My Grandfather
Posted: January 28th, 2006, 1:25 pm
I'm thinking of my grandfather. Well, he wasn't actually my blood grandfather, but he married my grandmother after my real grandfather, who I never met, had died. His name was Jerrell R. Powell. I never knew what the 'R.' stood for. He was born before the turn of the 20th century in Red Oak, Texas. He went to Texas A & M and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. Then he went to Washington D.C. and met my grandmother. She was managing a rooming house and a diner in the building owned by my great-grandmother at 3rd and Congress. My grandmother was a widow with two small kids and had been taken in and employed by my stern German great-grandmother.
Jerrell was working in Washington and lived in the rooming house run by my grandmother, whose name was Dorothy. Dorothy had lived in the Baltimore/ D.C. area all her life. Dorothy had three sisters. It was a family of girls.
Jerrell and Dorothy married and moved back to Dallas, or should I say Oak Cliff? They bought a modest house there during the Depression. Jerrell opened an electrical contracting business and for the next fifty years he and Dorothy ran it together. He had the technical skills and she had the business savvy. Over the years he painted all his service trucks maroon, he was a die-hard Aggie.
I remember several times while I was growing up, being present at family gatherings where my grandmother's sisters would come to visit from Baltimore. They would talk, talk, talk, as sisters do. Their accents were different than I was used to. My favorite great-aunt was Winnie, who worked for the CIA and was an aspiring novelist.
When I met doreen, we had been tapping away on the internet to each other for several weeks when we decided to talk on the phone. The minute I heard her voice, it flashed me back to those gatherings of my grandmother and her sisters. It was the Baltimore/DC accent.
Since I have come here, it's even gotten more deja vuish. Doreen is from a family of four sisters, a family of girls. Their mother is named Dorothy. They are all very bright and talkative, with Baltimore/DC accents, just like my grandmothers siblings. It's funny how things complete themselves.
Dorothy and Jerrell both died in that little house in Oak Cliff. It was my good fortune to be able to live there and care for them during the last couple of years of their lives. He was blind and they were both deaf. He had his environment so memorized that after he was completely blind, people would come to the house to visit and they would never realize that he was blind.
Toward the end it was pretty amazing to observe them. They were both hanging onto life for the benefit of the other. They would get in fabulous fights. They had dropped all pretense. She would jump on him for something he had said or done fifty years before. They were like a couple of kids. One day I caught Jerrell out by the side of the house, standing in a puddle of water, about to stick a screwdriver into the fuse box. I led him back into the house. The man was an electrical engineer, ferchrissake.
They died within six weeks of each other.
Jerrell was working in Washington and lived in the rooming house run by my grandmother, whose name was Dorothy. Dorothy had lived in the Baltimore/ D.C. area all her life. Dorothy had three sisters. It was a family of girls.
Jerrell and Dorothy married and moved back to Dallas, or should I say Oak Cliff? They bought a modest house there during the Depression. Jerrell opened an electrical contracting business and for the next fifty years he and Dorothy ran it together. He had the technical skills and she had the business savvy. Over the years he painted all his service trucks maroon, he was a die-hard Aggie.
I remember several times while I was growing up, being present at family gatherings where my grandmother's sisters would come to visit from Baltimore. They would talk, talk, talk, as sisters do. Their accents were different than I was used to. My favorite great-aunt was Winnie, who worked for the CIA and was an aspiring novelist.
When I met doreen, we had been tapping away on the internet to each other for several weeks when we decided to talk on the phone. The minute I heard her voice, it flashed me back to those gatherings of my grandmother and her sisters. It was the Baltimore/DC accent.
Since I have come here, it's even gotten more deja vuish. Doreen is from a family of four sisters, a family of girls. Their mother is named Dorothy. They are all very bright and talkative, with Baltimore/DC accents, just like my grandmothers siblings. It's funny how things complete themselves.
Dorothy and Jerrell both died in that little house in Oak Cliff. It was my good fortune to be able to live there and care for them during the last couple of years of their lives. He was blind and they were both deaf. He had his environment so memorized that after he was completely blind, people would come to the house to visit and they would never realize that he was blind.
Toward the end it was pretty amazing to observe them. They were both hanging onto life for the benefit of the other. They would get in fabulous fights. They had dropped all pretense. She would jump on him for something he had said or done fifty years before. They were like a couple of kids. One day I caught Jerrell out by the side of the house, standing in a puddle of water, about to stick a screwdriver into the fuse box. I led him back into the house. The man was an electrical engineer, ferchrissake.
They died within six weeks of each other.
