Grandma Wallis

“She'll be coming ‘round the mountain, when she comes, Yippee!”

“She'll be coming ‘round the mountain, when she comes, Yahoo!”

Grandma Wallis wasn't coming around the mountains by ox team for nothing. There, out West, was opportunity and a whole new way of life. She was going to take a stand, even if she only was three years old when she traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852. It wasn't easy. You had to have spunk. You had to have guts. And the wind had to be blowing in the right direction. She knew about dodging Indians and bandits; dodging bad weather, sickness and starvation before she could talk.

Grandma Wallis was tough because those were rough and tough times. So Grandma Wallis wasn't anything if she wasn't sure. You always knew where she stood and where you stood with her. Subtlety didn't carve out wilderness and tame wild country.

One time, my dad said he was having his dinner that Grandma Wallis cooked. His mother had gone to a dance that night looking for a future. And just as he was stirring a lot of gravy into the mashed potatoes and trying to stick it all onto a chicken leg, a homeless man came to the back door. He wanted something to eat. Grandma Wallis asked him what kind of work he was willing to do for it. “Oh Ma'am I'm tuckered out, I couldn't raise my arm right now.” Grandma Wallis grabbed a butcher knife, “you lazy good-for-nothing bastard. You high-tail it off this property ‘for I cut you up from ear to that gate over there.” The man was never seen again. The work ethic was pretty strong in those parts. My dad quietly set down the chicken leg.

Mary Wallis married Rufus Wallis and settled in Rufus Oregon. They ran the only hotel there. The town was named after my Great-Grandpa. It was what my dad called a one-sneeze affair. “Achoo” and you have passed right through it. The hotel wasn't very big either but it took a lot of work to keep it running.

The Wallis's had five children: three boys and two girls. They all were put to work in the hotel. Josephine was the youngest girl. She carried pails of water from the well up a large hill for their daily water supply. She stood on a wooden soapbox washing dishes from the guest's meals. She told me when we were sitting on her sofa and she had just gotten out of the hospital with pneumonia, that such elbow-grease work was no way for a young girl to spend her time. It was hard and there was no music in it. Grandma loved to go to the dances at the Dalles, which was an hour away by horse and buggy.

Josephine stood up to Grandma Wallis but she had to wash dishes anyway. It wasn't until she was nineteen when she really rebelled. She got married and got pregnant, or she got pregnant and got married. My dad, Herschal Wallis Hailey, “Little Wallis” was a surprise, no matter which way you looked at it.

Josephine had her son, but she didn't have her marriage very long. After one year, she went back to living with her mother. When my Dad asked his mother why she left, she answered, “Son, his feet smelled so bad!” Dad felt that was no reason to go without a father. He never got over being angry about it.

Great Grandma Wallis practically raised Little Wallis herself. When the boy was seven years old, she took him to visit a crotchety old bachelor in the town. The bachelor was sick and needed help. Grandma Wallis and Little Wallis climbed up a long flight of stairs with a pail of hot water in hand. They entered a bare room except for a bed and a chair. My young father looked on, while his Grandma washed the fellow's feet. During the whole treatment, the fellow cursed her terrible. Little Wallis never had heard such language. It was something to reckon with even for Grandma Wallis, who could really let the fur fly herself.

Little Wallis had a pet pig he called Wiggy. Wiggy would wait for him at the doorstep and let him ride on his back. Wiggy would follow the boy around while he was doing morning chores. “Wiggy! Wiggy!” Little Wallis would call, and the pig would come to him just like a dog. Until one morning Wiggy did not come running; there was only silence and the breeze blowing in the wrong direction. Little Wallis never asked and nothing was ever said. He knew it was his Grandma who slaughtered the animals to be eaten at the hotel. My dad learned early to sleep with his shotgun – just in case.

When Dad was twenty-three, he went to seek his fortune in New York City. He got as far as St. Louis, where he met mama, married her, and came back to Portland. Grandma Wallis was living there at the time, and she was to give a dinner party for the newlyweds. This would be the first time she was to meet Elizabeth.

The dinner party was held on a fine Sunday. About ten people came including one young friend of Josephine's. The friend wanted to make a good impression on everybody in general and Grandma Wallis in particular. She carried an armful of lilacs, wore a cream-colored organdy dress and a floppy straw sun hat. She cooed, “Grandma Wallis – Oh, Grandma Wallis” like some kind of walking symphony. Grandma Wallis paid no mind to all that flutter. She was interested in Elizabeth, who was wearing a bright red dress, but was very shy. Grandma could tell in a second if a person was honest, hardworking and strong-minded, even if she was shy. Mama always said Grandma Wallis liked her, “because they both came from Missouri”. I know, it was because they both had character.

Grandma Wallis was also very dramatic and a master storyteller. She would sit in her kitchen and rock in her rocking chair and tell tales about the Wild West. She would stomp her feet like the Indian. Stomp her feet like the cowboys. She could really whoop it up. Even by the time she was eighty years old, she was still telling stories – especially about herself. She had everyone convinced that she could scare away old age, and the blindness that was creeping in, all by herself. Grandma Wallis died in that rocking chair.

I never met her.