Remembering Harriet McClung Eckles, by her granddaughter Nancy Gilbert

 My two grandmothers could not have been more different. Rosa, my mother’s mother lived a privileged life in New Orleans. Planning dinner meant going to the kitchen and giving orders to the cook.

But my father’s mother, Hattie, convinced that idle hands were the devil’s play

ground, grew her own vegetables and fruits, cooking, canning and preserving them. We ate heartily on those annual visits to Lawton, Oklahoma. Braised rabbit with milk gravy was the Sunday special: the rabbits, to my horror and fascination, were raised in pens in the garage.

Bunnies?!!!

Grandma Eckles was one of a large family that headed west from a small community in West Virginia; their father worried about the gene pool being too small. A sister, Aunt Pearl, ran a boarding house and was known as the fun-loving one. Fun, I suspect, played a rather small role in my grandmother’s life. Her school-teacher husband was more than fifteen years older. She always referred to him as Mister Eckles. A devout Baptist, Grandma was serious, stern, and not to be trifled with. “Behave yourselves,” my parents hissed at my sister and me when we helplessly succumbed to the giggles at dinner. Even my grown-up father carried breath mints so his mother wouldn’t suspect he’d had a drink with his cousins. At 18 he escaped to the freedom of Oklahoma State University – where he played cards and went to dances!

My grandparents’ modest two-story house had once been rural, but the town grew up around it. Gradually they sold off the surrounding lots (my grandfather’s dream of striking oil -- never realized) and the house, a kind of time capsule, stood amid a sea of suburban ranch houses. In front, stands of larkspur bloomed among apricot trees and trumpet vines draped the porch. Behind the house a huge garden went straight through to the street behind.

Best of all was the storm cellar. Just a few yards from the back door, it was a raised, grassy mound with an angled door built into the side. Beneath the door, steps lead down to a small, damp room smelling of earth where rows of sturdy Mason jars testified to the virtues of foresight and frugality. It was cool, dark, spider-webbed and scary. Dashing down the stairs, flashlight in hand, to seek and find a jar of strawberry preserves was a thrilling adventure.  Tornados never hit during our visits, but I loved my father’s tales of narrow escapes  – an Oklahoma tradition.

The tiny living room was dim and suffocating. A glass-fronted bookcase housing Grandpa’s set of the Harvard Classics loomed, out of bounds for children. Every chair had tatted antimacassars and every table displayed Grandma’s embroidery and crocheting.  Nothing escaped her relentless needlework...doilies, tea towels, hand towels, napkins and pot-holders --- all embellished. Every bed had patchwork quilts. Some were crushingly heavy -- made of men’s suiting swatches.

There was a real ice-box. I remember Papa touting the benefits of electric refrigerators with no success. Ditto for modern stoves. Grandma’s iron must have weighed five pounds -- but it did plug in.

On those sultry Oklahoma Sundays we all went to church. I was grateful for the cardboard fans stashed in the pew ahead --- cheerfully imprinted with the name of a local funeral parlor. Every year the minister asked us to stand and be introduced. I felt embarrassed – but important!  Behind the pulpit a painted scene of the River Galilee looked down on a sunken tub where total immersion was practiced.

I never got to see that.

Now, I think of my grandmother when I find myself complaining about not having enough time.  She never wasted a scrap or a minute. She was surrounded by trophies of time well-spent: like this quilt. I look at it and marvel...every patch has a story, every tiny stitch was done by hand. Her hand!  She, and it, are part of a past I will always remember and cherish.

They don’t make them like that anymore!

A richly evocative memoir of Harry Eckles by his son Robert

Papa

My earliest memories of Papa concern his relationship to his job.  Katherine would begin dripping his strong French coffee first thing in the morning.  Papa took a leisurely, hot, tub bath every morning.  I  had access to the bathroom and vividly remember Papa lying in the tub.  Papa was white skinned, hairy, and had a red cherry mole on his chest  Next, he daily shaved off his heavy, black whiskers.  I watched him prepare the shaving cream, apply it with brush.  I got to play at shaving.  He used Lilac Vegetalis as an after-shave.  I could recognize the fragrance anywhere.  Katerine had breakfast on the table like clockwork.  It included at least bacon, eggs, toast, jelly, and coffee, if not grits, potato cakes, or sausage.  Papa sat down to the table dressed for work in his white shirt, tie, and suit trousers with highly shine shoes.  Papa liked to say, “You may not have a million dollars, but you can sure look like you do.”

Occasionally, I got to go to work with Papa.  This included a walk of five or six blocks to the St. Charles streetcar line.  The fare was seven cents.  It was likely we’d stand.  Papa prided himself in being able to hang on to a strap with one hand and read a newspaper folded in quarter sections in the other.  The streetcar was noisy and lurched from side to side.  The conductor clanged a bell, to clear traffic.  He would call out major intersections:  “Napoleon (Ave).”,  “Jackson”, “Louisiana”, “Melpomene”, “Lee Circle”.  We got off in the middle of downtown at the Carondelet Bldg.  The Godchaux Sugar Company was on the eighth floor.  “Gotcha boy with you, huh, Harry”, said Willy, the custodian, a light Negro, with straight, reddish hair.  Papa generously introduced me to all his co-workers.  I still remember names like Mallory, Knobloch, Gates, Rheiman, but have forgotten many.  I even got to meet the boss, Mr. Charles (Godchaux), my uncle.   Papa toured me around the floor, showing me the safe, the key-punch machine and cards, and lofty view from the windows over New Orleans and the nearby Mississippi River.  For the most part, I had a desk, pencils, paper, and entertained myself drawing or making paper clip chains, until it was time for lunch.  Papa ate lunch every day at Tranchina’s.  We walked past a long crowded, noisy bar, before coming to the sandwich counter. A huge pink roast beef was being carved quickly and nonchalantly by a man in a stained white apron.  We ordered the rare roast beef au jus on a French bread “poor boy” sandwich.  Papa had draft beer and I had Barq’s root beer. I never remember a better lunch.  When Papa got home, he would fix mixed drinks to have with Katherine, to close the work day.  This is what Papa did for over thirty years.

All three of us listened to the radio in the evenings. No TV yet. “Amos and Andy” “Jack Benny”, Fibber Mcgee and Molly” stand out, along with catchy product commercials as LSMFT, “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. At first, Papa smoked cigarettes, then a pipe, and then quit (to save money for film). He could blow smoke rings. 

Papa liked to read the funnies (comics) and read them to me on his lap.  My favorites were “Red Ryder”, “Prince Valiant”, and the “Katz and Jammer Kids”. Papa says he learned to read, by reading the comics.  He enjoyed books as a child: nature books by Ernest Thompson Seton, novels such as Peck’s Bad Boy.

As an adult, He read the novels by Thomas Wolf, Norman Mailer, and non-fiction, notably, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, A Thousand and One Nights, and magazines such as Popular Photography, Popular Mechanics, and the National Geographic. He would refer to the Encyclopedia  Britannica when questions arose. An exasperated family would taunt “Get the book, get the book”.

I never called Papa Harry, but children addressing their parents by first names was considered modern, and Papa and Adele encouraged it with my sisters. But it never caught on.  As Nancy reportedly said, “Other children had Mama’s and Papa’s, not Harrys and Adeles.  Eventually, I began calling my step-mother, Katherine, Mother.

I’m not sure what Papa’s expectations were for me, but I could tell he was interested in how I turned out.  He once said something like, “I raising you so that you can get along with others (be approved by).”   Papa made significant contributions to my growing up; he ushered me through informal rites of passage i.e. my first haircut at Mr. Hubble barbershop on Magazine St., my first 2-wheel bicycle at age twelve, a 26” Schwinn, my 1^st shot with his Benjamin pump air pistol, my 1^st BB gun, Whamo-sling shot.  I think Papa discovered my 1^st pubic hair before I did.  Papa took me places with him like the Audubon Park swimming pool, zoo, the batture behind the levee to visit with the squatters and watch the river rise, to Goose Bayou to collect irises, and to the sacred halls of  the Whitney bank downtown, to meet personnel he regularly met in the course of his job at Godchaux Sugars.  Presumably, these were people who might be prospective employers for me.  I think Papa wanted me to have job, family, and happiness.  Eventually, I’ve become reconciled to these normal, but solid expectations, but not without kicking and screaming.

Written by Robert Eckles, in response from a few questions I had for him.

My step-mother may have had her faults, but “cruel” and “evil” weren’t them.  As to why the marriage broke up, as you say, I was too young to know.  I am reminded of Rodney Dangerfield saying jokingly, “ I was so ugly when I was born that the doctor slapped my mother.”   No, seriously, I was surely  affected by the break up, which no doubt started before my birth.   It was, I think, economic.   Papa, Ma, and Nancy left New York after the crash of ’29, jobless, and Papa hoped to continue his education at LSU in Baton Rouge (Susie’s birthplace).    However, he ran out of money, and had to return to New Orleans.   This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Ma left N.O. because she wanted to get away from her family, and getting away from being a “good Jewish wife”.  To be back, and dependent on her family economically was too much.  She is to have said to her father, “I don’t want your damn money”, and threw the bills in his face.   Hearing from you siblings it seems that her relation with bill collectors attests to her disdain for money.  Ma fell in love with Bradley, ironically a friend of Papa’s, who taught him about photography, which was Papa’s true passion.  However, the 30’s were tough times; Papa worked for Godchaux Sugars the next 35 years.  After Terry’s birth, Ma divorced (back then, a scandal) and left with Bradley for Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Papa lived in the French Quarter, I believe, near work, for about a year.  To complicate the story, he then courted, or was courted by, Katherine Sharpe, who was a practical nurse to the Godchaux family, and nursed Susie with malta fever (?) before Papa and Ma got divorced.  When Papa married Katherine, I was 3 or 4.  Ma and Papa decided that I would be raised by Papa and Katherine in New Orleans, and so I was.  They didn’t ask me, but, hey, the food and climate were good.

Written by Robert Eckles