Like Saint Joseph: My mom writes about my grandpa

 

All week long, I’d been trying to figure out what to write about my grandfather Clarence, since his birthday was March 12th and his “Feast Day” is March 19^th (traditionally, in the Catholic Church, the day a person dies is considered his “Feast Day”).  Then, as if the Holy Spirit knew I was struggling, I got a little help.

I got a nice call from my Uncle Joe last night.  I haven’t heard from him since shortly after my mom’s 2^nd funeral service in Lodi back in 2014!  He started telling me about his getting more serious with prayer and the sacraments, and how he prays the rosary with Mother Angelica on EWTN.  That led him to reminisce about family rosaries at 7 o’clock (sharp!) every night when they lived in Wilseyville, California.  After that, he told me a story about his father (my grandfather), who was a convert to Catholicism after he met my grandmother. 

He said that he thinks Grandpa was even more devout than Grandma (to me, that’s like saying he was more Catholic than the Pope!) when it came to going to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days.  He talked about times that, when weather would keep most people from going to church, Grandpa would get everyone up early and tell them they were going to Mass whether they felt like it or not!

As I was speaking with him (the call lasted 45 minutes!), I remembered the conversations I used to have with my mom.  The way he spoke—jumping from one topic to the next, confusing me at times, then coming full circle to tie all of the topic together at the end—were so reminiscent of my mother I almost cried.  But it also gave me an idea.  Why not let my mom talk about Grandpa in her own words through a couple of posts she made on her blog back March 19, 2010?  I’ve edited it for punctuation and clarity (although there was only so much I could do, lol).

Mom wrote:

Today is the date of my father's death.  He was 83 years old and was the father of ten of us!   It is, in the Catholic Church, the Feast Day of St. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus.  How appropriate that my father would pass away on this Feast Day!  

Dad was a good, hardworking man and like St. Joseph, was kind to all of us and we never went without a meal in our lives.  And even though it wasn't what, in these days is called “state of the art”, we always had a roof over our heads.  He converted to the Faith shortly after marrying Mother and never let his faith down.  He was, in fact, the only one of his family that had any religious affiliation.  

I seem to remember, way back, when I was a very small child hearing the family talk about an Aunt Effie who would attend whenever a traveling preacher, or whatever came to the area.  I don't even remember much about her except that she was very tall and had married, at that time, a second husband, who according to the "family gossip" was a real loser!  Poor Aunt Effie!  Her first husband, I understand, had left her!  I remember the family telling how clean she was and the couple of times I saw her, she always had the whitest apron on.  Enough about her!  This is supposed to be about Dad!

He was a farmer when he met Mother and had gone into partnership with an older brother to buy a big ten room house and after Mom and Dad were married 11 months I came along.  My uncle and his wife had two children, my cousin Cecil, who was 5 years older than I, and he had a sister Eva.  She got into a bottle of aspirin when she was a year or so and they couldn't get her to the doctor in time.  My uncle died also a little later on and my aunt, to put it bluntly, took over the house.  So Dad and Mother went to Everett, Washington where he found work down on the docks on Puget Sound, loading and unloading ships.  

By this time, he and Mom had six children.  The youngest was born just outside of Everett in a small community when he got word that my aunt wanted him to come back and take over the big 10 room house in Wawawai, Washington.  

After Dad and Mom moved back to the Ranch in Wawawai, the Depression took its toll on Dad.  He couldn't keep the ranch more than a couple of years and so moved into one of his brother's ranches which was just, as they say, a bit up the road to Pullman from where we were.  That’s where we lived for a couple of years and still couldn't make a go of it.  It was another ranch that hadn't been taken care of and so with the prices that we got for what produce we did have, my aunt had to let us go from there.   I was in high school then and went for a year while we were still on the ranch to Spokane to an all-girls school in Spokane, Washington.  By then, my sister was ready for high school the next fall and we had to move anyway and so we went to Coeur d' Alene, Idaho and moved in with my Grandfather Rabideau and my Aunt Jo.  

Dad started working for the WPA (Works Project Administration—in those days F.D.R. started all his programs with initials, it seemed!) for which most of the people were being paid $44.00 a month and Dad—because he had had some carpentry experience—was paid $60.00 a month.   We got extra help which today would be called welfare, which consisted of some food allotments and clothing, etc.  And since it was in Idaho, we did a load of wood about every few months in the winter.  

Times were tough but Dad struggled through it and he and Mother had 8 children and the last two in the family were born in Coeur d'Alene.  A cousin of mine heard about a mill in California and so Dad and he came to California.  We looked like the "Grapes of Wrath", a popular movie out at the time!

The mill was up at White Pines, California, in the Sierras and in a year or so, I met and married Cappy in Angels Camp, which was where the only Church was for miles.  When that mill sold out it was sold to someone who had a mill at Wilseyville, so Dad moved the family over there.  

By this time besides me, Genevieve was married and Bob, and Laurence.  Teresa was married when they lived in Wilseyville.  That mill shut down and so Bob, Laurence and families moved to Torrance, California, and told Dad to come down.  He got work as a carpenter, building tract houses.  He was there in Torrance till his death.  

A hard worker, and not very many vacations for Mom and Dad, except to visit their kids!  When he got the Alzheimer Disease and had to go to the Convalescent home, he lived about a year after that. We, Genevieve and I, made a cake for his birthday which was March 12^th, and we took ice cream and got in touch with others that lived down in the Torrance area and had a great birthday party! 

We got a call on the 19th of March and my sister Teresa said that Dad had passed away.  I always remember the date because of St. Joseph's Feast day.