I knew Punxsutawney was northeast of Pittsburgh, so I was determined to go find the house on my way to Cape Cod. Jimmy verified my Google map advice. I set off about 9:00 on Sunday, June 13th.
My mother’s family has been rooted in Jefferson County since before Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania was incorporated in 1850, since before America was a country. Two of our ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, one of them crossing the Delaware with Washington and spending that winter at Valley Forge. No lofty Mayflower folk, my people–the census shows occupations like “farmer’s assistant”, “cabinet maker”, handyman”, “laborer” going back for centuries. While Mom’s branch left, there are still plenty of Depps and Vasbinders in Punxsutawney.
Mom’s parents, George Depp and Irene Vasbinder, lived at 226 Elk Run Street, the house of my grandfather’s childhood, from 1940 until sometime in the 50s. My great-grandfather, also George Depp, died in 1940, so perhaps he willed them the house.
My grandfather, Pappap, was a railroad brakeman and a commercial farmer. My mom and aunt came home from school to feed the turkeys and strip them of feathers after execution. My grandmother, Mimi, worked as the accountant in a shoe store, a job she loved with a great deal of guilt. Periodically she’d quit, return home and try to raise her daughters in the way she envisioned was her womanly duty, but she could only manage it for a few months before she was miserable. Her mother, Valetta (Grammy Vasbinder), told her to get back to work–she’d take care of the girls.
At some point after their daughters left home, my grandparents sold 226 Elk Run and bought the house of my memories, of all my maternal cousins’ memories, at 128 Perry Street. Rita Smith, the oldest of Aunt Irene’s daughters and senior of the seven grandkids, says that she’s pretty sure they moved in before she was born. The 1950 Census isn’t available to confirm this, although maybe Joan Phillips remembers (more on Joan later).
In any event, 128 Perry Street was a wonderful house. My grandparents bought the next lot over an had an extensive garden–rows and rows of strawberries, green beans, peppers, corn, and cucumbers. The lot was a hill, which made it great for rolling down wildly in summer and sledding in winter. There was a mobile home on the property as well, rented out to various young couples over the year.
We spent hours providing free labor to Pappap picking strawberries–it’s the only crop I remember him letting us help him with, or maybe it’s the only one that interested us!
The house itself was a splendid place. The basement included a second kitchen where Mimi did her canning–her bread and butter pickles, her peppers, green beans and tomato sauce. It had an ancient refrigerator that always contained cherry, grape, and orange soda–and lots of Genesee beer, Pappap’s beer of choice. An old milkshake blender stood in the other corner, on the bar, with a lot of stools. The basement had a shower as well, I think, as a door to the outside.
The main floor had a much more modern kitchen with a little nook where we kids often at our meals, rather in the formal dining room, with Mimi’s big dining room table and sideboard. I remember Grammy Vasbinder making my food “hop” to me like a bunny to convince me to eat vegetables, and she died in 1966 so I was young.
The living room was huge, split by furniture in two to give Mimi a little office in the back fifth. But most of it was centered around the TV and the bookshelves, with two “davenports” on each wall, Mimi and Pappap’s chairs dividing the TV from the office and a big chair and ottoman right by the TV that we kids fought over whenever we were in town. Remember, we lived in Saudi Arabia for ten months of the year, with no TV, so we spent hours making up for lost time. It was at 128 Perry Street that I first learned about movies and movie stars and picking the best old movies to watch. I also had an unholy love of game shows, particularly Match Game, the $10,000 Pyramid, Let’s Make a Deal, and The Price is Right. I vividly remember my irritation in 1973 and 1974 when the Watergate hearings pre-empted all my afternoon shows.
But I was a reader, and lining each side of the TV were scores and scores of first edition pulp. Zane Gray, the Louis L’amour of my grandfather’s era, was well-represented. Cherry Ames, probably from my aunt’s library, as she became a nurse. I still have one of those books that I brought home one summer, a first edition, Cherry Ames, Army Nurse.
On or around 1977, when we returned from Saudi Arabia, Pappap sold the house and moved him and Mimi to Dade City, Florida. I wish I knew why. Maybe it was the winters. I saw them many times in Dade City, both before and after Pappap’s shockingly immediate decline with Alzheimers. But I still miss their house.
The ride was beautiful, and I am really annoyed that I don’t have my pictures on the trip. Originally, Punxsy was a Native American campsite, halfway between the Allegheny and Susquehanna Rivers. Mahoning “Creek” runs through the town all the way and beyond to the Allegheny river. I remember that we always crossed a bridge on the last mile to their house, turned left and then left again, and went up the hill.
Google was sending me on right turns, which worried me. Was I in the wrong place? “Turn right on Wehrle Way”, the lady intoned, and so I did, even as I was increasingly uncertain.
“Sharp left on Perry”.
Wait–I was here? On Perry? Nothing looked familiar. How could I be turning left if it was a different street? But my spatial sense is non-existent, so I couldn’t trust that. I stopped at the corner of Wehrle and Perry to think. The left would take me down Perry, when I’d always gone up the hill. So this was the opposite direction. There was nothing but lawn at the intersection. So if I visualized coming from the opposite direction then the house would be on the right, followed by the empty lot that Pappap owned, followed by…..was there another house to the right? after theirs? I closed my eyes, remembering running or sledding down the hill of the big yard…no, there was no house to the right of 128. So the empty lot was the last on the street…wait. So this lawn I was looking at at the intersection must be the empty lot which means….I turned around slightly and looked at the back of the big house.
There it was. I made the left on Perry, drove down and parked across the street from the first house on the left.
Ironic that my first real look is of the front door, which we almost never used. The long driveway to the right of the house took you up to a large open parking area.
I’m delighted that it didn’t look smaller. This is the house of my memories. The large window on the bottom right is the dining room, the one on the left was just to the right of Mimi’s desk. I remember sitting on the other side of that huge room looking out the window onto snowy drifts when we came back for Christmas. Upstairs, the large window was for the master bedroom, one of three upstairs rooms and the bath opposite.
After getting a picture of the driveway, I sent these three pictures to Mike and Maggie.
This is how everyone came into the house: up the driveway, park, and go in through the kitchen door on the wall adjacent to the two car garage. The distant white fence is where part of the garden was–it kept going to the left. The mobile home was always on the right, behind where the white fence is now.
Mike texted back, “When Pappap built a retaining wall, it stayed built.” I don’t know if Pappap built it, although it wouldn’t surprise me. But the stone walls have been there for seventy years or more.
I had already considered and rejected the idea of knocking. Maybe the owner would welcome me, maybe think I was weird. It didn’t matter. I’d found the house and it lived up to the memories.
Driving off, it occurred to me that Mimi and Pappap were buried somewhere nearby, so I texted Mom and Gerry. I got a cryptic text back: “Joan Phillips” and a number. While I was worried about walking up to a house unannounced, calling didn’t seem like such a terrible intrusion.
“Hi, my name is Michele Kerr, and I know this sounds odd, but I am George and Irene Depp’s granddaughter, Rita Depp’s daughter. I was given this number because I wanted to find out where my grandparents are buried.”
“Oh, yes. Calvary Cemetery. Who are you again?” As I explained, she said, “Oh! why don’t you stop on at my place. I have to leave at 1:15, but we can chat. I”m right across the street from the church.”
Joan gave me Joyce’s number and description of how to find Mimi and Pappap’s grave. Then I remembered Aunt Irene–or cousin Irene–is buried here as well, and she gave instructions for that. I have that paper somewhere, I hope, because I entered Joyce’s number in my phone notes but NOT in Contacts, which means it’s lost, too._
We had a great talk. It took me a while to figure out how we were related, because her “Aunt Irene” was my “Mimi” (grandmother) while my “Aunt Irene” was her cousin. Once we realized that “Aunt Irene” was a phrase to use sparingly, it got a bit easier. Joan Phillips is my mother’s maternal cousin. Born in Punxsutawney, she and her husband, Bill Phillips lived most of their married life in Michigan, then returned to their home for retirement. Joan volunteers in the community and is clearly very active.
“So your parents are on Mimi–my grandmother’s side, right?”
“Yes, Jack and Leona are my parents. Jack and Aunt Irene were brother and sister.”
“Wait. Jack and Leona? I know them. They were Joyce’s grandparents!” In the mid-70s, I had the good fortune to find a second cousin, Joyce, whose grandparents were related to Mimi in some way, because their last name was Vasbinder. She also lived out of state, and our visits often overlapped. We’d just hang out and talk like teens, which was always a rare treat for both of us to escape our sibs.
“So how are you related to Joyce? You know who I’m talking about, right?”
She smiled. “I sure do. She’s my daughter.”
I literally smacked my head, but she laughed. “Joyce often came to Mom and Dad’s on her own, or we’d fly her out and then return. I remember you, but mainly because you look like your mother. If we’d met back then, it would have been pretty quick.”
“That explains why I remember Leona and Jack, but not you. So you’re Joyce’s mom! She came to celebrate during my mom’s 80th, but I was busy working and trekking nieces and nephews around. We talked on the phone at that time, I remember. So how is Joyce and her…brother, right? She had a brother?” Joan and Bill both caught me up on her kids, who live out in the wilds of upstate Michigan.
“Oh, man, I was going to go to Michigan on this trip but I just couldn’t work it in.”
“You’ll love it,” Bill chimed in and described the gorgeous island where Joyce lived. “It’s real remote. But beautiful.”
We spent half an hour talking about family–about her parents, Jack and Leona, and that Grammy Vasbinder had Alzheimers in her last years, but was such a joyous soul. She’d wander around the neighborhood in her undies, totally unconscious of herself, and chat happily with the officers who took her back home. She often visited Mimi and Pappap during that time, which means all my memories of her feeding me must have been when she was ill.
I took pictures of Joan by herself, and Joan and Bill together, and a selfie of the three of us and of all the pictures I’ve lost, these missing pictures pain me the most. Joan went off to her appointment and I went off to Calvary Cemetery.
After two hours wandering through the tombstones, I was drenched in sweat although the hike was good exercise. But I never could find Aunt Irene’s grave even though I was definitely in the right general area from Joan and cousin Betty Jo’s descriptions. But then I walked through the same rows three times before I found Mimi and Pappap’s. Cemeteries are complicated.
Before I left, I formed a memory of them all–sitting at Mimi’s dining room table eating dinner, picking wild blackberries, going up to the stream to drink icy cold mountain water, picking strawberries in the garden with Pappap telling me what to look for in a good berry, sitting in the basement drinking milkshakes or rootbeer floats.
My life has up til now seemed somewhat split between before and after Saudi Arabia. We travelled so much less after returning. Until Facebook, I never saw anyone I knew from Jedda again. My grandparents moved to Florida that same year, so the loss of 128 Perry Street felt very similar. It was lovely connecting with this part of my life, if only briefly.
Pappap had a sudden onset of Alzheimers in the early 80s, and died on Valentine’s Day, 1989. Mimi nursed him, but Aunt Irene and her second husband moved down to Florida to help, and two of her daughters (Georgianne and Rita) moved down shortly afterwards. Then Aunt Irene’s emphysema took an unexpected catastrophic turn, and Mimi nursed her, with Georgianne’s and Rita’s help, until Aunt Irene died in 1996, almost exactly seven years after her father.
Mimi had already broken her hip once, and recovered. Then, after Aunt Irene died, she fell badly and wasn’t found for some time. We were sure she’d go quickly after that, but instead, she was up and about on a walker within a few weeks, and then back home in six. A year or so later, she started coming out to California for several months at a time, living with Mom and Gerry, and then came out permanently.
For once, we Kerrs were the at home grandkids! Whenever Mom and Gerry went on vacation, we’d “granny sit”. Mimi was fine by herself, but they wanted us to check in on her. I originally planned to make fancy dinners, but listened to her responses carefully and remembered that my mom was a bit of a health freak. So I brought over In n Out burgers, fries, and milkshakes with movies. She loved it.
Mimi spent her time reading, embroidering, and enjoying her California family. Her last months with congestive heart failure weren’t painful; she faded out over time. In August 2002, I brought Kerry home from summer camp so we could spend some time saying good bye. She was at my mother’s kitchen table, eating blackberry icecream. Mimi died peacefully a few days later, just a month short of her 97th birthday.
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I was standing in front of 128 Perry Street, right by the driveway, wondering how to say goodbye. It seemed odd just to leave, after having taken such a trip to get there. I wanted some kind of talisman, a sign that marked the occasion. Just then, a pickup truck pulled into the driveway, a young man in his twenties at the wheel. He stopped when he saw me.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi–I’m sorry if this is a weird question, but do you live here?”
“No. My grandparents do.”
I smiled. “Mine did, too. It’s a great house, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I love it.”
As talismans go, I’ll take it.
Hypersensitive 