by Mary Wakefield Buxton –
URBANNA —
That Thanksgiving in 1945 as World War II was winding down, I was 4 years old living with my family in Vermilion, Ohio. We planned to spend Thanksgiving with my great-grandmother, Franc Horton Parsons, who lived with her daughter, Grace, on Elber Avenue in Lakewood.
Another daughter, Alice, my grandmother, had died earlier of a blood clot in her leg. Cleveland doctors in the late 1930s could only offer amputation as “cure,” which she refused and then died at age 48.
Alice had earlier married a “drinking man,” or so I was told, who had fathered Mary (my mother) and a younger son. Unable to find employment during the Great Depression, he had deserted leaving them to return home to Elber Avenue. In 1936, Mary had married my father, George Wakefield of Vermilion, and I was born three months before the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.
But that Thanksgiving morning my older sister, also named Alice, and I, bundled up like little eskimos for our trip to Lakewood, felt only joy at the coming Thanksgiving trip. It was frigid on Lake Erie shore that morning. We wore leggings and high boots, thick jackets, mittens, scarfs and woolen hats.
Father stood at the door when we filed out to do battle with snow drifts to our black ’45 Ford “steaming” in the driveway. Father had already started it in order to “warm up” before we “piled in,” as Father called it. Father never drove anything but a Ford until Henry Ford announced in 1963 he was supporting Lyndon B. Johnson instead of Barry Goldwater. Father never bought another Ford.
Father checked our clothing as we exited the house to make sure we were wearing enough “layers.” We had to pass inspection as Father said people who didn’t dress appropriately for the savage cold of Ohio winters put their lives in peril.
Our driveway was a straight shot along a line of poplar trees where I would later learn how to parallel park a car. The lane then swooped down a curved hill and over a wooden bridge that Father had built that clanked as we drove over the frozen creek. Then we shot up another incline to the highway that followed the shoreline east to Cleveland. Sometimes the snow was so deep we sank to our chests and Father had to leave the Ford at the main road and carry us home through howling blizzards.
Just 12 years later when I was 16, Chip (my husband) was visiting with Alice on a college holiday break. While driving his MG down this same road, would notice the highway was dedicated to General Sherman. “I’ll be damned if I will ever be caught driving on a highway named after a Yankee!” he shouted as he pulled off. I was sitting in the back seat. WOW! I thought, what a man! It was then that I decided to tell Father I wanted to go to college in Virginia.
My family laughed when I chose a woman’s college in “Lynchburg.” “That’s what they do to Yankees that come south, Mays,” Father had quipped.
Yet, even at 4 years old I was aware there was a war going on because Mother worried about getting meat on the “black market.” And Father had bought three baby pigs that escaped their pen often and chased Alice and me into the adjoining cornfield. (I would later refuse to eat the meat when I heard it was my three little pigs.) But in spite of all the troubles the war had wrought, we were happy that Thanksgiving to sing holiday songs as we drove to Great Grandmother’s home.
“Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go!” we sang merrily. I wondered about the horse that “knows the way” but I knew all about “piles of driving snow!”
Great Grandmother was ancient (84) and seated in a wheelchair with giant wheels in front of the fireplace. She had white hair, as if she had been caught in a blizzard, and wore a black dress with a white lace collar.
A traditional turkey feast was laid out on the table, soon devoured and, afterwards, we piled into the car and returned home through the icy night to Vermilion. I remember the Christmas lights twinkling in the dark from almost every living room window all the way home.
Not long after that Thanksgiving we returned to Elber Avenue as Great Grandmother lay dying. I didn’t know yet about death. Aunt Grace asked me if I would like to hold her hand as she lay in her bed. I thought this a good idea but when she left the bedroom I was frightened. I still remember her white face and the feel of her cold hand in mine.
My great-grandmother was born in 1861, the beginning of the Civil War, and died as World War II was drawing to a close. With my present age, this Thanksgiving of 2021 includes a span of 160 years of treasured American history.
Happy Thanksgiving!
© 2021
