OLD SAWS

Being in a prolonged mellow mood after my terrific birthday weekend, I can't be too serious yet. I hark back - I love saying that - I hark back to my grandmother's sayings, mostly memorized, I gather, from Ben Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanak." The Old Saws that I grew up with, repeated many times, have stuck with me. Then this morning I came across a poem that prompted me to reminisce - again.

THE WILL AND THE WAY

It was a noble Roman,
   In Rome's imperial day,
Who heard a coward croaker,
   Before the Castle say:
"They're safe in such a fortress;
   There is no way to shake it!"
"On - on," exclaimed the hero,
   "I'll find a way, or make it!"

Is Fame your aspiration?
   Her path is steep and high;
In vain he seeks her temple,
   Content to gaze and sigh:
The shining throne is waiting,
   But he sure can take it
Who says, with Roman firmness,
   "I'll find a way, or make it!"

Is Learning your ambition?
   There is no royal road;
Alike the peer and peasant
   Must climb to her abode:
Who feels the thirst of knowledge
   In Helicon may slake it,
If he has still the Roman will
   "To find a way, or make it!"


                                                             OLD SAWS            

     "CAN'T never did anything, but I WILL did."  That old saying probably was responsible for shaping my tenacious character. When I was a very little girl, my grandmother first quoted it to me. I think I was trying to tie my own shoes at the time. She repeated it often as I was growing up.

     Gramma raised me, but that's another story. She was earthy and full of common sense. Her standards of behavior were high, but her language could turn the air blue when she was angry. Of course, I was expected to "Do as I say, and not as I do," and could not utter so much as a "Darn it!" If I misbehaved, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," but she could not possibly "spare the rod and spoil the child."

     Gramma was the embodiment of Victorian mores and manners, as well as a natural-born feminist (in the best sense). Her upbringing was both privileged and tough. Gramma's Pennsylvania Dutch father was a successful farmer, who married and settled in Missouri after the Civil War. He was a corporal in the Union Army and took part in many of the major battles. He was thirty when he married my delicate, French, sixteen year old great-grandmother. They produced five children, three older and one younger than my grandmother. The older three died of scarlet fever. A sickly younger brother came along later, and Great-grandmother's health was thereafter precarious. Gramma, at a very young age, became her father's companion and help. The hired hands taught her to smoke and cuss. She rode her horse astride, alongside her father. She learned the business of farming and raising livestock. At sixteen, in 1894, she had enough money saved to buy her own house in town. She was always "independent as a hog on ice," and horrified the townsfolk as she raced her horse and buggy down Main Street. In our home, everything was in repair and neat. Gramma hammered, sawed and sewed a fine seam. "A stitch in time saves nine." She was deliberate and careful since "Haste makes waste."

     She believed that "children should be seen and not heard." When company came, I sat quietly on the couch, hands folded in my lap in  ladylike fashion, to "speak only when spoken to." Sometimes I was excused, because "Little pitchers have big ears."

     The nuns at the neighborhood parochial school introduced me to formal learning. Gramma wanted me to have the kind of education she had desperately desired but had been denied. I was exhorted to graduate from college and make something of myself.

     "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Fortunately, I drank in learning and loved to compete. I inhaled books. Gramma cherished her Harvard Classics, the set of Junior Classics and a houseful of worthwhile volumes. In the Junior Classics I found the wonders of King Arthur and Robin Hood. Fairy tales and Greek myths fascinated me. By the time I was fourteen I had read everything from the Nancy Drew series, every dog and horse story in our Carnegie Library, through Jane Eyre and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. No one can say I didn't have an eclectic literary appetite. "A good reader makes a good book."

     Because I was a girl who loved girl things, Gramma built an elaborate playhouse for me in our backyard. All my dolls and stuffed toys lived there. I cleaned the house with a little carpet sweeper and duster and swept the porch with a small broom. "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well."
    
     At the same time, she encouraged me to play with the boys on the block. She let me know that girls were the equal of boys in all but physical size and strength. I had a natural athletic ability, never pursued at school. Homework and piano practice were more important to me. On the home front, I outran most of the boys and could throw a baseball with the best of them. In choose-up football games I exulted in being thought an excellent pass receiver well into my teens.  The other girls, disapproving, sat flirting and primping, but then, "Pretty is as pretty does."

     In one corner of my bedroom sat a dollhouse and in the other a fort complete with lead cowboys and Indians. During World War II I deployed lead soldiers, vehicles and airplanes. The neighborhood boys and I bivouacked in our backyards and used my front porch for a medical station. We fought the enemy a couple of times a week. Sometimes I had to be a nurse; but since I had my own weapons, more often than not I insisted upon being a guerilla in the Philippines.  There were enough movies to help expand our battle plots.

     I've digressed from the Old Saws, but not too far. Some days I really wished I were a boy. Then Gramma would say, "Wish in one hand and spit in the other," or "If wishes were horses beggars would ride." She assured me that girls could be anything they wanted to be and, "God helps those who help themselves." I was to smile through my personal storms of the teen years. "Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone." People still tell me that I always look like I'm smiling. Thanks, Gramma.

     As I grew into young womanhood and fulfilled her and my own dream of earning a college degree, I no longer wanted to be other than my own sex. I attended a Catholic girls' high school academy, studying music to the end of obtaining a scholarship to a respected Catholic women's college. "Practice makes perfect," you know. I continued to be enthralled by books and all that could be gleaned from them. Studying Caesar's Gallic Wars in Latin was exciting. French felt wonderful on the tongue and sounded so cosmopolitan. Beowulf was horrifying and intriguing. Byron was romantic. Algebra forced Gramma to repeat again and again, "CAN'T never did anything, but I WILL did."  And that was just high school!  In college, when homework, term papers, three hours of music practice daily and a part-time job stressed me to the limit (18 units was my usual semester), she continued to quote it.

     Marriage immediately upon graduation, as was the norm in the early 1950s, and the subsequent births of nine children in twelve years, called upon all the strength and love I had. When I felt I couldn't do more, Gramma tersely commented, "You made your bed, now lie in it," or, more compassionately, "God never sends us more than we can bear." When my husband left to find himself, the oldest child was 16, the youngest, 4. I had recently obtained my first real job outside the home, as an assistant librarian. When I applied, and had to take an extensive test after seventeen years of almost nothing (but not quite) except homemaking, I was full of doubt. Gramma was no longer around, but I heard, "CAN'T never did anything, but I WILL did." Now, here I was, alone, raising an army and working.  "Waste not, want not," was the admonition du jour.

     After eleven years of learning, practicing the craft and specializing in children's services, I found a children's department head position advertised in a city two hundred miles away. Finally, my children on their own, save the youngest, I dared to try. Not having a Master's Degree in library science, I had little hope of being hired, but "CAN'T never did anything, but I WILL did." Showing more confidence than I felt, I interviewed and got the job. The department had been neglected by a burnt out librarian. The new Library Director believed in the importance of children's  library work and gave me my head. Within three years we had a quality room, effective programs, wall-to-wall juvenile users and a full-time assistant librarian.

     After retiring I continued to tackle or initiate other projects, relishing each challenge. Now, however, if I must choose between a certainty and a long shot, I know that "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."  Hmm. I think I have ignored that one at times.

     Gramma passed away in 1967, but all her Old Saws are indelibly imprinted on my brain, especially the one that has pulled me along through life, "CAN'T never did anything, but I WILL did."


APOLOGY: I didn't mean this to be a personal history, but somehow, it just turned out that way.

9/6/11