The demanding life of a ranch matriarch

I don't know how our paternal grandmother managed. She wasn't different than any of the women who raised families in the early and mid-20th century. They all had it hard.

Many families were large in those days, and with no pizza shops, MacDonald's, or heat and eat foods, even lunches for the children entailed a lot of work.

Our grandmother kept a house with seven sons, a husband, and a brother-in-law. She gave birth to a girl baby after all the boys, but the child died of meningitis as a two-year-old. I can't help but think that the loss must have been a crushing experience, but she was reticent about her loss and never spoke of it to me.

She lived in a totally masculine world. Our grandfather was neither domestic nor sentimental, and when he was told that there was finally a girl in the family, he responded, "Good, another cook." That's the way he saw the world - concerned with only cows, grass, and irrigation water.

There must not have been enough hours in the day for the women back then. The men couldn't work after dark and the horses had to rest, so when they walked in the house, their day was over. But the women still had hours of chores in front of them. The men "worked," and the women "kept house."

Before our family got television, there were occasions when we were allowed to stay at the ranch for a few hours in the evening. The entire household sat in the totally darkened living room watching black and white TV, but our grandmother left at every commercial break to see to something in the kitchen. Even when she had aged into her sixties, she was usually the last one to bed.

Her family had come to Butte from Chicago in the early 1900s, and she held onto the Irish tradition of tea at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Her routine was simple and consisted of little more than a cup of tea and maybe a saltine with a little butter. I think those daily respites of fifteen or twenty minutes were the only times she ever reserved for herself. On all the other occasions, she was at the demand of the needs of others.

In those days haying began just after the 4th of July and in rainy years could continue until after Labor Day. The hay demanded large crews of ten to twelve men even after the horses had been replaced by tractors.

Our grandmother had help during the summer, but still she was up early to make breakfast which went on the table at 6 a.m. And after supper she had hours of work still ahead of her, washing dishes and readying things for the next day, while all the men were sleeping or enjoying the local bar.

Our grandmother lived in a large house with two stories and five bedrooms. It must have been full of life when the boys were growing up, but with the exception of one son and occasional family visitors, she was alone in it for over twenty years after our great uncle and grandfather had passed on.

It must have been horribly lonesome in that echoing house. She had spent years in the frenetic toil required to maintain a busy house with neither electricity nor running water, plus she had a large family that depended on her for everything. But as she aged all the need disappeared, and she was alone.

Most of her friends had died, so she had few people to visit with on the phone. Even her interest in the soap operas waned when she no longer had anyone to discuss the shows with.

Our grandmother got enthused by the afternoon programs in the late 1950s, but once, when a character on one soap died, and then a month or two later appeared in a different soap, she lost some faith in television.

Her later years (she died in the mid-1980s) were spent in her red rocking chair next to the wood burning cook stove. I always found it poignant, if not sad to walk into the house and see the old lady sitting alone in a large, empty house after she had spent scores of years maintaining it as dynamic home, teeming with kids and hired men, all needing something.

The house must have been a cacophony of child noises, plus the clump of men's boots, and the sounds of the haying crew as they ate. But as she got older and weaker, all she had was the creak of her rocker as she rocked and waited.