pearl had left Grandpa Hayter, but I never thought about Nancy being divorced, which was stupid of me because I knew she had an older son. I figured her husband had died. But, the people at church knew that they were both divorced, so they refused to accept the marriage. They were both considered adulterers. The way Mom got around it was by having us call Grandmother Hayter, Aunt Nancy. -- Too many of us learn just enough about religion to hurt people.
I do so wish I could’ve told my grandmother how sorry I was for referring to her as Aunt Nancy. She had earned so much more of my respect than my Grandmother Pearl ever did. After all these years, I hold no animosity toward Grandma Pearl. After all, by leaving my dad, she did our family a favor. However, I’ll never believe that Mom did us a favor by hiding the truth from us. And, it makes me feel stupid for not being able to figure it all out while Nancy was still alive.
Well, that’s my grandparent story. I hope and trust that your grandparent story is a bit more upbeat. Regardless, I’ll not bring this up again. -- And, the entire congregation said, “Hallelujah!” – One last thing. Next Saturday has been declared “National Ghost Hunting Day”. Enjoy. Me? I’ve already dug up all the ghosts I care to.
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