Charles H. Grinkmeyer

Charles H Grinkmeyer
The Life of Charles H. Grinkmeyer
We move to Champaign from Cincinnati, Ohio in the winter of 1952, I was seven years old. It was Chuck and Kay, our mom and dad, and Butch, Rooney and me. I think we were a typical family of the time. We were three Catholic boys being raised by an aspiring father and mother hopeful of making a better life for their family.
Mom had not been feeling well for the last several months she was sleeping a lot and complaining of back pain which was not like Mom. There was some question as to whether or not she would be able to take care of Rooney, our baby brother, by herself. She had had her mother, Grandma Talon, to help her while we lived in Cincinnati. It had been a tough decision and there had even been some long and hard discussions among the adults about moving and leaving Rooney. Grandma Tallon didn’t want us to go but she couldn’t keep Rooney because she had to work at the hospital and she’d be by herself. Aunt Ruthie, Dad’s youngest sister, was still living at home and she could help Grandma Grinkmeyer with Rooney if it was necessary.Mom’s doctor, Dr. DeCourcy., who had delivered all three of us boys, assured Mom and Dad that the lump in her breast was nothing more then a swollen milk gland, “After all Kay, you have had three healthy boys, the lump will go away in several months and you’ll be fine.”
Mom wasn’t a frail woman; she came from strong Scottish and German stock and had been an active young woman. She loved to roller-skate before she got married and had continued to skate as often as she could after she had us boys. She was about five foot five and weighed about 120 pounds, had striking auburn hair and wore glasses to read. She was a pretty 27 year old woman and the proud mother of three boys.
Chuck and Kay saw the move to Champaign as Dad’s opportunity to advance our family. We could not live in Grandma Talon’s house forever; there were now five of us. It was decided that we would all go to Champaign, together. It would be hard leaving our friends on Church Street, but Butch and I had each other and Rooney was just one so he hadn’t made any friends yet. The center of his world was Mom.
The movers came and took our furniture two days before we were to leave; Mom put blankets and pillows on the floor where their bed used to be and all five of us slept there together on the floor for those two nights. We rolled around and laughed, we were all together. Butch and I rode on Dads back like a cowboy on a horse; I wished Mom had not packed my Gene Autrey toy gun.
Jerry was born on December 13, 1950, and came home from the hospital just before Christmas. Uncle Eddie had played Santa on Church Street that year; I hadn’t realized it was Uncle Eddie at the time. Gene Autrey had a number one hit called Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa had brought us a copy that we could play on the crank-up RCA Victor record player. We all decided that baby Jerry’s nose was so red that he looked like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, thus he became known as Rooney. I don’t remember ever having so much fun as those nights on the bedroom floor.
Although Butch and I were leaving all our friends in the Saint Bernard neighborhood we were looking forward to the adventure in Champaign. After all we would be together as a family. Like most families the center of our life was our Mom. She was always there for us; her love for us three boys was abundant and readily accessible. I didn’t notice that she wasn’t feeling well I’m sure that she wanted it that way.
Chuck had taken this new job with Williamson Heating and Cooling and his new territory was in Champaign. Before Williamson Heating and Cooling, Dad had done a lot of things after he got out of the Navy. He had been a blackjack dealer over at the casino in Covington, Kentucky. He worked at the slaughterhouse owned by one of his uncle’s in downtown Cincinnati; he even was a press operator at the Beau Brummel Tie Company. Looking back at our life in Cincinnati, we were poor; I didn’t know we were poor at the time.
This move to Champaign was a real opportunity for Dad, and us, and a real tough decision considering Mom’s condition.
Butch was conceived just before Chuck went off to the Coast Guard in 1942. Chuck had met Kay at a roller rink and they had dated for several months before he got his draft notice from the Army. His buddies had told him how bad the Army was so he attempted to get into the Navy or Air Force but they couldn’t take him because he had already been ordered to report to the Army. He stumbled onto the Coast Guard recruiting office at the courthouse. The Coast Guard had not yet become a part of the Navy and was not bound under the same recruitment rules as the Air Force and Navy. He joined the Coast Guard on Friday, proposed to Kay on Saturday night and got Grandma Talons permission on Sunday. They were married the following Sunday and he was on a train to Oakland, California on Wednesday. Butch was born nine months later. Chuck moved up the ranks fast and was a sergeant teaching signal school in Oakland when he sent for Kay and Butch to join him in Oakland. He had rented one room apartment for $17.50 per month. Chuck ran the school in the afternoon, worked as a long-shore-man on the docks two to three nights a week and slept in the morning. Kay passed her time with Butch and the other military wife’s in the area. She grew to like the California weather but missed her mother and didn’t particularly like spend so much time alone while Chuck was working. Then Chuck got assigned to a ship and would be spending the next six months to a year on board. Six months after getting off that train Kay got back on the train for Cincinnati with Butch in her arms and me in her belly.
I was born on September 5, 1944 at 4:15 p.m. in Cincinnati, Ohio delivered by Doctor Giles DeCourcy. Mrs. Katherine Grinkmeyer had entered Good Samaritan Hospital on September 4, and left on September 15 with her second son. I had blond hair and blue eyes, weighed eight pounds and ten ounces, and was twenty-one inches long. Her hospital bill for my birth was $94.18. Her church had paid $74.00 and she owed $20.18. Fourteen years later I would learn that the Catholic Church had some expectations tied to that $74.00.
Mom took me to her mothers home on 514 Church Street in Saint Bernard, Ohio. Dad was on a ship and didn’t know I was born until September 24. I only have good memories of life in Saint Bernard. We didn’t have much but we lived in a working class neighborhood in Grandma Talon’s house with few expenses but fewer needs that I was aware of. Grandma Talon had a two story white clap-board house with a big fenced in back yard full of flowers, a stone fish pond and an arboretum. There was a porch across the full front of the house with a swing on one end. Inside the front door was a large foyer with steps on the right leading to three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, there was even a small kitchen in one of the bedrooms.
Down stairs the living room and dinning room were large with hardwood floors covered with area rugs. The dinning room had a large two pane window that looked directly into the neighbor’s house, where Ann and Mary lived. The neighbor’s house was no more then six feet away from the left side of our house. There was a good sized kitchen with a dinning table, a full bath and an enclosed back porch. Mom and Dad slept in what used to be the dining room, and Butch and I slept on what was the back porch on two steel cots. When Rooney came he slept in a crib next to Mom and Dads bed. I remember we didn’t have a refrigerator; we had an icebox on the back porch that the iceman used to fill twice a week with a big block of ice. On the right side of the house were steps into the cellar. Grandma kept her electric clothes washer down there and would hang our wash out on a line in the side yard.
Our world was our neighborhood, our extended family in Cincinnati and the Catholic Church. We were Catholics, being a Catholic was an important part of our life. We went to church every Sunday and prayed to Jesus and Mary the Virgin Mother. Butch and I were confirmed and our family followed all the Catholic teachings. We went to confession once a week, took communion every Sunday and never eat meat on Friday. Being a Catholic made me feel a part of something.One half of my education came from Mom and Dad and the other half came from the Catholic Church; meaning the nuns.
Both Mom and Dad’s families were all in Cincinnati. Chuck was one of five kids, the oldest son, and no one had ever left Cincinnati. Kay was one of two children and was very close to her mother. Grandma Talon was by herself. Kay her daughter, and Kay’s family were all she had left. Her husband had died some years ago and her son Jimmy had died in an automobile accident in 1940
Many of the weekends were spent with the Grinkmeyer family; aunts, uncles and cousins would go to a park somewhere, everybody would bring food, and we’d have a wonderful day together. Uncle Norb and Dad played on a baseball team; we’d all watch the game then have a cookout with our cousins. Other times Mom and Dad and Butch, and me would camp out in a tent along the river bank; we’d catch catfish and cook them over an open fire. Dad drove a Willies Jeep; it had a canvas roof and plastic side windows. It would go anywhere but was awful cold in the winter.
Grandpa Grinkmeyer was a true German, both his parents came to the U.S. when they were in their teens, and he had grown up following German ways more then American ways. I didn’t get to know him all that well. I do remember that he liked his beer. Sometimes he would take me with him down to the corner tavern and he would buy a bucket of beer. He’d let me carry the empty steel bucket down to the tavern where he would have the bartender fill it with beer, I’d guess it held about a half gallon of beer. He’d carry it back home because I might spill some and that would not be exceptable. Back on the porch, he would drink his beer from the bucket, Grandma might bring out a small glass and have a “swig”, but he would consume most of it. When he was done he would slide the bucket over to Butch and me and we would be allowed to “slurp” what was left. This never happened when Mom was around.He died at age 57, while we still lived in Saint Bernard with Grandma Talon, I suspect it had something to do with those cigarettes that he rolled with one hand and smoked all day.
Grandma Grinkmeyer was the center of the family until she died at eighty three years old. Her children were devoted to her and she was devoted to them, and she loved her grand children to death. In my eyes she never changed. She was a buxom German woman; when I was young she would hug me and I would be consumed by her breasts, she’d hold me so tight I’d have to fight for breath, while she held me there she take my feet off the ground and just shake me. I loved it.Moving to Champaign was a big change in many ways. Number 1 Patricia Court was the first house of four along one side of what used to be a farmer’s path to his hay barn. The hay barn still stood at the end of Patricia Court and would provide Butch and me with a lot of adventures over the coming year. All four houses looked exactly the same, only trimmed in a different color. Ours was number 1 Patricia Court, the first house off the paved road, trimmed in red. It was a three-bedroom, one-bath, living room and kitchen, about 600 square feet, with a gravel driveway pulling up to the back door. There were no trees, no shrubs, and weeds for grass. All around us were nicer homes made of brick with trees and grass in the yard and concrete driveways.
Our life seemed normal on Patricia Court, we had friends our age, we spent a lot of time outside, and Mom looked after Rooney, Butch and me. I don’t remember being aware that Mom was getting sicker or unable to do as much as she had in the past. Dad was developing his territory, which covered most of Illinois and some of Indiana, so he wasn’t around during the week. He got a monthly draw, and then got paid a commission check once a year for his sales of the past year, so it was important that he get off to a good start.
On the weekends Dad came home and he would play baseball with Butch and me with Rooney sitting on the ground next to him. There was no family in Champaign so the picnics and family get-to-gathers were no longer a part of our life.
Dad took Mom to the hospital at the University of Illinois because she wasn’t getting any better and her regular doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. They came home and talked over dinner; that was the first time that I heard the word cancer. I didn’t know what cancer was but I got the idea that it was something that was growing in Mom’s body. Butch, Rooney and I were sent to our room but we could hear they were talking about some kind of cancer treatment, money, looking after the boys and how long Mom would be away.Rooney was playing on the floor not aware of what was going on and how his life would change. Soon any memories that he may of had of his mother would fade, she would become someone that might be mentioned only briefly in passing conversation, but for the most part was about to exit his life for the next forty-five years.
It was scary to me, but I felt sure that Dad would see to it and Mom would make everything alright for all of us. After all that’s what mom and dad’s do.
Mom and Dad called back to Cincinnati the next day and it was decided that Rooney would go back to Cincinnati to live with Grandma Grinkmeyer until Mom got to feeling better and Butch and I would stay in Champaign. For the next several days Mom wouldn’t put Rooney down, she acted like once she sent him back to Cincinnati we would never get him back.
That weekend Dad took Rooney to Cincinnati to live with Grandma Grinkmeyer and Aunt Ruthie.
Mom went into the hospital and Dad had to continue working as well as spend time in the hospital, so Butch and I were looked after by a series of housekeepers’.
Mrs. Elkins was our typical housekeeper. She stood about 5 ft. 3 in. and came in at about 220 lbs., didn’t take a bath, at least not at our house, so had a very distinctive odor about her, something like sour milk. She was, however, a darn good cook but not much of a housekeeper. I remember Mrs. Elkins because she stuck around longer than anybody else. I suspect it was because she needed the money worst then anyone else.
“Now here are my rules while I’m looking after you. I make dinner at night and sandwiches for lunch, you eat cereal for breakfast. I keep the house clean. You two stay out of the house except to eat and sleep. I go home on Friday night and come back on Monday morning. You get your bath on Saturday when your dad is home. What happens here during the week is between us, I don’t bother your dad with what you get into, and you don’t bother your dad with what I am doing. Do you understand?”
That was how it worked to. We left the house in the morning, came by to pick up a sandwich and showed back up for a sit down dinner, left the house and came back around nine, went to our rooms and went to bed. Most nights Mrs. Elkins would be asleep on the couch or talking on the phone when we came home. On the weekends Dad went to the hospital and we were again on our own until he got home at night. Butch and I were eight and nine year’s old living on our own during the week with a place to eat and sleep.
I really didn’t know what was going on, I just knew that my Mom was sick but I figured she was getting better. I think Butch had a better idea what was going on, he seemed to be mad and getting madder. It was about this time the Butch and I started fighting a lot, and by fighting I don’t mean just words, I mean fists. There was no question that we were best of friends as well as brothers, but it seemed that I would do just about anything to irritate him and he would be more then happy to smash me in the face, or pound the breath out of my stomach. It was almost like we were starved for any expression of emotion and this was the best that we could do.
School let out for summer vacation so the next weekend Butch and I were in Cincinnati at Grandma Grinkmeyer’s house. Grandma Grinkmeyer lived in a row-house, with a driveway of the side where we would play. Her house was in the old part of Cincinnati, close to where my Grandfather worked at the Formica plant. It was one of those houses where you walked in the front door into the living room, behind it was the bedroom, behind that was the dinning room, and behind that was the kitchen, with a build on that held the bathroom. In the bedroom there was a set of steep steps that went up to two bedrooms. There was no bathroom upstairs and it wasn’t heated. The heat came from a coal fired furnace down in the basement. Aunt Ruthie and Grandma had been taking care of Rooney and now they had Butch and me as well. We spent our days with Grandma, or went swimming with our cousin Diane Mason. Her brother Tom was off studying to become a priest.
Aunt Ruthie would get off work and take us with her shopping or for a walk, but we would always end up in Saint Pious Church. Aunt Ruthie gave Butch and me each a rosary and told us, “Pray for your mom, Jesus loves you; Jesus loves your mom, pray to Jesus and his mother, The Virgin Mary, to make your mom better so that she can come home and be with you. You boys keep your rosary in your pockets so you can pray to Jesus anytime; when you get up in the morning, before you go to bed or during the day. Pray to Jesus, Jesus will make your mom better.”
Kay Talon Grinkmeyer died on July 14, 1953, she was 30 years old: I was eight years old, Butch was ten years old, and Rooney was two years old.
Butch and I had been in Cincinnati since school closed for the summer and Dad had gone back to Champaign to look after Mom in the hospital. On this particular July afternoon Butch and I were playing in the driveway and Aunt Ruthie was there looking after Rooney.Dad drove up, “hi boys,” all three of us at his feet clinging at his legs not wanting to let him go. After a few minutes, several pats on the head he went into the house leaving the three of us on the driveway with Auntie Ruthie.
He’s on the porch, three steps up, “Butch and Kobe come into the house I need to talk to you.”Aunt Ruthie stayed outside with Rooney. “He’s going to tell us when Mom is coming home and when Butch, Rooney and I are all going back to Champaign to be all together again.” I ran up the steps and followed him into the house, grabbing his leg as we moved together towards the sofa. Butch lagged behind, came through the door with his head down, and hands held together at his belly button. I looked up at Dad and his face was sad as he looked to Butch approaching us on the sofa. He reached out and turned to set him next him on his left side.
We sat on living room sofa, Dad in the center and Butch and me on either side. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. The sofa set against the side wall, it was brown and the fabric was soft, kind of fuzzy like short cropped hair on a dog. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon the lights were on the end tables and the curtains were pulled. I could hear Grandma Grinkmeyer in the kitchen and the cars going up the street outside.
There was the smell of food in the house, but then there was always the smell of food in Grandma Grinkmeyer’s house. Dad was wearing brown slacks, a sports coat and a tie; this was not his normal dress. Dad put an arm around each one of us pulled us close and said, “Boys, Mom died two days ago.”
Later while we were in the back trying to understand what had happened; inside Grandma’s house another battle was being waged in Grandma’s kitchen. Our aunts and uncles were trying to decide who was going to take who. They had figured this all out weeks ago. Uncle Norb and Aunt Flow volunteered to take Butch home with them and raise him like their son with their daughter Sandy. Uncle Eddy and Aunt Sis said they would take me and raise me with their daughter Cherry; she was just a baby and I could be her older brother. Aunt Dee and Uncle Phil would take Rooney they had one son.
Chuck said, “No, I’m going to keep my family together; I promised Kay that I would keep the boys together. I’ll be back for Butch and Kobe in a couple of weeks; I’ll be coming to get Rooney soon.”
I was lying face down in the ditch next to the culvert, preparing to make a break for the can, we were playing Kick The Can, when Dad called out, “Butch, Kobe come on the in here I have somebody that I’d like you to meet”
Butch and I ran to the front door and stepped into the living room. The living room was no bigger ten feet by twelve feet. Sitting in the armchair just inside the door was a lady. There was a table lamp next to her and the light on her made it look like she filled the whole room. Mrs. Elkins was in the kitchen looking around the corner and listening to every word.Dad was in a sports shirt and slacks, his hair combed back real neat, he had on shinny brown shoes. He was dressed to go out. Aunt Ruthie had told me that men get “slicked-up” to go out with ladies.
This lady didn’t look like any of the housekeepers that we had in the past. So I was sure this wasn’t a new housekeeper, besides Mrs. Elkins was over there watching. This lady had long thin legs, they were crossed, and her skirt let her knees show. She wore a tight flowered dress, not one of those baggy ones like the housekeepers wore. Her hair was all done up, it was dark and shiny, she wore long earrings, her cheeks were red, she wore lipstick, and she smelled good. She was smoking a cigarette, and she greeted us with a friendly smile and reached out to shake each of our hands. As she shook my hand she said, “My name is Grace Plotner, nice to meet you Kobe.”
“Boys, this is Grace Plotter, I’ve been going out with Grace for several months now. She and I are going to get married; she’ll be your new mom.
I didn’t know it at the time, and I’d probably didn’t come to realize it for many years that the lady we met that night, Grace Plotner was going to change the path that Butch and I would follow from that point on. She would do more to change the direction of my life than anyone else that I would encounter over the next fifty years. She would also provide me with the biggest disappointment in any relationship that I would have over the next fifty years.
Grace Plotner and Charles H. Grinkmeyer were married on June 6, 1954.
We never went back to Patricia Court; our new home was on Green Street. Grace Plotner, our new mom, and her mom, our new Grandma Plotner, had lived here. Grandma Plotner had to move downtown into a co-op and our new cousin Judy had moved in with her. Our new home was very different from Patricia Court. Green Street had a white picket fence around it; it had trees in the yard and well kept grass. Inside there was big furniture, carpeting on the floor, and a separate dinning room. Butch and I shared a room that was larger then our old room.
January 1956, we moved to Greencroft. This was not a normal house; this was a house of the fifties. You would recognize it as a house of the fifties if you were to see it today. It’s most outstanding feature was it’s butterfly roof. It was constructed of redwood siding and glass, a lot of glass. Chuck and Grace were making a statement, they had arrived. They were members of the Champaign Country Club, their new home was featured in the Champaign Times Sunday Home section, and Grace was driving a new pink, black and white Buick Roadmaster.
Grace had gone to the Chicago Furniture Mart and had purchase all new furniture, much of which was designed by the times most contemporary furniture designers in the country. My brothers and I now know that if we could put our hand on some of that furniture today we would have items worth $25,000 and more, but no one knows where it all went as Grace and Chuck moved over the following years.
It had been almost four years since Chuck and Grace got married and our family had been formed. Grace had taken control of the situation and Butch and I had been turned around. There was discipline, direction and respect for ourselves and others introduced into our lives. We were far from perfect, our scholastic achievement still had some short falls but we were trying.
It must have been decided in January that Grace would attempt to have a child, she was thirty eight years old and it was now or never. This was not a topic of conversation at the dinner table but the news of her pregnancy was share with the boys on late May.
“Rooney you’re going to have a little brother.” Grandma Plotner shared. She received a “well OK” look from Mom.
I was happy for her and I understood why she would want to have her own child. It was some task that she had taken on, coming into our family after the death of our mom, and raising three boys.
The pregnancy wasn’t easy for her besides her age she had some complications with her blood. She wasn’t allowed to put on any excess weight. Every afternoon for the last six months Grace would get on my bike and Butch and she would go for a half hour bike ride. At first it was funny to see her riding my English bike not knowing how to shift the gears and use the hand breaks. I got even funnier as her belly grew but she continued to ride the bike everyday, even in the rain until the day she went to the hospital.
I would say everyone was happy to see her having a baby, we were hoping for a little sister but it wasn’t to be. Steve came home ten days after being born on August 18, 1958.
Steve was a cute boy. It was obvious that he was a Plotner more then a Grinkmeyer. His hair was black, like the Plotners, not blond like his brothers. His features were long and narrow like the Plotners, not short and broad like his brothers.
We lived in Champaign until 1960, my sophomore year in high school. Chuck was offered a larger territory in Indiana so we moved to Indianapolis. This is where most of you got to know Grace and Chuck so this is where I will end my story. I wanted you to know more about Charles H. Grinkmeyer and how his life evolved. Obviously there is a lot before and after that I don’t know, and that is where I am asking for your help.
This story is posted on my blog on the internet (http://kjohng.typepad.com/secondlifeblog/). I would like you to go to my blog open my Memories section and click on Live of Charles H. Grinkmeyer. You’ll find a comments box at the end of the story. I’d like you to share your memories about Chuck, so that I might complete his life story.