My Grandma Pace suddenly passed away. She was 99 so it shouldn't have come as such a shock but it was to all of us mostly because she was healthy as a horse and acted more like a 75 year old. Or maybe it was that we thought she was invincible and would live forever.
I've been down to Teasdale more than ever lately working on our new project house. I'm always trying to cram as much in as I can in the couple of days I'll be there. Whenever I've been there alone and come back Bart will ask me if I stopped by and visited my Grandma. I'm blessed to have a thoughtful husband who prioritizes the most important things. Too often I'd say no I didn't have time but the last time we were there I was on a mission to find a "cowboy" picture to frame over the mantel and took an afternoon looking through old slides and picture albums with her. My grandma quick as a whip labelled all the old timers in the pictures and where it was taken. I love family history and hearing my grandma comment about things like "Gramps always wore overalls when he worked" or "Most of the time Grandpa James Pace smoked a pipe." She loved telling me all about the pictures when her children were small and you could see the love and twinkle in her eyes for that time in her life and her children. I will be forever grateful that I took the time to spend with her knowing now it would be the last time I would see her.
Here's the post I did for her 90th birthday. https://bartandcolletterichards.blogspot.com/2011/11/queen-of-quilting.html
The funeral was lovely. So many wonderful tribute to the good person she was.
1. Industry Grandma Pace worked hard and long every day making each step and task she did count. She grew or picked then bottled her own food, strained fresh milk from the cow each day. Darned holey socks with a light bulb. She also made all of her food from scratch feeding more than a dozen farm hands and others each day. Even a relaxing trip to her favorite place "Dark Valley" constituted walking the last 3 miles into the cabin throwing rocks out of the road to make for a better ride back.
2. Quiet Contentment Grandma Pace always seemed very content with her life. She enjoyed living in Teasdale close to family in her weathered 50's house doing the same things each day. I never once heard of her saying anything like I wish I had a bigger kitchen or I wish I had this or that. She also never seemed to mind all the tedious tasks that needed to be done instead she quietly and contentedly went about her life whistling and seeming to find joy in all the service she performed.
3. Tight family bonds. Grandma Pace lived within blocks of her Parents and all of her siblings. As an adult with my own family I see how she really was the luckiest person to have this. When my dad mentions being teased by Uncle Carlile about how he's going to die his toe blond hair with coal or other stories I can tell he spent a great deal of time there. I grew up with memories of Aunt Bernices house and playing pretend with her old timer telephone and her dog Regina. I remember my Aunt LaRee's house was pretty cool with her table that was a booth with it's blue vinyl seats. I can only imagine how fun it would be for my kids and their cousins to live within walking distance and pop in for a snack like you have a few homes. She also had a love for her ancestors and knew so much about their lives.
4. Perfectionist Grandma Pace didn't just do things well she did them perfectly. She made the best pies, cakes (my favorite being "Texas Sheet Cake"), quilts, bread, stitchery etc. She won about every quilt contest she entered and seldom a soul left her table without thinking it was the best food they ever ate. She didn't boast but was obviously very confident in her talents and work.
5. Unnerved Grandma Pace seemed to not worry or fret about anything. My mom commented that she had nerves of steal. I wish I had more of this quality and didn't worry or get anxious about things. No matter what life threw her way she stayed on the sunny side and didn't let it get her down. A few years ago she fell and broke her leg and was hospitalized then sent to a rehab center in Payson for a short time to recover. We went to visit her in the rehab center expecting her to be bedridden and miserable. Instead we walked in the room to her sitting in the chair pleasantly sewing these cute round Christmas ornaments that later she would give a set of 10 to all of us grandkids. https://bartandcolletterichards.blogspot.com/2017/12/gifts-that-make-me-cry.html
She was happily doing what she could despite her circumstance. She lost many family members to death including 2 children unexpectingly. If she had regrets, resentment or remorse no one knew. She never let grief overcome her but steadily carried on.
5. Loved Kids: Grandma Pace loved kids. As a child she never made us feel like a burden to have around. She took us in herds to Dark Valley and loaded way more kids then should have been allowed in my moms first blue mini van and took us to Dinosaur land in Vernal. Now that I'm a mother she's always excited to see my kids. She reaches for the babies and smiles with delight to hold them. She helps complete her complicated wooden puzzles stored away in a box in the closet with the younger kids and makes the older ones feel welcome in her home. One day a few years ago one of my kids (can't remember who) tripped and fell walking into Grandma's house and scuffed up their knee just a bit. It was just a minor scrape the I felt the excess whining was unnecessary and I had little patience for it. My grandma being well into her 90's noticed the sad child and quietly got up found a band aid some ointment and gently kneeled down and doctored the tiny scrape. Instantly my child felt better and I learned from example how a little loving nurturing even with the minor things can be so calming to kids.
My favorite line from the funeral was from the Bishop who said "If in Heaven there are quilts to tie and meals to make I'm sure Grandma Pace is busily doing both".
A local historian often visited my Grandma digging deep into her life and the history of Teasdale. He wrote this tribute to her and posted it in the local paper. Obviously like so many other after spending time with my Grandma he thought of her as his own. Here is the post he shared on facebook.
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But life is not like that, and in voice sweet and tender I can hear Grandma chastise me for even thinking it.
When the skies of Wayne County cleared and I wiped the tears from my eyes I realized that Grandma had taken me along on her journey, a lifetime journey, nine months short of 100 years, her personal life journey. And she had left me without nary one detail left out.
In the little out of the way town of Teasdale, in south central Utah, on November 9th, 1921 Barbara Coombs was born to George and Mae Coombs. Her Grand Mother Mary Williams, of who had been the Teasdale Post Mistress for a time, delivered baby Barbara. Grand Mother Mary Coleman was widowed when her husband William died when he was about 40 years old, leaving Grand Mother Mary with six kids. So Mary Williams decided she would go up to Salt Lake and take a course to be a mid-wife and when she came back she delivered babies in Teasdale, Torrey, Grover and Fruita in the early 1900’s. With only a horse and buggy to get around, Mary Williams traveled the Wayne County countryside delivering babies, and generally stayed with new mothers during confinement for about 10 days being paid in produce or what little money anyone could spare. In a well worn cloth bound book that Grandma showed me one time, there is a detailed list all the babies Mary Williams delivered, Barbara Coombs, born November 9th 1921, a little baby girl, was the second to last entry.
In 1921, Warren G. Harding was the 29th President of these United States, and in November 1921, the New York Yankee’s Babe Ruth logged his best baseball year. History would not remember Warren G. Harding well but in 1921 the Babe would go down in the books as one of the best baseball players ever. If you lived somewhere else other than Teasdale, Utah in 1921, a family sized house cost about $7,000.00, bread was 10 cents a loaf, gas was 11 cents a gallon, and a gallon of milk was 58 cents. But in Teasdale at that time, you built your own house, baked your own bread and milked your own cow… and “you were happy as can be to do it,” said Grand Ma Barbara Pace.
Entering into Grandma Pace’s world on any given day was like walking into a Norman Rockwell painting, the only difference was that you could hear and smell it. Stainless steel pans chattering away on the stove, little puffs of steam rising, the Pace cookbook spread out on the counter and Grandma standing there with a spoon in her hand as if she is steering a ship.
In an instant Grandma Pace could recall her grade school teacher Cecil Clayton and his wife that gave tap dancing lessons, and the names of all her Teasdale classmates like Rena Bell Hiskey, Irene Forsyth, Melba Larsen, Iva Daly, Vernon Buchanan and Reed Brinkerhoff, but most importantly were the names of the Teasdale lunch ladies Wanda Heaps, Jane Forsyth and Luva Hiskey. All while lifting a spoon full of pie filling and letting is slowing drip back into the pan to test its consistency.
While sitting at her kitchen counter Grandma would tell me about trips over Boulder Mountain to visit her Uncle Eph and Aunt Floss with Brother Lee Pierce of Torrey that ran a small one man trucking service and would drive the old dirt road on the east end of Boulder to near Oak Creek where the semi-improved road ended. The road around the east end of Boulder Mountain would not see much improvement until the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC,) arrived in the area in 1933 to 1942, The CCC was a public work relief program that operated in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families as part of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Another spoonful of pie filling came up and out of the pan, without even looking Grandma could tell from the feel that it needed about five more minutes.
With a twinkle in her eye Grandma told me of her dad George Coombs from Teasdale when he first saw the benefits of sheep ownership and began working for the local sheep magnate Emery King. Being an industrious sort of fellow that George was he took his yearly herding payment in sheep, and when George had about 1,000 head of his own sheep he struck out on his own.
When George Coombs’ sheep were being sheared in the spring it was a happy site to see young Barbara Coombs playing on large bales of her dad’s wool down at Sandy Ranch or in the alley next to the Coombs Store in Teasdale, memories of sheep shearing time were always the favorite for kids growing up.
After World War II when wool was still king George Coombs would shuttle most of his wool over to Sigurd to send it out on the train but being the smart man that he was, he would always hold back a couple of wool bales to take to Utah Woolen Mills in Salt to trade for blankets. When George Coombs was at the mill he would ask about the large surplus of last years wool suit samples that they would have for the taking, and when George would arrive back in Teasdale with his pay and wool suit samples, his daughters Bernice, Lorea and Barbara were always intrigued to think of ways they could put them to good use.
It has always been a well-known fact that the Coombs sisters were the best quilters this side of the Mississippi, and quilting in Teasdale has never been just a pastime. Every since Eve batted her eyes in the Garden of Eden and handed Adam the apple, quilting for the Coombs sisters has been an art, and no one dares question that fact for fear of losing a rib. For beginners there is more blood spilled at a quilting bee than there is at a professional boxing match.
Grandma Barbra Pace told me that she started seriously quilting in 1976, but she always enjoyed embroidering the most. It was after she pieced together a Log Cabin quilt in the mid seventies and entered it into the Springville Quilt Show, and won 1st prize that her fingers never stopped stitching. It was after winning that 1st prize that Grandma always kept a quilt frame set up in the sun room and when she wasn’t cooking for 30 or more farm hands she was in there quilting. Local lore has it that Grandma Pace could get a record sixteen stitches on a single needle and I dare anyone to try and convince me otherwise.
When all was said and done, together we would sit at the kitchen table, while a fresh from oven pie cooling on the counter.
I am going to miss you Grandma.
“You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
Kahil Gibran
Love Adus
She sounds like a lovely person. I'm so sorry for your loss!
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful post. It made me tear up. I am sorry for all your losses this past year. I know the memories and tributes you have saved will help preserve her legacy and example for your children!
ReplyDeleteI loved that line: "she left Wayne County on a wind so fierce that it sucked the lights out in Boulder and left Cottonwood limbs strewn about like a scene from the movie The Wizard of Oz"