My Grandma Rose was a singularly interesting person. There
are many things to say about her; what a survivor she was; how smart, savvy,
and class conscious she was; she was great story teller. She was amazingly
beautiful. No wonder she swept my grandfather off his feet.
This week I have been thinking about her and the territory
she defended. She arrived in the US in the 1930s with nothing more than the clothes
on her back and the skills of her sewing needle. Within twenty years she built
two homes for her family, one in South Bend, Indiana and the other at Diamond
Lake near Cassopolis, Michigan. I spent lots of time in both these homes, but
the latter was my favorite since it was on the lake. I was too young to
appreciate the view, but I did appreciate the water, pier, and getting to run
around in a swim suit all the time.
Access to water frontage was at a premium, and even those
who didn’t own lake access were supposed to have some shared path to the lake.
Many of the homes were huge homes that the owners wanted to keep private. My
grandma’s neighbor, who I think was called Mr. Hazard, had a cement stairs
right next to Grandma’s property. I’m
not sure who she disliked more Hazard or his stairs.
Grandma also liked her champagne. She liked it pink, near
freezing, and with strawberries. As a college student I helped her drive from
Arizona to Michigan one summer. When I arrived, she greeted me with a bottle of
champagne and a bowl of strawberries and said that she had our evening
activities covered. That’s when I knew I had finally come of age and joined her
as an adult.
On one particular visit back to Diamond Lake, Grandma told
us that she had been saving up champagne bottles to launch a new campaign, one
where she would toss a bottle a night over the fence so that it would break and
cause trouble for her neighbors. I’m
sure we laughed with her at the time, but now as I look back I am amazed at how
feisty she really was. Her territory was hers, and no one was going to take
that away.
As I reflect on the meeting I will attend tonight to learn
more about the cities plans to turn my properties canal easement into a public
trail, I wonder what my Grandmother would advise. I’m certainly not opposed to
trails, but find myself saying “not in my back yard.” Until the city can
competently answer the questions of safety, liability, privacy, and
maintenance, I’m not likely to support a movement to put the path in,
especially since the proposed path will be paved. My Grandmother was a
Hungarian of Jewish descent, but with her pistol-packing, vandalistic tendencies,
I think she would have fit right in here in the west. She would have defended
her property and her rights in whatever way she saw fit.
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