I remember Grandpa
May 19, 2020

So . . . I begin . . . but where to start is the big question.  There are so many thoughts, a multitude of memories whirling around - all wanting to be acknowledged, all wanting to be shared.  I guess that is what comes of procrastinating putting thoughts to paper, or in this case, computer.  Begin at the beginning is the common wisdom; that is what I will try to do.

I think I was not one to question, as a child.  My Grandpa, Clyde Leroy Catron, lived with us, passing away at our house when I was seven years old; he & Grandma had divorced.  My memories of the night he died are few but stark.  I know we children were sent across the street to stay at the home of our friends, the Congers.  Perhaps not the most obedient of children, or maybe just more curious or concerned about what had caused us to be sent away, I returned home and looked into the front room through the screen door.

There I saw my mother lying facedown on the couch sobbing.  And that is about the sum total of what I remember - nothing before or after - although my older brother Frank shared something about the momentous event much later.  Grandpa sent him to the store to buy cigarettes, he said (at least that's what I think he said; keep in mind these are my memories, not necessarily facts), and when he returned, Grandpa was dead.  He was 54 years old.

I think Mom looked so much like him.

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I remember Grandpa but not any interactions at all, although I am certain there must have been many.  I think he lived with us for only a couple of years, perhaps less, and probably because he became ill.  His cause of death was interstitial nephritis - kidney inflammation.

I know that he smoked cigarettes, and I remember his floor stand ashtray.  His bedroom was in the add-on room at the back of the kitchen, where he had a trundle bed.  The trundle pushed underneath during the day to become a couch.  The house's second bathroom was off his room.

He was a nice, quiet man - not particularly tall - with male pattern baldness.  I remember that his legs and feet were swollen, a result of his disease, no doubt.

Did he talk to me, the second oldest child?  Did he tell me stories or sit me on his lap?  Did he play with me or take me for walks?  Of these questions, I have no answers nor did I ever ask Mom about him, a lapse I deeply regret.  Surely she would have loved to tell me about him.

My advice to all: Take the time now to ask, ask and ask some more; listen to the answers and ask more questions, and write down the answers.  I wish I had done so much more of that.

We do know that Grandpa was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1899, to an unusual family, but more about that at another time.

Years ago, Chris & I went there looking for where Grandpa grew up.  We had a photo of him sitting on a rock wall in front of a house and a picture of the house to guide us.  That's my Grandma's handwriting at the bottom of the picture.  She - Grace (Rhodimer) Catron Smith - made a major effort in her later life to identify photos she had to pass on to us.

We had the address because it showed on the house, but didn't know what street it was on, so we began driving back and forth in that number block of the old part of town, a section now referred to as Old Colorado City.  Just a few drives up and down and there it was: the exact house!

We were pretty excited as we took some photos, and even more so when we knocked on the door and were cordially greeted by the lone resident - an elderly lady by the name of Thelma Long.  Mrs. Long invited us in to tour the house when we told her my Grandpa had grown up there.

Grandpa & Grandma seem to have relocated to the Los Angeles area very shortly before their marriage there in 1921.  I am unsure of which part of the family moved there first, but around the same time, Grandpa's mother Molly with his sister Flossie was in Los Angeles.  Molly and Grandpa's father, James, had divorced in 1913.

Curiously, Grandpa & Grandma moved many times during their marriage, both during their time in California and when they lived in Prescott; I have no idea why.  At one time, they lived at 1018 E. 33rd St. in Los Angeles, a 1905 house that has been torn down and replaced by an apartment building.  I was lucky enough to find a photo of that one.

They had other abodes in the short time they were there, including I believe in the Porter Hotel until they moved to Prescott in about 1923. (Edit: I have just found in Grandma's writing that they moved to Prescott in 1926.)

Grandpa variously worked as an elevator operator, hotel clerk and a vulcanizer, which was a procedure that had to do with preparing automobile tires and evidently worked at the Valley Tire Shop and the Tire Hospital in San Fernando.

Although I know of other jobs he held in Prescott, Grandpa also worked in Grandma's brother's tire shop.  Dale Rhodimer's business, pictured below, was on the east side of South Montezuma, the second lot south of Willis.  When I moved to the area in 1976, it was still a tire store. Now it is the collectibles section of the Salvation Army store.

I have morphed from memories into research, which is not exactly what I meant to do.  Obviously, I can't use this medium to chronicle our entire family history.  All that information is contained in our Reunion charts with the source material filling an entire closet.  There are electronic copies of all of it; it is my hope that it will be retained for future generations.  We have invested a huge amount of our lives into amassing it, but it will fall to those who follow us to decide if it is worth keeping and to pass it on.

My darling daughter Sara had the idea that comments could be included on the blog itself and possibly turn into sharing thoughts among us, with conversation and discussion.  What a nice idea to bring us all together!  I love that and hope we go that direction.