She lived long enough to see my first child and hold him and rock him in the rocking chair. Walter was 5 months and 9 days old when she died. She was living with Truman, Walter and me at 2002 E. Cork St., Kalamazoo (it was called 1930 Cork Street at that time; the "Old Fisher/Fischer Place").

She was very small, probably less than 90# when she lived with us. She couldn't see very well because of cataracts. This began while she was still living with my mother and stepfather, Eva Youngblood Galbreath Snook and Fred (Freddy Lee) Snook at 1234 Cork Street. She tried to be of help around the house but gave up when she couldn't see the glasses she was trying to wash and broke one. My mother, who worked in Gilmore's department store, finally hired people to stay with Grandma during the day. There was one older woman named Miss Pelong, and later a young Scandinavian woman who referred to bread and butter as "butterbread".

A few generations back, people lived in big houses or on farms, a family of several generations would be together so that there were always some related persons who knew you and cared about you as an individual and a family member. This was the kind of life she was accustomed to and it was too bad that, after a busy and important role as a wife and mother of 7 living children she should be alone all day half blind with hired minions. She always wore little strap slippers, "Mary Janes", in black with a very low heel. There was only one store where they could be bought. She had been accustomed to long dresses with a waistline, and it was hard to find anything that looked right in an era of short dresses which were straight up and down.

When we moved from Stockbridge (Eggleston?) Avenue back to 1930 E. Cork, Grandma came to live with us. I can't remember that it ever seemed to be any trouble. At one point she said something to the effect that Aunt Emma and I were the only people who took the trouble to be good to her. She had lived with my mother after we moved to Kalamazoo when I was 10. Before that, my mother had lived with Grandpa and Grandma on the farm in South Haven and had worked in Hale's Department Store. So maybe my mother had got into the habit of being impatient or sounding impatient. When Truman and I were going out in the evening, my mother would come and stay with Grandma.

She slept in a small bed (mine before I was married) in the north bedroom and was able to get around some and come to the table for meals. I remember once I'd gone outside to hang up clothes and she tried to come to the door to tell me the baby had awakened and was crying but she fell trying to get out of the chair. She had a plate of my Italian spaghetti at noon on 10/15/38. My mother came to stay with her in the evening so we could go visit Wayne and Helen Williams on Dutton St. My mother called during the evening to tell us that Grandma was dead. My mother had been sitting by her bedside as Grandma hadn't been feeling too well.

Grandma and her parents and her sister Emma Alida moved from Erie County, Pennsylvania, before she was married. They settled in a house "near Niles" not far from the Berrien Center Cemetery. Her brother, Rance, had enlisted in the Union Army from the Pennsylvania location, so when he was discharged, he came to join the family in Michigan. Grandma's father was one of twin brothers, Aunt Emma had the photograph of the two of them. Aunt Emma says that Grandma's father had plenty of money and that he invested $1000 in the Anneke Jans estate (probably as one of the alleged heirs?). He recovered nothing. Aunt Emma knows nothing of how Grandma's father got his money, only that he was stingy with it. She could shed no light on how Margaret Lydia Tenbroeck met Benjamin Franklin Youngblood of the Decatur/Dowagiac area of Michigan.

My Grandmother and Grandfather lived on farms until they moved to Kalamazoo. The earliest one I remember was on Phoenix Street in South Haven. We lived in what I remember as a big elegant house with a parlor. There was a row of evergreens beside the house as a windbreak and the ground under it was carpeted with pine needles. It was there that I saw my first hummingbird, probably at a trumpet vine beside the house. There was another house on the property, the lane leading to it went from the main house driveway back some distance. It was a yellow, less impressive house. My Uncle Roy and family lived there. We raised pigs among other things. I had a pet pig which was kept in the house for a while. I suppose it was kept there because it was the runt of the litter and needed to be given special care.

My grandmother made all the clothes for the family including shirts and overalls for the men and boys. She did the washing by hand, boiling up the white clothes in a copper wash boiler, an oval-shaped vessel made to fit over two stove holes or burners. She made the soap from waste fat and lye. My grandfather helped wring out the heavy pieces. I guess she used a washboard as a supplement. Aunt Emma says she had a washing machine "with slots inside" which Grandpa would turn by a wheel on the side. Later they had one I remember with a wooden tub and a contraption on top for turning.

There's wasn't electricity on all farms like now, but wherever the family lived they have had a windmill to pump water. On the "Dye Place" where I was born, Aunt Emma tells me there was a tank in the house which the windmill filled and at a certain level it would switch to filling the tank outside for the horses, etc. It was also possible to fill the watering trough from the house tank even if it wasn't filled to the overflow point.