HIS AND HERS ASHTRAYS FOR THEIR SPECIAL DAY

This personalized change-dish and his-and-hers ashtrays set was a wedding gift to my parents, who were married December 22, 1961. I’m not sure who gave it to them but it’s hilarious they gave ashtrays since my parents never smoked. It was the 60s, however, so it was assumed that any self-respecting couple would want matching ashtrays, especially with their names on them. 

We let the ashtrays go but I kept the change dish and I’m now using it. I like to imagine their wedding day and how exciting it was for them to be joining their lives together.

Mom bought a beautiful wedding dress for the occasion. It had a square neckline and seven layers of chantile lace that needed to be worn with a can can so it would poof out. She looked like such a princess in her wedding pictures. Mom always told my sister and I that she hoped we’d wear her dress when we got married someday. And guess what? We both did. 

Mom and Dad's wedding picture

Here I am wearing Mom's dress on my wedding day

We also found this silver anniversary plaque, which they got in 1986. To celebrate their 25th anniversary, all four of us went to Chicago for a few days and had a great time.

JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE YOU

My mom’s dad, Grandpa Pensel, bought this throw pillow for Grandma. I was at their house when he randomly came home with it one day. Grandma and I loved it straight away. We thought the poem on it was adorably sweet. 

I love you when you’re laughing,

I love you when you’re sad,

I love you when you’re teasing,

I love you when you’re glad,

I love you when you’re fooling,

I love you when you’re true,

And the reason why

I love you,

Is just because you’re you.

And the black-velvet-painted quality, well, we didn’t realize how dreadful it was. She always kept it on her davenport. I remember lying on the floor watching soap operas at their house and using it to prop my head up. I looked at it so many times, I memorized the poem. 

Grandma kept this pillow until the day she died. It moved with her from her house to the assisted living and then to the nursing home. Afterwards, my mom inherited it and though it didn’t go with anything in our house, she could never quite bring herself to get rid of it. It’s pictured below with her brother, my Uncle Wally, who took it home when we cleaned out my parents’ house. He’d actually come for Grandpa’s radio but he was convinced to take the pillow and the ceramic cat Grandma had painted in her brief ceramic-painting phase. 

My Uncle Wally with the pillow

Wally with the cat Grandma painted

Wally and Dad loading Grandpa's antique radio into his truck

Recently, I’ve been having a new appreciation for my Grandpa Pensel. He was a truly remarkable man. A farmer and self-taught musician, he could play just about anything he heard on the radio. He’d jot down the words on the back of an envelope and then figure out the chords so he could play it on banjo, guitar, or another instrument in his collection. My dearest memories of him are when we sang and played songs together. The music flowed from his soul so effortlessly.

He died suddenly of a heart attack at age 75 when I was a junior in high school.  It was so long ago, I feel like I’m in danger of forgetting what he was really like. But then I tune into my memories and he is there, singing and laughing and loving me still. His love for us was so strong, so unconditional. Despite Grandma’s years of illness and depression, his love for her never wavered and he bought her sweet little gifts like this pillow, which now seems to carry deep significance. 

Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day

I know that I carry my grandpa and his music with me. He is mine and I am his. “And the reason that I love you,” he sings to me, “is just because you’re you.”

THREE-GENERATION ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE

While cleaning out Mom and Dad’s house, we decided it was time to get rid of this. Burnell, my dad, made it out of a brick from the one-room school house he attended. He, his father, Carter, and his grandfather, Reuben, all attended this little school known as the “White School” of district #7 of the Elkport Township in Clayton County, Iowa. When the school was torn down, Dad took actual boards from the siding and a nail from it and put together this commemorative brick. That’s him pictured in front of the school (above).

I remember my grandma taking us mushroom hunting near the school when we were young. It was abandoned with windows broken out and so it looked rather foreboding. But Dad didn’t seem to be bothered by that. He would always proudly tell us that it was his country school when he was a boy. 

Why is it that kids have a hard time picturing their parents as children? My dad—a little boy? It was a weird concept to me. And the idea that he went to school in the dark ages in this humble little, one-room school with no indoor plumbing really blew my mind. I guess it made his childhood seem even more fictional to me.

Now as an adult, I still have a hard time thinking of him as a boy. But as I look at the picture I took of him holding the brick, I guess I can see the boyish twinkle in his eye. To him it seems only yesterday that he was a kid causing trouble at that quaint country school.

My dad (front) with his little brother and mom

Dad's baby picture

My grandpa as a boy

Three generations of Smith men went to school there. That’s a long way back. My grandfather, a little boy studying there—and his father before that. I never got to meet these men and I’m curious to know what they were like, especially when they were young students at school. What was their world like in the hills of Clayton County in those days? What did they hope for their future? 

Suddenly, I feel a surge of emotion. Though I didn’t even meet two of the three Smiths who went to this school, they a part of me. They are my ancestors. Now I am overwhelmed with a profound sense of gratitude for them, and for the life and values they gave to me. 

Though this one-room school house is long gone and the teachers and many of the students have died, I am now certain that its impact can still be felt.