Private family reminiscence. Not for public distribution.
Grandma Dee was such a regular person, but she had a strange family. Her father was a ladies’ tailor for Marshall Fields. Grandma’s mother was his second wife. I don’t know what happened to the first, but there were two half-sisters.
Grandma’s oldest brother, John, was an alcoholic artist. He was married to Tess, and when Grandma and I visited, we always had Italian sausage sandwiches. Because I liked them, Tess let him eat them. By the way, they were Norwegian.
Next was Grandma, and she always told me she was the prettiest one, and all the sisters asked her to meet men for them.
Third and fourth were Christ and Mattie, twins. Christ was a real bum and used to come down the aisle to borrow money from Grandma. He was married several times. Mattie was very nice, but a hypochondriac.
Next was Helen. She died in an old people’s home, refusing to wear clothes. We went to visit her in Southampton, Long Island. She had black hair to her waist, the figure of a 16-year-old, and the face of her age, 65.
Her husband, Oscar, invented some important part of the jet plane navigation system, and they had a lot of money. But she boarded musicians anyway. She had two children: Jack, a pilot in World War II, and Babe Corrine (Karen).
Next came Corrine (Karen), the star of stage—a singer. Wonder where I get it from, name and everything. She was married five times: a French lieutenant during World War I, a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, and Steele, who was a fundraiser for colleges. I don’t know the others. Steele paid her alimony for 48 years.
Last was Esther, my mother’s favorite, who died of TB rather young. It seems all were crazy in some way except Martha, our relative.
— Karen Lawler