This piece was written by Helen Kawa of Cincinnati, Ohio: S: I was over 30 years old when I discovered a beautiful eccentric friend named Glennibel. This interesting human being used to be ‘just my weird mom.’ The definition of eccentricity is: ‘deviation from an established patter or norm; odd or whimsical behavior.’ Imagine waking up for school at 7 a.m. to the blaring sounds of ‘The Eighteen-Twelve Overture’ at full volume, accompanied by a shrieking voice, echoing up the stairway to the two small bedrooms, “Get up. It’s seven o’clock. I don’t want to throw water on you!” Or being called to the attic to assist in the delivery of a dead kitten from an anguished mother cat.
Glennibel was a creature like no other. She graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in Fine Arts and married the shy handsome man from one of her art classes who wanted to sketch her. Jack said he was attracted to Glennibel because of her large nose and intelligent fiery eyes, framed by thick dark hair. He later told us he compared her to a renaissance painting of Mary, mother of Jesus. In 1946, she and Jack moved to the small river town of Dayton, Kentucky. There they raised nine girls and two boys in a six room two-story house just a few blocks from the Ohio River.
Glennibel was not a traditional mother. We enjoyed her overcooked hamburgers or crisp fired canned hash. We ate in our noisy cluttered living room shared with a blaring television set, two cats, one dog, three neighbor kids, and a quiet dozing father on an overstuffed couch. At one-thirty a.m. I would hear her doing the daily laundry. On her messy kitchen table were her precious library books. She had everything from ‘The Anthropology of Man’ by Margaret Mead to ‘The Life of Vincent Van Gogh.’
In her quiet inner sanctum, she could travel all over the world and never leave her small familiar kitchen. Once she spoke to me about how the runaway slave girl, Harriet Tubman, led her fellow slaves through snake infested swamps with baying hounds in the distance. As she spoke she would be weeping. And I, too, would feel Harriet’s fear in the pit of my stomach. I could smell the cold swamp and hear the pursuing hounds. When I would take long walks along the Ohio River, I pretended I was the brave Harriet Tubman.
I recall the time she burst into the room, full of excitement, breathlessly explaining to her children that the mockingbird can imitate 55 other birds in an hour. Then she would laugh and hold up the reference book for all to see like and eager salesman, waiting for nay comments from inquiring minds.
Glennibel’s children could tell others that George Gershwin was the composer of “Rhapsody in Blue.’ We knew ‘Carmen’, was not the new girl down the street, but the name of a lusty Spanish Opera. We were different from our peers.
The person, I later learned to appreciate was Glennibel, the woman. I wanted to have a mother like other mothers. I wanted fancy meals and an immaculate home. I wanted June Lockhart of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ to be my mother. Instead I was blessed with a free-spirited, childlike woman who loved art, music, and books. I am very grateful that I grew to love and know this eccentric woman named Glennibel before she died in May 1996 of pancreatic cancer. The free adventurous spirit and love of leaning will never die in my heart. When I see an odd woman with an unfashionable hat digging in piles of dusty books at the used bookstore, I smile with inner joy.
Glennibel was an unusual woman; an eccentric friend who gave gifts of knowledge like jewels scattered among her offspring. But these jewels had no monetary value; they were jewels from her heart and mind. Judge not the social misfit at the secondhand bookstore. She just may be an eccentric in an untidy package collection jewels as an inheritance for her children and grandchildren.
March is the month of unpredictable weather in this part of the country. With all the tornadoes reeking destruction and death this past week, we are reminded once again of nature’s wild ways. I can recall one such March almost 50 years ago.
I grew up on Third Street in Dayton, a small river-town on the northernmost tip of Kentucky. Each year in early spring, the river went on its usual rampage, filling its banks and threatening to pour into the streets and alleys of Dayton and Bellevue, our sister river-city. Most years it crested at or just below flood stage, which was 52 feet. But every 10 years or so, the Ohio River became vengeful and flooded the towns and byways up and down her banks.
1964 was one of those years. In March of that year the river came up higher than I can ever recall before or since. It crested at 68 feet. All the residents along Front and Second Streets had to leave and head for higher ground. My best friend Darlene and her family, who lived on Second Street just down the alley from us, stayed at her Mamaw’s house on Fourth Street until the river subsided. Other families left town and some were put up in the basement of the high school, which was on higher ground, sleeping on narrow army cots.
On March 9th (I remember the date because it was my brother Tommy’s birthday) my sisters, myself and Tommy pulled our rubber boots over our shoes and waded around the back yard in the brown water. We stayed out all afternoon and actually watched the water creep up a stick we had plugged in the ground. When the water reached the cement lip of the cellar door Tommy pulled open the two wooden doors that led to the basement. Then we stood on the porch and watched as the Ohio River ran like a waterfall down the steps filling our house from the bottom up.
The next morning when we left for school, there was about two feet of water in the basement. We did not know what to expect when we got home. Mom started carrying her books and other valuables from the first floor to the bedrooms upstairs. Daddy was stubborn, determined that we would stay put, and not leave our home. So we went on with our lives, ignoring the obvious question. “What would happen to us if the water came into the house?”
When we came home from school that day, our house was surrounded by brown muddy water full of floating debris. Someone had spanned several boards from our front porch to the middle of the street, so we could get to the front door. The basement was full, the water lapping over the top step, just minutes away from creeping into our kitchen. The furnace was out, no gas to cook with, and we could not drink the water, but we still had electricity. The box with the one 30 Amp fuse, which supplied us with all our power needs, (except when someone was making toast and another tried to iron a shirt), was located up high in the front part of the basement, so it was still dry. Dad bought a kerosene heater at the hardware store to heat the house at night. It was exciting, like camping out. The first night the heater malfunctioned and we all woke up the next morning our faces were blackened with soot. We looked like a family of coal miners.
We did not worry too much about our fate because Dad seemed to be OK, and Mom said that the religious icon she had hanging on the living room wall was supposed to protect our home from floods and fire and other natural disasters. It was some kind of Papal fetish, and in the center was a disc of pressed wax that supposedly contained a relic from some dead Pope. My sister Helen used to say it had the Pope’s toenail in it, or it was the Pope’s earwax. But she was careful not to make her comments in Mom’s earshot, as this was a blasphemous thing to say about a late Pope who was probably a Saint.
I suppose the Pope’s relic worked, because on the third day the river crested and began to recede and even though most of our neighbors’ houses were flooded and the water surrounded ours, the river did not cross the threshold of our little wood frame abode. By weeks-end Daddy was working with a large pump he brought home from LeBlonds Tool & Die, where he worked, relieving the basement of the lingering river water. And for the next several evenings he and my older brother, Joe, shoveled mud and river muck into galvanized garbage cans, carrying them to the edge of the riverbank where they dumped the mud.
Tommy and I marched around in the thick slimy mud in the basement wearing our winter boots again. We caught a few small shiny fish that were stranded. Daddy said they were minnows. We fed them to our cats. Later Tommy came up the stairs with a big yellow-bellied dead catfish in a bucket. Yuukkk!!
Daddy cleaned up the mess and we were safe because of his efforts. He was strong and good in the eyes of his children. And the small river town of Dayton, Kentucky survived another flood.
Sydney Candle of Cortland, OH
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Alex Maine Debuts Made-in-the-USA Upscale Apparel Brand
Los Angeles, CA (April, 2011) – Create Jobs, Buy American, Go America! Alex Maine – “Alex” meaning “defender” and “Maine” meaning “homeland.” The company stands up for the American economy by bringing textile jobs back to America, producing 100% of its product within the U.S. Its men’s collection launches simultaneously with the opening of the Alex Maine flagship store on the famed Sunset Strip in Hollywood and online. Now available on AmericasVirtualGeneralStore.com
The inspiration for Alex Maine comes from founder Bron Heussenstamm. The grandson of a Pearl Harbor survivor, with two cousins currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, Bron is passionate about reversing the outsourcing of American jobs (In 2009, 97% of all U.S. clothing purchased was produced by foreign factories).
Alex Maine is a brand designed by the American people, constructed by the American people, and sold by the American people—100% American. The brand prides itself on having fun while creating unique, upscale apparel, using the finest American craftsmanship and the most comfortable fabrics. All with a charity element, always giving back to the America people. The Alex Maine logo consists of two parts: the flag and the name. The flag is facing west, backwards from normal, to reflect how the American troops wear it on their sleeve in battle. The word Alex Maine is written in Georgia font. This font was selected because it was developed for the New York Times as an American answer to Times and Times New Roman, which are used by England’s The Times. Both the flag and font were conceived to capture the essence of America in Alex Maine.
