When You were Young and I was Poor

It was the only tangible, written legacy my mother left my sister and I before she died. Ten pages, single spaced, documenting a lifetime of hard work, unbroken faith in her God, loss, rejection, betrayal and heartbreak. There was also a tremendous (though hidden) pride in her own survival and personal accomplishments.

The title she had scribbled on the top of the first page, almost as an afterthought, was so well crafted, it took me years to understand that it’s brevity spoke volumes.

There was no mention of meeting her second husband, Erwin, or the thirty wonderful years they had together before he passed at age 104 and she a little later at 92. References to my father were few and cryptic and left me nothing tangible to hold on to.

Fortunately, my sister conversed more with my mother in her later years than I did. Unfortunately, my mother’s strong rural German Catholic legacy of never bringing up the past and keeping secrets had rubbed off on me. She never talked about her past and I never asked.

Now with that written admission, confession, revealing document I could finally gleam some of her and my own history during those early years; hers and mine.

Hildegarde only went as far as the sixth grade in the small hamlet of St Martin, Minnesota. She dropped out to take care of the chickens and other livestock. Since she was the youngest it was expected that she would stay home to help out her aging parents and work the farm as her siblings gradually left for greener pastures.

My mother grew up a beautiful and ambitious young woman. The Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis proved irresistible to Hilde when she cautiously toe-stepped away from home for the first time. She was hungry enough to break free of the life-choking reins of farm work by testing herself in the cities. But with just a sixth-grade education, the only work she could get was house-keeping for wealthy clients, odd jobs as a seamstress and cooking. She became a maid on Summit Avenue. Not quite Downton Abby but close.

Despite the occasional homelessness, abject poverty and lack of support from relatives, my mother soldered on, and with the help of one brother, actually built her own house in a tony neighborhood in town.

I never felt poor growing up. Part of that I’d attest to the fact that we lived in a house not an apartment. My classmates in grade school all came from the same lower to middle class background. High School was a little different with more solid middle-class kids but few if any who showed their wealth.

Micky, my best friend, lived across the street. He had three brothers, a mother with issues and a father who worked for the post office. They had no car like us and didn’t take family vacations either. They didn’t feel poor either but at least Micky had a father.

At some point later in life, I came across some photos of my father and myself. Of course, I’d seen those photos before but back then my inexperienced eyes were vacant and mind-closed. This time around I looked at those glimpses of my past with a much different attitude. All of my friends had fathers growing up; some good, some present, some never talked about but there nonetheless.

For me, it’s always been a vacuum in my memory bank that’s never been filled-in. There were no pictures or other mementoes of him ‘ever’ in our house. It was as if he never existed in the first place. By the time I had finally matured and became curious about my lineage those memories of her distant past had become a fog clouding my mother’s mind. About the only thing I could be sure of was that I once had a father and he died at a (relatively) young age. End of story.

There were clues in those pictures…in the clothes, mannerisms, posture, location and a hundred other enounce that spoke volumes about the man that gave me life. By reading into them with the inquisitiveness of a writer and a curiosity of past traits passed down to me, there are answers (unconfirmed, of course) in what those pictures were saying.

So, without being clinically antiseptic, I began to study the clues some unknown photographer presented to me. There were stories in those images that said so much and yet revealed so little. I did my surgical inspection without the benefit of that brief written journaling pasted down from my mother. I was also cognizant of her refusal to recognize that part of her past life. If there was any prejudice, hard feelings or hidden shame in their relationship it had slipped away with her last breath here on earth.

So, who was this man that was a part of my life for less than two years then was gone forever? Who was this Arthur LaComb whose lineage could be traced back to Quebec, Canada but little else beyond that?

I’d been told that my grandmother (on his side) was in our lives for a brief period of time but she never a part of my life afterwards. My sister said she visited us once then disappeared after her son died.

Turns out, I have a step-sister. My mother remarked once back in the eighties, “Oh yes, you have a step-sister who lives in a trailer park in Florida. She came to visit us once.’ I guess I was in the fourth or fifth grade at the time but I don’t remember her visit. We never heard from her again.

The story of my parent’s breakup has been clouded by time and my mother’s selective memory. As the story goes it was a Catholic priest who declared that their marriage wasn’t valid because my father’s first marriage hadn’t been properly annulated in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The priest declared that therefore they couldn’t live together...in sin. My mother, being a devout Catholic, complied. She told me there were no jobs for a short order cook after the war and thus my father had to move away. That was in 1945. When I asked my mother if my father ever wrote or sent money to her over those four years that he was gone, she said no.

The story of his death is also a vapid cloud that kept changing tones and colors as it was retold over the years. It seems that in the winter of 1948 my father was traveling back from the West Coast to be with us for Christmas when he stopped in Missoula, Montana. He died of a massive heart attack the next morning and was buried there. My sister’s been to his grave. Neither my mother nor I ever have.

Growing up, I was vaguely aware of other nuclear families that had a father and mother. But we had our home on Randolph Avenue and that was our abode; minus all the trappings of Ozzie and Harriett and the Cleavers. It never registered to me what a real family might be like.

Martin Noll, my grandfather, died seven years before I was born. That’s really a shame. I’m guessing he would have been one hell of an influence on me had he lived long enough. So, it was left up to his youngest, my mother, to show me the value of hard work and steel hard, forged determination to get ahead. A legacy that has driven me all of my life.

I’ve had a good life. I’m married to a wonderful woman, fifty-three years and counting. I’ve got great kids and wonderful grandchildren. It’s been ‘all good.’ And for a very brief period of time back on Smith Avenue in old Saint Paul it looks like we were a family… a family just like everyone else when I was young and mom was poor.