November 1 is my grandmother’s birthday. She was born in 1904 and would be 121 if she were still living. She lived to be 96. Her name was Dorothy.
I post this story every year as a tribute to her. I love to tell it. I want it to be my first post on my new blog here.
My mom once told me that all during the Great Depression, anyone that came to Grandma’s door and asked got something to eat. Usually, a sandwich and a piece of fruit. And as up against it as the family was, she always found something to give the hungry person.
The family home was not far from some railroad tracks. My grandfather used to warn her that the hobos had a code and she would be marked as a soft touch if she fed them. She paid no attention to that. Her mission, as far as she was concerned, was to feed everyone who asked.
When I was a little girl, decades after the end of the Depression, I noticed a drawing on the stoop of the house. It was a crude drawing that looked like a cat. I asked Gram about it.
She smiled and she told me that a man knocked on the door and asked her for something to eat. She gave him what she had. When he was about to leave, he drew the cat on the stoop. Grandma said that she thought he did it to thank her. So, she left it because it was all he had to give.
Years passed. Maybe a couple of decades. I was looking at a catalogue with cutsie stuff for the home. I noticed a plaque of a cat that resembled the one I saw on Gram’s stoop. The write up about it said that it was a symbol hoboes drew.
Of this I am most proud. The cat symbol was a designation that hoboes used to tell others, “A kind hearted woman lives here.”
My grandmother was a kind hearted woman.