The Queen of Pep

Arriving at my grandmother’s 1950s pink brick, ranch-style house, I find her in her usual spot. She is sitting in her lift chair, one that would assist her in getting up, if she had the patience to wait for the slow mechanism to raise her. This chair has become her island in the sea of the 2500 square foot home where she raised ten children. I yell loudly to be heard over the blaring big screen television, purchased one Christmas by her children, in hopes that she might be able to make out the larger-than-life images. Macular degeneration has not been kind.

“It’s me,” I yell louder. “How are you?”

She finds the enormous-numbered remote control, feels for the volume button and turns down the TV. “What do you know?” she asks, mostly out of habit, but desperate for information from the outside world.

I make a quick, mental tally of my day, attempting to glean something of interest to offer as the diversion she so desires. “I had lunch with a professor from the university,” I say.

This works, and she peppers me with questions. “What does he teach? Where did you eat? Why did you go?”

After exhausting all of the details of my lunch meeting, I ask her about her day. “Did you have any company?”

“I don’t think so.”

I know my Aunt Gail and Uncle Bob have been by several times, to make breakfast, to read aloud the newspaper and the crossword puzzle. Gail leaves the scrambled letters of the Jumble word puzzle written in five-inch tall black Magic Marker letters on a clipboard for grandmother to decipher. They return at noon to finalize the Jumble answer and to fix her mid-day meal. Uncle Steve usually eats with them as well. “What did you have for lunch?” I ask.

“I don’t remember,” she says, looking a little confused.

I know she has eaten well. When I lived with her in my early twenties she was fond of quoting, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.” She usually said this as we sat down to a large evening meal, but now she is unintentionally living the advice. Her appetite is best in the morning, but wanes by late afternoon. If I can get her to eat a little something and drink a glass of milk in the evening before she goes to bed, I have succeeded. “What would you like tonight?” I ask. “Sweet or salty?” If the answer is sweet I know there is a peach cobbler in the refrigerator. But tonight she chooses salty.

“I’ll just have a few Fritos.” She loves chips, it must be the salt her worn-out taste buds crave. I hate it when she requests them as she has a hiatal hernia and they cause her to cough and choke. Some nights she coughs up more than she ingests. In the kitchen with its original green linoleum tile floor I spread Fritos on a plate, grate some sharp cheddar cheese on top, melt it for a few seconds in the microwave and pour a glass of milk. “I have a glass of milk in the ice-box,” she shouts from the living room.

She thinks she does. Any morsel of food or drink she doesn’t finish, she requests we save. She lived through the depression and raised ten children, she doesn’t believe in waste. But her caretakers don’t believe in serving her old food, so we pretend we put her leftovers in the refrigerator.

I serve her salty snack on a tray, carefully positioning her fresh glass of milk and guiding her hand to it. If I can distract her, she may forget she isn’t hungry and eat all of her food. She is no longer the slightly overweight woman who futilely attended Weight Watcher’s meetings every week. Now, when I walk behind her as she slowly maneuvers to her bedroom behind her walker, her hips are so narrow, I wonder how her pants manage to stay on.

I opt for the distraction ploy, knowing she needs the calories, but running the risk of a choking spell, usually set in motion when she talks while eating. “Tell me about the Queen of Pep,” I ask.

She closes her blind eyes and travels the roads of her memory, the roads more familiar to her than what she had for lunch today. In a voice stronger than a few minutes earlier, she begins. “I used to play cards with Mr. and Mrs. Murphy at the teacherage in Pep. Mildred was her name. They invited Oliver Fredenberger, what a name, from the gin to be my partner. I hate to play cards, I told him, makes me want to kick the table in the air.”

I can imagine this. As my grandmother tells the story, I can see her in her early twenties, used to the freedom of growing up on a west Texas ranch, her long red braids cut into a bob, trying desperately to be a proper small town school teacher.

“Oliver asked me what I liked to do. I told him I liked to dance. He said he didn’t dance, but there was a dance at Lehman he’d take me to if I’d like to go. So that Saturday night we went to the dance at Lehman. They had a real fine band from Lubbock, the Buffalo Rhythm Stompers. They played real good music.”

“What kind of music did they play?” I ask, interrupting her memories from 1929.

“I don’t know what kind of music, just good dancing music.” She opens her eyes and I’m afraid I’ve broken the spell. “That’s the night I met Lewis and Prof and the Widder,” she says.

I know Lewis ends up being my grandfather, and I’ve heard about Prof and the Widder my whole life. “How’d they come to be called Prof and the Widder?” I wonder aloud.

“Prof taught school earlier in his life, just for one year. That’s what they sometimes called school teachers back then, Prof, short for professor I guess.”

“And the Widder?” I ask. “Had she been married before?”

“No,” my grandmother replies, her eyes close again and her smile reaches all the way to them. “Prof named her that, said she’d just as well be a widder as married to him.”

I watch as her smile fades and her brow wrinkles in thought.

“When he was in the war, the Widder was pregnant. He wrote home and told her to name the baby Buckley Lane; I guess after his best friend who died in the war. You couldn’t just pick up the phone and call back then, people wrote letters. The baby was a girl and the Widder named her Buckley Lane. Lots of little girls got bad names back then because of that. Buckley Lane married and had two children, but I don’t know what became of her.”

I can see she’s gone down a side street in her mind, trying to remember Prof’s progeny. I want to hear about my grandfather. “What about Lewis?” I ask. “Did you dance with Lewis that night?”

The smile is back. “Yes, we danced. Lewis didn’t know my name. All he knew was I taught school in Pep. He and Prof drove to Pep a few days later. Said they were ‘buying corn.’ They weren’t really, maybe corn liquor. They called me the Queen of Pep. They talked mother into letting me go to Lehman to stay with the Prof and the Widder so I could go to the next dance. Can you imagine?”

She stops here, her eyes still closed. I can only hope she is in 1929, dancing with my grandfather to the ‘real good music’ of the Buffalo Rhythm Stompers.

“He called me the Queen of Pep,” she says one more time.