Medora, 1915

Of the four daughters of Helen and Harry Espy of Oysterville, my mother was the youngest.  Oldest was Medora (1899-1916), then Suzita (1903-1932), then Muriel who we all knew as Mona (1904-1970).  Only Mona was still living when I was born and it goes without saying that I knew her best. Although…  after spending a number of years with Medora’s letters and diaries and then writing Dear Medora, Child of Oysterville’s Forgotten Years (WSU Press, 2007) perhaps it was teenaged Medora I knew the best.

Each of the four had distinctive characteristics.  Medora was steadfast, practical, responsible — called by her mother:  “Mama’s  strong right-hand.”  My grandmother wrote this poem in her scrapbook after Medora’s death:

Medora

Dear helping hands that led,
Down life’s thorn strewn way.
Dear loving hands that fed,
The wants of every day.

Now in my greater need
And loneliness for thee
Dear gentle hands O, heed
The anguish of my plea.

Lean a bit across the strand
And lead me where you are
A beckon of your guiding hand
Will prove the gates ajar.

Suzita Espy, c. 1920

I always think of Suzita (or “Sue” as most of us called her) as a flapper (which she was) who married a rum runner (which she did).  My grandmother wrote this of her: “Suzita dashed into the world one bright July morning before I could even get my shoes off.  There is not a definite incident that seems to mark the memory of her – just her glowing personality and gorgeous eyes that won the hearts of all men from the time she was two years old.  She could achieve her own ends and dismiss obstacles like a magician.  Brighter than average, she bluffed her way through school – was asked by a teacher in the third grade once what a dumb waiter was.  ‘Mama is a waiter,’ she said, ‘she waits on everyone, but she isn’t dumb.’  Suzita – staunch, loyal, loving, reckless Sue, my beautiful red rose.”  Sue had several bouts of pneumonia during her life, finally dying of it four years before I was born and leaving two young sons, Wallace and Charles Pearson.

Mona circa 1946

Mona was tiny — maybe five feet tall — a practical nurse, an Eisenhower Republican, and taught me how to smoke and how to drink my coffee black.  (“You’ll always enjoy it that way, whether or not cream and sugar are available.”)  Of Mona, my grandmother wrote:

Little Mona, born the night Albert was taken ill – a two and a half pound wisp – had 75 convulsions in five days when five weeks old.  Up she came, frail, unstable, completely dominated by Suzita’s force and vividness.  Twice during her fourth year she had pneumonia, and had to learn to walk all over again.  It was about this period that she used to sleep with her hands over her ears “to keep the dreams out.”’  Always a pathetic hungry little creature unable to assimilate her surroundings.  At four she used to sit by the hour perched on the fence accosting every passer-by with “Hellow what you goin’ to do tomollow? ”

Dale c. 1928

I once overheard a conversation between my grandparents. the gist of which was that Mom had all the best qualities of each of her sisters.  Many years later, Mom told me that her folks had shared that thought with her, too.  Typically, she blew it off but I could tell that their expressing it meant the world to her.

Dora Espy Wilson at 80, c. 1951

Leave it to my friend Maggie to remind me about my Great Aunt Dora’s story of the Christmas roast.  I mentioned it in my blog about holiday dinners “In The Best of Regulated Families” the other day and promised to tell about it later. Then, of course, I promptly forgot about it.  (My Forgetter is the best of all my faculties, bar none, these days!)

Well… Aunt Dora was my grandfather’s older sister.  When I was a child, the two of them were known as “the talkative Espys,” unlike their three surviving siblings (Will, Susie, and Cecil) who were “the silent Espys.”  Aunt Dora lived in Portland and when she came visiting, she and Papa would sit in our library and tell story after story about their early days in Old Oysterville.  Papa was said to talk about the saints, Aunt Dora, the sinners.  You don’t have to guess which stories I liked (and remember!) best.

I believe the events in “the roast story” occurred during my mother’s childhood, perhaps before she was born, but during that generation.  The various Espy siblings and their children had gathered here at the Red House (the “family seat”) for Christmas dinner.  The women were busy in the kitchen with last minute touches and beginning to carry the laden serving dishes to the dining room table.  Someone took the roast out of the oven, “done to a turn” said Aunt Dora, and finding no counter space available at the moment, set down the roasting pan, roast and all, on the kitchen floor.

Aunt Dora with Hilda and the Espy Girls, Mona, Joey, Freddy, Cassy – 1947

“One of the little boys — I don’t remember which — but a youngster about two or three years old, dashed into the kitchen just then,” said Aunt Dora.  “For some unknown reason, he pulled down his Christmas britches and tinkled right on that gorgeous roast!  We women all looked at one another in horror and then did the only sensible thing.  We pulled up the culprit’s rompers, sent him on his way, and transferred that gorgeous roast to the serving platter!”

At that point in the story, Aunt Dora would interrupt herself with her contagious chuckle and (every time we heard it) we asked, “And what did you do with the roast?”

“Ate it for dinner, of course,” she laughed.  “It was, after all, the main dish and a ‘culinary masterpiece’.  Everyone said so!  In fact, for years (at least until the story came out) everyone remarked on that being the best piece of beef they’d ever eaten!”  And we all laughed along with her, all the while looking at our uncles and cousins and wondering which of them that little boy had been…

Sydney and Uncle Cecil, 1979

What I’ll be the first to say about my grandfather  and his brothers and sisters is that there were the taciturn Espys and the loquacious Espys — about an even division among the ones I knew well.  Uncle Cecil and Uncle Will were the quiet ones; Papa and Aunt Dora were the talkative ones.  But, I think they all had a sense of humor, though it was sometimes harder to tell with the quiet ones.  And even though many of my Red House Cousins would disagree.

However, two stories involving Uncle Cecil (Grandy to those RH Cousins) stick out in my mind and I think of them as the tip of the proverbial funny-bone iceberg.  If you could have seen the twinkle in his eyes when he was delivering his punchlines, you’d have to agree that, though it was tinder-dry, Uncle Cecil’s sense of humor was completely intact.

The first incident involved a party — a Christmas party, I’m sure — hosted by my folks a year or so after I moved here fulltime — 1978 or ’79.  Uncle Cecil, a retired banker from Portland and a widower, had been living by himself at the R.H. Espy House for some years.  He took pride in the fact that he was sleeping in the very bed (“NOT! “said my mom) and in the very room (“probably” said his children) in which he’d been born in 1887.  Mom worried about him being too solitary and so, of course, invited him to every event that came along.

On this particular occasion, Mom had teased him ahead of time and said, “Maybe you’ll meet someone interesting who’d be willing to cook you a dinner now and then.”  Uncle Cecil “harumphed” but the night of the party I did notice him sitting on the sofa between two local widows who seemed to be vying for his attention.  The next evening when he came for a dinner of left-overs, I mentioned the two ladies who had him “captivated” the night before.  “Oh, those two!” he said.  “Lemons!  Both lemons!”  His eyes twinkled and so did ours!  He was spot on in his assessment.

R. H. Espy and Aunt Kate, 1918

It was at another dinner at our place  (Mom tried to have him often; she didn’t trust him to cook himself a balance meal) that the subject of R.H.’s amorous proclivities came up.  R.H. had married “Aunt Kate” as all the village called her, some years after his wife had died.  R.H. was Aunt Kate’s third husband, the first two having served at Baptist preachers in Oregon and Washington.

Aunt Kate had been a friend of the family for more than fifty years and,  shortly after she was widowed for the second time. she got in touch with “Mr. Espy.”   My mother and her siblings remembered her as wearing long dresses, high-buttoned shoes, and taking pride in “the one tooth in the front of her head with which she could scrape the meet from an apple.”

“I’ll bet Aunt Kate is one of the few women who was married three times and died a virgin,” my mother announced over dessert.  Back came Uncle Cecil’s twinkle:  “Not if you knew father,” he said.