Memories of My Mother

By Andrew Adams McCornack

In August of 1953 I was driving from Minnesota to Florida and fortunately was not on a tight schedule; so, I decided to go through Brookline, Missouri, the birthplace of my Mother.  In our younger days Mother had told us of many things that occurred in "Old Missou" before she and her brothers and sisters went to Oregon.  Brookline was not an impressive place.  Obviously no rain had fallen for some time, and compared with the green fields of Iowa, that I had just driven through, the country looked pretty forsaken.  I understood then why Uncle Claude, the older brother, had decided to go west when he was old enough.

I stopped at a small grocery store and asked the woman at the counter if she knew any old timers that might have known the Adams family that used to live in Brookline.  She nodded toward an elderly woman wearing a sunbonnet.  After introducing myself, I asked the lady if she remembered any of the Adams family that used to live in Brookline.  She replied, "I sure do!  They were a headstrong lot."  That was the extent of our conversation.

The lady was right; they were a headstrong lot.  Mother was the youngest of six children.  The family included:  Lula, Claude, Clara, Waldo, Mamie, and Bernice, my mother.  After their father died, seventeen-year-old Claude went to Oregon City, Oregon, where he got a job in a paper mill.  As soon as he could, he had the others come to be with him as they didn't get along with their stepmother.  Less hardy souls would have fallen by the wayside, but they all worked when they could and somehow managed to eke out a living.  Aunt Lula told me she always wore a white uniform when she did housework for other people so it would appear that she was nursing.

They all managed to get an education except Aunt Lula who held the family together.  Claude and Waldo became dentists, Mamie and Mother, teachers, and Clara attended business school.  The ones that were working chipped in and helped those that were attending school.  Somehow they made it.

On completion of normal school at Monmouth, Oregon, Mother got a job teaching at Saginaw, a rural community south of Eugene.  I never heard how she happened to meet Dad.  Following their marriage on February 6, 1907, in Portland, they lived near Dundee (south of Portland) where Dad managed a prune ranch for his uncle, Eugene McCornack.  After about three years at this job, Dad and Mother moved with their first child, Rodwin, to Eugene, where Dad went into business with his cousin Walter in a sporting goods store.  This venture was not successful.  Dad then became a bank teller.  Janet was born in 1911, I came along three years later, followed by Terry (Waldo Terrence) in 1918.  Dad was drafted into the army during World War I, and sometime after his return we moved to the country, west of Eugene, where Dad's mother lived.  Although I was only five at the time, I can remember that Dad and I hiked the distance of about two miles between our old home in Eugene and our new home, an apple storage house which had been made into a hired man's house.  This was in 1919.  We lived in this location, with many additions to the house (it faced three different directions in the time we lived there), until 1937 when the house burned.  We then moved to Grandmother's house which was a short distance from our old home through an oak grove (Grandmother had passed away in 1929).

Mother's life on the farm was busy, especially during the summer and fall.  She canned peaches, plums, pears, strawberries, blackberries, and beans.  We always had lots of canned beans.  All of our jellies were homemade.  Applesauce, in season, was standard fare.  Many of the apples were windfalls from the neighbor's orchard near our house.  One year these neighbors made the mistake of planting field corn near our house.  It wasn't the tenderest corn, but we ate it with pleasure.

About the only thing that Mother and Dad disagreed on that I can remember, was the placement of a door in our house.  Because the house was of frame construction, doors could be moved fairly easily.  Dad refused to put a door where Mother wanted one; so, when Dad had to be away for a few days, she hired a neighbor to put the door where she wanted it.  I never heard what Dad had to say when he returned.

Mother was born November 27, 1883, and she was proud that her birthday frequently fell on Thanksgiving Day.  She never forgave President Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he set the date of Thanksgiving one week ahead to stimulate business.

The name Bernice can be pronounced two ways.  Mother accented the first syllable, so it was Bernice.  People who insisted on accenting the second syllable just didn't measure up in Mother's world.

In later years we would play a game with Mother.  Sometimes after supper we would get her started telling about the "cute" things one of us did as a youngster, then lead her through the other three children.  Before she was through, she would have said that each of us was the cutest.  That is a mother's prerogative.

One evening, when I was in my late teens, I came home about 10:30 P.M. following a storm that had knocked out all electrical power in the Eugene area.  When I switched off the car lights, I noted a faint flicker of light from the house.  I found Mother and Dad sitting in front of the fireplace enjoying themselves without the modern convenience of electricity.

The following little stories came to mind when thinking of Mother:  After we moved into the house in the country the most immediate need was room for the six of us to sleep.  Dad made a building out of fir poles and unplaned lumber, which was attached to the east end of the house.  This building was dubbed "The Sleepy House."  Rod, Janet, and I slept in a three tier bunk bed made with a frame of fir poles.  Rod had the top bunk, Janet slept in the middle, and I had the bottom bunk.  No provision had been made for heating this room; so, on cold nights Mother wrapped warm flat irons with newspaper which she put in each bed as foot warmers.  As other additions were built onto the house, the Sleepy House was moved to another location and became a woodshed, shop and catch-all building.

Mother didn't throw anything away that might have some potential value in the future.  I attribute this trait to having to "make do" as a girl.  For example, we had many bags of rags which she planned to make into quilts.  Mother liked to move furniture.  The pieces of furniture I hated to move most were two double chests of drawers that could be placed on top of each other with very little room left to clear the ceiling.  Terry was always involved in this operation.  A broom handle was used to do all of the measuring to see if things would fit.

On especially rainy days we were given umbrellas to carry to school.  The instructions were clear, but the umbrellas always ended up by a big oak tree just out of sight of the house.  There was "no way" we would carry an umbrella to school.  We didn't always remember to pick them up on our way home either.

We ate at a round table supported by a center pedestal with four protruding braces on the floor.  Janet always insisted that one of these braces must be in front of her so she could use it to put her feet on.  Dad kept a stick leaning on the wall behind where he sat, which he used to "invoke the censorship" when the conversation got out of hand.  I sat between Dad and Mother because I had a tendency to fight with Rod and Janet.  Rod and Janet sat on either side of Terry to keep them apart.  At the time of this happening, Terry sat in a high chair.  When Rod would come to the table, he would playfully chew Terry's ears.  Naturally Terry complained, but Rod did not stop, even when told to by our parents.  Fortunately, someone hit on the idea of putting lard and pepper on Terry's ears.  As I remember, it took about two "treatments" to break Rod of this habit.

Mother had purchased an upright piano, hoping that one of her children would learn to play it, but with no avail.  One evening when Janet had a date, the young man was waiting in the living room.  Mother came into the room and, after exchanging pleasantries, said to him, "Do you play the piano?"  Following a negative answer she said, "I've always wanted someone in the family who can play the piano."  When Mother had finished, the young man called toward Janet's room.  "You might as well quit getting ready, Janet.  I can't play a piano."  Janet didn't marry this young man but it wasn't because he couldn't play the piano.

One of Mother's prize possessions, that must have dated from the horse and buggy days, was a very impressive, big, black bear-skin muff.  It was much favored when we went riding in our unheated touring car with snap-on sides with isinglass windows to keep out the inclement weather.  With the advent of cars with windows, hard times fell on this muff.  It was stored in a shed where bumble bees used it for a nest and I suspect moths had found it too; so it survived the burning of our house.  When Terry and I were cleaning up the mess following the fire, Terry noticed the muff hanging in the shed and suggested we burn it, and I concurred.  About twenty minutes later, after the muff had "disappeared," Mother came from Grandmother's house where we were living, to see how we were doing.  It didn't take her five minutes to notice that the muff was gone.  She immediately accused us of burning it.  We knew nothing about its disappearance—but she knew better.

Mother liked to tell the story about a telephone call she got from a country-squire type that lived over a mile from our place.  The voice on the phone said, "Mrs. McCornack, your dog is chasing pheasants in my field."  Mother immediately replied, "That's interesting; our dog has been dead for three weeks."  This was one of the few times in her married life that they didn't have one or more dogs.  Mother spent considerable time making dog food out of left-over fat, scraps, and cow feed meal.

Mother passed away on October 20, 1946, at the age of sixty-two.  The evening before, she suffered a stroke while at the Four Oaks Grange.  Mother and Dad had a good life together and raised four healthy children.  Their marriage lasted through sickness, war, and the great depression.  Being a little headstrong can be a help.