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Elinor Serviss

1928-2006
Born: Gouverneur, St. Lawrence, NY, USA
Died: Seal Beach, Orange, California

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  • Story: David Allen's Maternal Grandmother

    My Grandmother Lehigh just passed away less than a month ago. From the time I was a very little baby I have always called her "Nami" or just "Nam", and so subsequently did all of my cousins (its funny how those names stick). Nam was a very sweet grandmother. She was always a very short, petite woman with salt-and-pepper black hair and very dark eyes. Her "Serviss nose", which both I and my mother inherited, was the source of many family jokes. I think one of my grandmother's best qualities was that she was always able to laugh at herself, and when my grandfather or anyone else teased her and joked with her (which was often), I always remember her laughing right along with everyone else. I have many memories of Nam and Papa from the summers I spent with them in Gouverneur when I was young. My grandmother expected my aunt Kris (who is only two years older than me, and therefore is more like a sister than an aunt) and I to do weekly chores, which included most of the housework--I would dust and Kris would run the vacuum. It was hard work but she paid us the princely sum of THREE dollars a week (compared to the buck a week I got at home), which went really far in the 70's. One week Kris semi-conned me into doing both the dusting AND the vacuuming so she would play with me, and my grandmother found out and read Kris the riot act and teased her about forever after. In my grandmother's memory Kris conned me out into doing her chores for the entire summer but it really only happened once or maybe twice. My grandmother had heart troubles in the 70's and had an artificial pacemaker installed, which she lived with for another 30+ years. I can remember any time we were driving in the car and passed under power lines she would feel a "twinge" in her heart. Perhaps as a consequence of this, she was one of the first people I ever knew who was health conscious and watched what she ate--this was WAY before most people were into this. My aunt still tells the tale of the time my grandmother made "meatless meatballs" (which were actually triangles because the faux meat she used wouldn't round up into balls!) and she and my grandfather rioted! I can also remember her doing exercises along with Jack Lalane on TV in the 70's. My grandmother LOVED to shop, much to the extreme boredom of my aunt and myself, since she could spend HOURS looking through every single rack in every single store. Still, one of the biggest treats of the summer was the one or two times when she would drive the 3 of us to Watertown, the nearest "big" city to Gouverneur, and let us go off to the bookstores and t-shirt stores and comic book stores while she nosed her way through every clothing rack in Watertown. Later in life her favorite thing was to go "rumming", or shopping at rummage (and garage and estate) sales. She LOVED country style stuff and her house on Grave Street was FILLED with "clut" (as she called clutter) of this sort. She was also a world class coupon clipper, which we always derided but in retrospect was probably how she managed to stretch my grandfather's paycheck as a telephone lineman to feed a family of five. When I would come spend the summers I'm sure I ate them out of house and home--I remember how everything seemed to taste better there, probably because most everything WAS fresher, and I would eat like a horse, belying my very skinny frame. My grandmother was a terrible driver, and once got in a car wreck when she plowed into these peoples' car while driving by admiring their new house! She was also a legendarily bad singer, and would belt out "Mares Eat Oats" (which when I was young I thought was called "Marsey Dotes") and "Way Down Yonder in the Hallaballoo" and other wacky songs, much to the delight/disgust of my aunt and I. I can also remember the terrible migraines she would get once or twice a summer that would totally incapacitate her. She was also an excellent cook, and once a summer would make my favorite meal when I was young, chicken and biscuits. She could also bake fantastic pies, and would make apple pies from the sour green apples from the tree they had at the Grave Street house, or blackberry or raspberry pies when my aunt and grandfather and I would pick them in late summer. Those were just about the best pies I've ever eaten. Any discussion of my grandmother has to include some of her less good qualities. She could be amazingly bigoted, not necessarily on racial lines but mostly on socioeconomic lines. Many of her neighbors in Gouverneur were on welfare and she would often stick her nose in the air to these people. She also was notorious for her many feuds with various members of the family--at any given time, she wasn't speaking to any number of people for various less-than-stellar reasons. After my grandfather passed away in 1992, my grandmother went into a really bad patch for several years, where she just didn't seem to be able to get past her anger and hurt of my grandfather's passing. But eventually she did, and she really started to flourish. She rented then eventually bought places in Stuart Florida and would go down there to avoid the harsh upstate NY winters, along with the other "snowbirds". She volunteered as an usher and ticket taker at a local theater that presented plays and musicals, and would entertain friends at her small place. She would also spend a big chunk of time in California, usually starting in Thanksgiving and running through New Year's. Three of my best memories of my grandmother come from the past 10 years or so. The first was at my wedding in 2000. That was one of the first times in my life that I truly appreciated how socially gifted my grandmother was, and how sharp her mind was for social facts. Within a few hours of meeting everyone at the various functions associated with our wedding, she knew the name of EVERYONE, who they were married to, how they knew Tiff and/or myself, etc. She also danced the entire night away with all of us. Many of Tiff's relatives still remark about my amazing grandmother, and I know I've never been more proud or amazed. My second memory was when she and my mother came to visit us in Boulder a few years back. Her last night here we decided to take her and my mom to an Indian restaurant. Even though she'd never had Indian food, and even though Indian food can be very strange, she was very eager to try something new. Her ability to continue to try new things was always a source of inspiration to me--in the last few years of her life she also got into the internet and e-mail, which was incredible to me considering her age and lack of experience with things technological. I hope I'm as eager to try new things when I'M 75+ years old. My third best memory of Nam was just last year, when my mother confessed that she voted for George Bush. My grandmother, who is not anyone's definition of a hardcore liberal but who was still disgusted with many of the policies of Bush, lit into my mother like nobody's business right along with me (a hardcore liberal). It pleased me that my grandmother was still active and aware and compassionate enough to find the Bush Administration repellent. The last 6 months of my grandmother's life were tough. She came down with a brutal disease, polymyositis, which made her supremely weak. One of my great joys is that she lived to see her beautiful great-grandson Ryan and that she got to move into the condo my mother and stepfather had fixed up for her in Leisure World in Long Beach, CA. She LOVED that condo and she loved Ryan. I only wish Ryan could have gotten to know her before she died.

 
 
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