Still More Nostalgia

It has been pretty cold here in Denver the past few days, and so I wound up staying inside and watching Chicago White Sox spring training games.  And of course, when I watch Chicago White Sox games, I start thinking about growing up back in the south side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago. The photograph on the left is of my mother Mary sitting on the railing on the front porch of our house, proud as can be of the place.  She didn't even want to leave it to go on vacation. Probably the result of our family having to live with her parents for two years before they could afford to buy their own place.

And as long as I am posting that photograph of my mother Mary on the front porch of our house, I think it only fair I should post the photo on the right of my Grandmother Louise Spillard (my mother's mother), posing on that same front porch.  My Grandmother Spillard had a hard childhood.  Her family was poor, and lived on a farm in Saint-Eustache, Quebec.  During the summer months my Great Grandfather Charles St. Pierre (her father) would travel to Chicago with his family to work as a carpenter.  Once, when in Quebec, my grandmother's aunt Maggie (who was English) offered to let my grandmother live with her family, to help out the struggling family. Aunt Maggie turned my grandmother, who was French, into a servant, taking her out of school and forcing her to get up early and light the fire in the mornings, cook, clean, and care for her aunt's children.  My grandmother eventually was able to escape and run home, never to live with Aunt Maggie again.  I vividly remember how anti-English my grandmother always was.  I wonder why?