Friday, April 26, 2013

Photo Friday: My Wondrously Tall Grandma Edition

Good morning!

Well, you're not going to believe it, but THIS Photo Friday, the subject of our weekly vintage photograph round up is ACTUALLY RELATED TO ME. I know, I know-- take a deep breath, this is unprecedented. Folks, meet my grandmother, Hazel. She's my mom's mom, born in 1924 in Falmouth, Massachussetts.


Isn't she lovely! And a rare bird for the time period, too- while her father, brother, and mother were all average sized, my slim teenage grandma shot up to six feet tall by the time she reached her full height in 1939, owing to a rogue set of super-tall genes in the Hill branch of her family tree. She said it was well nigh impossible to find dresses that were long enough or skirts that didn't seem unfashionably short, so she sewed a lot of her own clothes. Can you imagine! The average height for a man in the 1930's was around 5'8''. Grandma said she heard a lot of "How's the weather up there?" for years and years as a shy teenager in Cape Cod. Even though it was hard being that same height in 1996, when I joined the "weather up there" club, I'm sure it was much more difficult in the homogeneous forties' to be a super-tall young woman. After all, aren't all the songs about "five foot two, eyes of blue" sweethearts?


Here she is on a bicycle I would still love to own. Flipping through the photo album this picture was scanned from, in the front room of her house when I was in middle school, she would tell me all about singing Frank Sinatra, bobby soxer love songs out the window to the moon, love sick for a neighborhood boy who lived down the street. She dated a boy named Jimmy whose father owned the bus station in town, and worked at the office counter there after school and during the summer selling bus tickets and reading the newspaper when the shift was slow. My granddaddy  a Tennessee native with craggily handsome, black Irish good looks, was stationed at nearby Camp Edwards. He used to come down to the bus station to throw peanuts at said newspaper while my grandma read it, making like he wasn't sure what she was talking about as she angrily snatched the paper down from her pretty face. If you knew my granddaddy, this is easily identifiable as classic Lucien O'Brien behavior-- slightly puckish, devilish, endearing.


LOOK HOW TALL. WHAT DID I TELL YOU. What always interested me about the peanuts story was the ensuing clash of accents that must have happened when dialogue was initiated between the two future sweethearts. Besides that interlude in the service, my granddaddy was born in 1919 on one street in Inglewood, then moved one street over, built a house, and lived there the rest of his life. His accent was about as Southern and thick with local vernacular as you could imagine. My grandma, born in Massachusetts, didn't have much of a notable accent when I was growing up because she had been in Tennessee almost fifty years, compared to her eighteen years as a Yankee. However! When we went to visit my grandma's relations in Massachussetts around 1998, I was stunned to hear her cousin Avis, who grew up with her practically as a sister, had the "pahk the cah in the yawd" New England accent I'd heretofore only heard on tv. Can you imagine the two of them talking to each other in 1942? I don't know how they even would have understood what the other was saying? Maybe this contributed to the burgeoning romance, who knows. At any rate, they married, and had three six four and taller sons and my 5'9'' mom. I was doomed to this height in the genetics race.

Here's my grandma and her first born, Harold. She says she was 135 lbs when she married my granddaddy, and I'll believe it! 


And one last photo, this one on the beach with Harold when my grandparents went back to Falmouth to visit her dad and stepmother. Another interesting thing about a lot of these "Up North" photos are the kinds of buildings. Lots of clapboard and shingles and things that don't look anything like Tennessee. I truly can't imagine picking up and moving almost 1,200 miles away, but you have to go where your life takes you, I guess. And how else would you get little old me born in sunny Tennessee some forty years later? Second to the peanuts conversation, the idea of traveling that distance by car in the forties' is kind of unreal to me. No interstates! Nothing but radio! A car that probably couldn't go much above 55! Bless their hearts.


So! What do you think of my real life, actual relatives making a debut appearance on the blog? Do you have any geographically farflung relatives or stories of great migration in your family tree? Have any super tall relatives whose height either caught up with you or skipped a generation? Do any of your family members have accents that are just wonderfully strange to think about? Let's talk!

Well, that's all for this week! I wish you luck at the sales (I'm off to the flea market bright and early tomorrow!), and keep a good thought for me and the wedding dress hunt this afternoon! Will report back on Monday. Til then!

20 comments:

  1. This was fantastic! I love reading and learning about people's families. It's just so interesting to see where and how families came to be. That's so cool your grandma was so tall.

    My grandmother was born in Houston Texas. At a very early age she became a migrant worker. She worked in Texas, Mexico and parts of the Southwest. She had some really great stories. She was a strong, courageous women who was a bit of a Hell-raiser when she wanted to be. She was around 5'2" and my grandfather was 6'1". Both my uncles are over 6'2". I wish I had recorded her stories before she passed away.

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    1. The funniest part about my tall people story is, the OTHER side of the family is just as tall! My dad's dad is 6'3'', and my dad's mom was 5'11''or so. Just couldn't beat those odds. And none of us play basketball, it's a waste! :)

      That's so neat about your grandma. I love stories about that generation, people really had get-up-and-go back then (mainly because they had to!).

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  2. Your grandmother is beautiful! I'm tall myself as well and I had those silly questions all of the time during my teens. Like: "Oh my god you're tall!" No, are you serious? Didn't know that..

    It must be even worse when your grandmother was young.

    The dress she is wearing in the 4th picture is gorgeous! I am planning on making a similar dress this year from the Lutterloh book. Just love the stripes!

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    1. HAHA, right? Or "Do you play basketball?" Once I was really nasty to a person who asked me that when I was a camp counselor...only to realize it wasn't my height but the fact that I was wearing a seventies' t-shirt for a basketball camp that had prompted the question! Oops.

      I look forward to seeing your stripes dress! I bet it'll be cute, too!

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  3. So cute! I see the family resemblance.

    I have some long-time Inglewood relatives too. My great-grandparents bought a house on Brush Hill Road in the 1920s. It was in the family until about 2003. The current owners painted it very nicely. It's about two miles from where I live! Oh, and there's a cave in the backyard.

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    1. I look a little like her, but I definitely got my height from her! Harold, the baby in the last two pictures, looks as much like his mom as I do like my dad. Isn't it weird when family resemblances carry over genders?

      WHAT I WOULDN'T HAVE GIVEN FOR A CAVE IN MY BACKYARD AS A CHILD. So cool!

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  4. she was so gorgeous! these photos are even better since you know the story behind them!
    my dad talks all the time about his family of 6 traveling from mid florida, up to Pennsylvania every summer, no interstates! i can't even imagine!

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    1. I think if it was me on those cross country car trips, I would just get out at a gas station on the way and be like, "Well, I live here now. There's no way I'm getting back in that car, so I guess I live here." It's a hard enough trip WITHOUT all the amenities! But then look at Jack Kerouac, I guess there's some magic to it, too.

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  5. Gorgeous granny!!! I think a tall, willowy woman is where it's at - your grandfather obviously had great taste! I would have loved to hear that exchange of accents on their first meeting. Thanks for sharing the awesome photos!

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    1. Thanks, Mr. Tiny! I'll have to do a dramatic recreation of it some time; my grandma swore up and down that she never paid any attention to it at the time and I'm like, THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE.

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  6. What a pretty lady! Love these pictures. I wish I had her pretty striped dress!

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    1. Me too! She never kept any of her clothes, she was always remaking old ones into other things or giving them away. ((frustration))

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  7. lovely grandma!
    in my family the family member who comes the longest way is the mom of maternial grandpa - she came from königsberg (today kaliningrad) to berlin.
    and in opposite to yours the woman in my family are extremely short, 1,50-1,55m. except me, 1,70m, thank godness.

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    1. Thanks! Isn't that funny you beat the "short" gene. I'll have to find a picture of my grandma standing next to her stepmother in one of these albums. She was barely five feet tall in heels, so you can imagine that distance between the two of them! It's so strange to think about how many different sizes of people there are out there.

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  8. What lovely photographs!! Your tall grandmother would be quite modelesque in today's world!

    My grandmother had the exact opposite trajectory: born and raised in rural Mississippi, but finished out her life in Cape Cod. She kept her deep drawl 'til the end!

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    1. Re: photos: RIGHT? She was so tall and thin!

      Re: your grandma: Oh, isn't that neat! Vice versa! It's funny how my grandma's faded almost into obscurity except for on certain phrases. "My brother Charles" was one that always sounded completely peculiar to me, and I now notice that it was probably that accent shining through the years and years in the South. Isn't that weird?

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  9. Loved seeing these photos Lisa, your gran was a gorgeous looking girl. I'm tall myself and have often had a hard time finding clothes to fit so I can imagine how hard it must have been for her back then when tall girls were more rare. Our family is full of mixed up accents too, my parents are Irish but moved to England where I grew up near Liverpool, then I married a Scotsman and now live in Scotland, so I'm used to crossed lines when communicating with my nearest and dearest. xx

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    1. Thanks! And I sympathize, it was H-E-L-L trying to buy juniors jeans in high school when everything was cut for someone 5'6'', maybe 5'7''...on top of which the style was "low slung"! Practically impossible, to the point that I just started wearing skirts all the time.

      That's such a neat mix of accents and heritages in your family! But I can see where the communication would get iffy, haha!

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  10. She was a beauty! If she had a Cape Cod accent when she moved, folks must have had a time understanding her!
    My father's family is from CapeCod, too, and his grandmother was over 6 ft, as were all of her children & grandchildren. ( I didn't quite make it.) :)

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    1. Thanks, Su! She said the two things she was most upset about when she was getting used to life in the South was a) no one understanding anything she said and b) her naturally ash blonde hair turning dark "because of the well water" in her opinion. Maybe they're from the same super-tall-gene-pool in Cape Cod as my grandmother! Six foot tall in the forties' was rough for ladies'!

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