In addition to New Year's Day, we have Old-Calendar Christmas (aka Russian Christmas) coming up on January 7th, which we prefer to call Nativity of the Lord. Eastern Orthodox festivities associated with Nativity are full of old-world, joyful solemnity that is exquisitely beautiful, and yet reflects the poverty of spirit of Christ and his earthly family, as well as the countless generations of poor people over the centuries who have been touched by the Grace and Hope of Christmas.
Marty and I are very casual about Western, Gregorian-Calendar Christmas on December 25th. Marty has fun wearing a Santa hat and lets his white beard get fluffy, and we like spending time with family, but we don't party or shop very much. The Brenneis family has a tradition of making ravioli. I usually bake pumpkin pies for the family and dairy-free breads (cranberry-orange, zucchini-walnut, banana, and pumpkin) for our home. I make batches of Martha Stewart's recipe for cranberry sauce with cognac. Also try to sneak some fish dishes into the family gatherings.
Speaking of fish, the main subject of this article was an avid fisherman. The day that I am writing this (December 28th) is the birthday of my maternal grandfather, Clarence Everett Pryne, known by friends and family as C.P.. He was born 109 years ago, in Eagle Township, Brown County, Ohio. He passed away in 1985, when I was 24, and I'm grateful for all the years of contact with him. The older I get, the more I identify with Grandpa C.P. In my opinion, I've always resembled him, both physically and in personality, more than any other relative. In a previous post from 2017, Mom's Home Town, and C-SPAN for Genealogy, I related some of my favorite memories of Grandpa C.P.
Here is a picture of Grandpa when he was about 3-1/2 years old. Grandpa's brother, Aaron, had died earlier that year of TB at age 6, so it had to have been a melancholy time in their home. He's dressed so oddly here and could easily be mistaken for a little girl, especially with the bow in his hair. Wish I knew the name of the dog.
Speaking of Grandpa being mistaken for a girl, here I am at age 5, already looking a lot like C.P.!
These days, I look a lot more like his mother, Great-Grandma Lou.
Even in her 50s, she had a mischievous look, didn't she?
Grandpa C.P. was a very dapper, yet fun-loving guy. Here we see him in the late 1930s, standing behind Grandma Dorothy and my mother, Bonnie.
This is a nice picture of C.P.(L) standing near a bright, shiny car with his wife's youngest brother, Elmer. We called Uncle Elmer "Whitey," because he was the only sibling in his family with blond hair.
Here are Grandma and Grandpa playing on the beach, probably shortly after they moved to California in 1951. Love this photo!
Here's a sweet family photo, probably also taken in the early 1950s. Pictured, L-R, are Bonnie (Mom), Grandma Dorothy, Grandpa C.P., and twins Joanie and Jimmy (the only person in this pic still living). Grandpa seems to be having the most fun, once again!
My memory has always associated trout with Grandpa C.P. and Grandma Dorothy (known by the kids as Grandma "Shug," short for "sugar"). They had a hillside get-away in the southern Sierra mountains, near Lake Isabella and the Kern River. Trips to our grandparents's get-away were called "going up the hill." Both nearby bodies of water were great places to fish, and my grandparents loved to go fishing! They had their favorite spots along the Kern, but they were not averse to taking a boat out on the lake to fish. Most of my memories fishing with them were on the river, and river trout has remained my favorite fish to this day.
C.P. "up the hill" in front of their mobile home in 1968,
having laid out the day's catch, by size.
In the early 1970s, Grandpa C.P. and Grandma Dorothy both retired from General Dynamics. They sold their place "up the hill" and bought a place in the Kern River Valley, right next door to Dorothy's older sister Elva. Here's a photo from the valley property, with C.P. apparently taking a rest after sawing some lumber for Aunt Elva, who stands behind him.
Aunt Elva was always one of my favorites, because she was another musician in the family and was always very welcoming to us. Elva had played piano for silent films when she was a teenager and also loved to sing in church. My mother's sister Joanie was a gospel singer, too. Mom could sing, but she was more of a music fan than a performer. Mom loved dance music, like big-band, rock, and country, but she had a set of classical music records and played them quite a bit. Mom got me started listening to Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, and also let me have many years of music lessons. Mom didn't like Elva's piano playing, because she thought Elva "banged" on the keys. I liked playing Aunt Elva's piano because some of its notes were way off kilter, and I would make up tunes based on the worst of Elva's piano keys.
Sadly, Grandma Dorothy died in early 1975, just a few short years after they bought the valley homestead. She was only 58 years old (my age now), when she had a sudden, massive cerebral hemorrhage. She always seemed to be such a tough lady to all of us, but she wasn't taking her blood pressure medicine properly. Losing her was awful, just awful, and Grandpa C.P. spent the remaining 10 years of his life feeling rather lost.
Not long before Grandpa passed away, I talked with him on the phone for a while. I was finishing up four years of active Navy duty in Charleston, South Carolina (a lovely place!). He was not doing well physically and was living with my mother. We usually talked about what was in the news or on TV, as well as family stuff. During that call, Grandpa and I had our final conversation. The last thing I told him was that I loved him. When news of his passing reached me in Charleston, I was so grateful for the way our last conversation ended.
We all need to end our conversations with expressions of love, because we may not speak to that person again.
A very blessed New Year to all!
Annie
"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition." -- Indira Gandhi
