Greetings from Sarah G, Uncle Mike and Aunt Eileen's youngest.
I'm living in Kansas City with my partner Sarah (it was a popular name in the early 1980s) in our newly purchased 100-year-old home. I work as a Community Organizer for a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights organization- it's my total dream job!
I have always considered being "the baby" a privilege and a blessing. I'm the youngest of the five Uncle Mike & Aunt Eileen kids and the youngest of the twenty-two Gillooly cousins. I imagine my feet never touched the ground as a baby or toddler, as there were always aunties and sisters and cousins to hold me at those fabled Gillooly weddings! I grew up watching the adventures and misadventures of everyone who came before me, which gave me the time and passed-down-wisdom to plot my own course in life (though I claim no lack of my own misadventures). As mothers, fathers, aunties, and uncles get a little older and pass a child or two (or four) up through life, they get a little less strict, and the hijinxs of "the baby" are sometimes treated with a bit more permissiveness. I have an entire giant tribe who have known me my entire life; how fortunate this makes me feel!
Perhaps the only down-side to being the baby is that, by the time my memories begin, the older among us are, in fact, older; and since my memories begin in the mid-1980s, I have missed out on the many of the joys and sorrows we Gilloolys have seen as a family. In particular, Grandpa Gillooly died many years before I was born. My memories of Grandma Gillooly are only of an old woman. Don't get me wrong; I cherish the memories I do have of her: her refusal to eat anything but pumpkin pie and coffee for breakfast when she came to stay with us, the time my father was called into the office of the nursing home when Grandma slapped another resident for trying to steal her dessert (she was a feisty old woman, wasn't she?), listening to Aunt Mary sing "How Great Thou Art" to her in her final days, and watching my own father rock his frail mother in his lap. In our household still, when someone asks, "Now what am I supposed to be doing?" it is met with deep belly laughs as we all remember Grandma's constant refrain when she got bored or forgetful. But again, these memories are of an old woman. I have few memories of The Old Homestead. I have no memories of Grandpa or memories of Grandma as a younger and healthier woman.
So, what I would like from this blog, dearest Gilloolys, are your memories of our Grandparents -- things that stick out in your mind about who they were and what they were like. Similarly, my memories of all of you (Aunties, Uncles and Cousins) are limited to when most everyone else was "all grown up." I'd like to hear the stories of the Grand Adventures of Gilloolys young and old.
Much love, Sarah G. (aka Baby Bones)
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Aunt Jane and the Chocolate Fudge Icing
For as long as I can remember, Aunt Jane has been an almost mythical character. I can still hear my Dad's voice when he talked about Mom's older sister. "Your Aunt Jane was a wonderful woman," he'd say whenever her name came up. Mom would never say much, but she'd get this look in her eyes when Dad would talk about Aunt Jane, and she'd add little bits of information -- not much, but enough to make me wish I had known this woman who died long before I was born. Understanding the special place that Aunt Jane occupied in Patrick and Ruth's hearts requires a little background.
Aunt Jane was Little Grandma Ruthie's only sister, and she was quite a few years older than mother. I don't know the precise timetable, but I think she was already married and living in Elkins, West Virginia, when Vonnie Jerusha Zeiler Long, our mother's mother, died when her twins Frank and Ruth were four years old. The time after that was a very lonely time for Granddad Long. I got a sense of just how lonely from something that happened one day when I was in high school. I had learned the old song "My Buddy" when I was a kid. I was singing it one day at home. Mom stopped me and told me that that was the song Granddad Long used to sing. She said he'd stand in the kitchen looking out the window and sing that song. ("Nights are long since you went away; I think about you all through the day, my buddy.")
Granddad was still fairly young when Grandma Long died, but he tried to keep things together. Since he still had the four-year-old twins at home, he employed a series of housekeepers to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. Either Uncle Frank and little Ruthie were real hellions, or the housekeepers were pretty unreliable, because Mom told me that Granddad never knew when he came home if the housekeeper would still be there. I learned much later from Uncle Frank and Aunt Lena that he actually married one of them, a Mrs. Abernathy, probably to ensure that she stuck around. Apparently "ole lady Abernathy," as mother called her, was a piece of work who was downright mean to the twins. Uncle Frank said she was particularly hard on Ruth. She used to lock her in her room, and she was nicer to her cat than she was to the kids. This possibly explains a couple of Little Grandma's quirks. She never liked to have doors locked or even shut all the way, and she never liked to have animals, particularly cats, anywhere around her, especially in the house.
"But," to quote Sophia Petrillo, "I digress." Eventually, despite Granddad's marrying her, ole lady Abernathy ran off, and this led to the deep dark secret that I didn't learn until I was a grown woman: Granddad divorced her. He was a divorced man. This would have been quite a scandal back in the 1920's. From that time on, Ruth took on a lot of the household duties. At some point, Granddad apparently thought that Ruth needed a woman's influence because Ruth was shipped off to Elkins, West Virginia, to live with her married sister Jane. She attended high school there and graduated in 1928. She stayed in Elkins and worked as a telephone operator. It was during that time that she met "her Patrick."
The match between Patrick Gillooly (an Irish Catholic and a bit of a wild boy since his mother also died at a young age and Aunt Marie used to say he sort of "raised himself") and Ruth Long (a young woman from a somewhat prominent Protestant family whose brother-in-law, Jane's husband Harmon Kerr, would eventually be mayor of Elkins) was probably not very well received at first by either family. Please remember all you young things out there that this was the time when there were signs posted in places of employment that said "Irish need not apply."
This brings us back to Aunt Jane. She apparently treated Patrick well because he never had anything but kind words for her. He said she was a wonderful cook and a great hostess. She loved parties, and she would jump at the chance to have one. The one negative thing Dad had to say was always said affectionately: She wasn't much of a housekeeper; she was too busy reading anything she could get her hands on. Now that's my kind of relative!
I believe Aunt Jane died when she was in her early 40's. She had gall bladder surgery and died of peritonitis. She was the closest thing to a mother that our mother ever had. Her untimely death led to another of our mother's idiosyncracies. Grandma Ruthie had terrible gall bladder attacks when we were kids, but she resisted having gall bladder surgery for years. No wonder.
I have some of Little Grandma's recipes that I copied over the years, and I think several of them are Aunt Jane's, but I know this one is definitely Aunt Jane's because it said so on the card I copied. It's a recipe for chocolate fudge icing, and our mother used it quite often when we were kids. She also made it with brown sugar and without the chocolate for a caramel icing.
Aunt Jane's Chocolate Fudge Icing
3 squares of chocolate (softened)
(or 9 Tbsp. of cocoa and 4 Tbsp. of butter)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
dash of salt
1 tsp. vanilla
2 beaten egg yolks
powdered sugar
Put chocolate (or the cocoa and butter), sugar, milk, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir and cook for 2 minutes (be careful with the time or the icing will get too hard). Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Add beaten egg yolks. (Stir a little of the hot mixture into the egg yolks first so the egg yolks don't curdle when you add them.) Beat in powdered sugar to an icing consistency. Be careful not to add too much powdered sugar as this icing thickens as it cools.
For Caramel icing, eliminate the chocolate (be sure to add the butter) and substitute brown sugar for the white granulated sugar.
As to the inexact measurement of the milk, a lot of the old recipes are written that way. At least it says "1/4 to 1/2" and not just "add milk." Well, that's all for today. Love to all.
Aunt Jane was Little Grandma Ruthie's only sister, and she was quite a few years older than mother. I don't know the precise timetable, but I think she was already married and living in Elkins, West Virginia, when Vonnie Jerusha Zeiler Long, our mother's mother, died when her twins Frank and Ruth were four years old. The time after that was a very lonely time for Granddad Long. I got a sense of just how lonely from something that happened one day when I was in high school. I had learned the old song "My Buddy" when I was a kid. I was singing it one day at home. Mom stopped me and told me that that was the song Granddad Long used to sing. She said he'd stand in the kitchen looking out the window and sing that song. ("Nights are long since you went away; I think about you all through the day, my buddy.")
Granddad was still fairly young when Grandma Long died, but he tried to keep things together. Since he still had the four-year-old twins at home, he employed a series of housekeepers to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. Either Uncle Frank and little Ruthie were real hellions, or the housekeepers were pretty unreliable, because Mom told me that Granddad never knew when he came home if the housekeeper would still be there. I learned much later from Uncle Frank and Aunt Lena that he actually married one of them, a Mrs. Abernathy, probably to ensure that she stuck around. Apparently "ole lady Abernathy," as mother called her, was a piece of work who was downright mean to the twins. Uncle Frank said she was particularly hard on Ruth. She used to lock her in her room, and she was nicer to her cat than she was to the kids. This possibly explains a couple of Little Grandma's quirks. She never liked to have doors locked or even shut all the way, and she never liked to have animals, particularly cats, anywhere around her, especially in the house.
"But," to quote Sophia Petrillo, "I digress." Eventually, despite Granddad's marrying her, ole lady Abernathy ran off, and this led to the deep dark secret that I didn't learn until I was a grown woman: Granddad divorced her. He was a divorced man. This would have been quite a scandal back in the 1920's. From that time on, Ruth took on a lot of the household duties. At some point, Granddad apparently thought that Ruth needed a woman's influence because Ruth was shipped off to Elkins, West Virginia, to live with her married sister Jane. She attended high school there and graduated in 1928. She stayed in Elkins and worked as a telephone operator. It was during that time that she met "her Patrick."
The match between Patrick Gillooly (an Irish Catholic and a bit of a wild boy since his mother also died at a young age and Aunt Marie used to say he sort of "raised himself") and Ruth Long (a young woman from a somewhat prominent Protestant family whose brother-in-law, Jane's husband Harmon Kerr, would eventually be mayor of Elkins) was probably not very well received at first by either family. Please remember all you young things out there that this was the time when there were signs posted in places of employment that said "Irish need not apply."
This brings us back to Aunt Jane. She apparently treated Patrick well because he never had anything but kind words for her. He said she was a wonderful cook and a great hostess. She loved parties, and she would jump at the chance to have one. The one negative thing Dad had to say was always said affectionately: She wasn't much of a housekeeper; she was too busy reading anything she could get her hands on. Now that's my kind of relative!
I believe Aunt Jane died when she was in her early 40's. She had gall bladder surgery and died of peritonitis. She was the closest thing to a mother that our mother ever had. Her untimely death led to another of our mother's idiosyncracies. Grandma Ruthie had terrible gall bladder attacks when we were kids, but she resisted having gall bladder surgery for years. No wonder.
I have some of Little Grandma's recipes that I copied over the years, and I think several of them are Aunt Jane's, but I know this one is definitely Aunt Jane's because it said so on the card I copied. It's a recipe for chocolate fudge icing, and our mother used it quite often when we were kids. She also made it with brown sugar and without the chocolate for a caramel icing.
Aunt Jane's Chocolate Fudge Icing
3 squares of chocolate (softened)
(or 9 Tbsp. of cocoa and 4 Tbsp. of butter)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
dash of salt
1 tsp. vanilla
2 beaten egg yolks
powdered sugar
Put chocolate (or the cocoa and butter), sugar, milk, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir and cook for 2 minutes (be careful with the time or the icing will get too hard). Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Add beaten egg yolks. (Stir a little of the hot mixture into the egg yolks first so the egg yolks don't curdle when you add them.) Beat in powdered sugar to an icing consistency. Be careful not to add too much powdered sugar as this icing thickens as it cools.
For Caramel icing, eliminate the chocolate (be sure to add the butter) and substitute brown sugar for the white granulated sugar.
As to the inexact measurement of the milk, a lot of the old recipes are written that way. At least it says "1/4 to 1/2" and not just "add milk." Well, that's all for today. Love to all.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Why a Family Blog?
When I was in Albuquerque this summer for Skip and Kay's anniversary party, I promised myself that I would do my part to help keep everyone in touch. At first, I thought I would just do a little booklet with pictures that I would mail to each family. I'm sure my sisters and brothers are already snickering at that, since I am notorious for not even mailing Christmas cards. I have a couple of boxes in a drawer right here that I bought at least five years ago. (Peggy, you'd better not snicker too much, because I know about all those cards you addressed and then found in a drawer a couple of years later!)
Then, when we lost Skip, doing something to draw us all closer together seemed more important than ever because, as Skip said once in one of his emails, "life is short; drink the good wine." Furthermore, Skip was always one to take plenty of pictures, thoroughly enjoy whatever good things were on the dinner table, keep up with what everyone was doing, and best of all, tell a good family story.
My purpose here is to post news, pictures, memories, recipes, and family stories about our family, the Gilloolys, and their various tribes-in-law. I hope all of you will enjoy this, and send me things to post. So, if you have any news, favorite family recipes, pictures, stories or memories you want to pass on, please email me and I will gladly post it for you for the whole family to see. I plan to let the family know if there is a new blog via email, so when I send you notice that there is a new blog, please send me any emails that you notice that I don't have and I'll add them to my group.
Oh, yes, and the name of the blog, Sláinte, is a traditional Irish toast meaning health or cheers. It is pronounced slan-shuh, I think. It's not a very original title, but since Irish is such an obscure language, I don't really have a feel for it yet. If I were to be plunked down in the middle of Italy, France, Spain, or Germany to read signs with no English translations, I could probably figure it out, but Irish is quite another matter.
I also wanted to let you know that I do not intend to publish any last names, addresses, email addresses, or telephone numbers on this blog. Since it is on the web, I don't want any weirdos out there finding any of our children.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy what you find here; and if you don't, send me something to post that will liven it up. I hope all of you are well. It's almost five o'clock here. Sláinte!
Auntie M.
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