Jun. 10, 2006 ~ Elsa
A distant cousin recently sent me a box of letters and such which had apparently been among my great-grandmother's things. My mother's parents had died before I was born, and Mom didn't talk much about them. It was a sad story, and she just didn't have much to say about it. What little she did share was hard for me to hear.
A very old black and white portrait hangs on my bedroom wall. It depicts the wedding day of my grandparents, Henry and Elsa. Both are solemn, without even a hint of a smile. That is probably more about the custom of the time, than about what was soon to come.
While still a newlywed, Henry was thought to have TB, and was sent to a sanitorium for a rest cure. My cousin's package contained letters from Henry to Elsa written over a period of several years. They start out as those of a loving husband and father, and at some point they begin to contain jokes about the pretty widow women he has met at the hospital. Later the letters are full of sadness about the serious state of Henry's "illness," how the doctors have told him he will not be able to do any real work again, that he must have absolute rest and freedom from all worry, that he must move out West. All for his health. It breaks Henry's heart, of course, but the doctor seems to recommend a divorce. Now, this was in the early 1930's, and divorce was not commonplace as it is today. It was scandalous. But in this case the separattion was only for the sake of dear Henry's health, and for his sanity. He was going crazy, worrying about all this. I read the letter where he actually asked Elsa for the divorce, after he'd written pages and pages about his broken heart, and how much he hated to have to do this, and how he was going to pack up and move to Arizona as soon as the divorce was granted.
Well. As it turned out, the pretty widow women were not a joking matter. One wealthy widow was of particular interest to Henry. In her defense, she did not know he was married or that he had a child. Go figure. Henry was a secretive fellow.
It reads like fiction, but there is no happy ending. Elsa died of a broken heart, at the age of 33. My mother was 12. People don't really die of broken hearts, but they do die of depression. Especially when they go to bed and refuse to eat. Henry had remarried before the ink was dry on the divorce papers -- in violation of the state's required waiting period. He'd hoped to acquire the widow's holdings, but she was an intelligent woman, if nothing else. Her property was in her children's names. She wasn't interested in raising another woman's child, though, or so it seems. After Elsa died, my mother was raised by her grandmother.
So my grandfather was not a particularly honorable man. Some might not think it's appropriate for me to write negative things about family members; I know some people feel that way. But these people have been dead for more than 50 years, and this is my story to tell. I grew up with so many family secrets, and that habit dies hard, the keeping quiet. But I just felt like writing a little about this today.
It felt so strange, holding these little pieces of history in my hands. Letters from people long dead. Knowing how the story was going to end.
There were letters from other people, too. Cousin Lilly and Aunt Dora. Dora was Henry's sister. I spent part of one summer at Cousin Lilly's farm. Aunt Dora, Lilly's mother, had a nice, cozy trailer on the property. I spent a few nights as her guest, watching Bonanza on TV. She did not speak of her brother. Almost no one did. Most of the letters from Dora to Elsa were in German; I couldn't read a one. Thinking about it, I guess that meant Elsa spoke and read fluent German. Ah. I also learned her middle name, and that apparently she'd had appendicitis. They called her Elsie. At birth my middle name was Elise, a variant of Elsie. For reasons unknown, my parents changed it when I was about a month old. My birth certificate is amended to reflect the change.
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On another subject entirely...
Some years ago I'd written of my dealings with an oil company which wished to lease our land. We do own part of our mineral rights, and we own all of the leasing rights. The company wanted to give us money for the option to drill on our property, and there would be royalties if the well was good. Only we don't want a well on our property, so the oil company's representative went away. Several years later, a different representative from a different oil company came back, this time with a compromise. They will lease our land, but they can't drill. This is an uncommon arrangement, one they were reluctant to make. But they did agree to it. And they did give us the legal papers, which have all nicely checked out and been approved by an attorney, and the oil company sent us a check. So now that they aren't drilling on our land, we hope they drill SOMEWHERE, so we can partake of the royalties. If this is confusing to you, hey, it's confusing to us, too. But it's a good thing.
We have been dickering over the terms for over a year now. They called our bluff. We called theirs in return. They went away for a long time, then came back with terms not so great, but at least there was the no-drill clause. They gave a little, sweetening the deal, but not as much as we hoped for, and then we waited. And waited. "Non-drills" are uncommon, and we know it. We didn't want to miss out completely. We signed. We're done. We're part of a large unit of land and if they find gas anywhere on that land in the next three years, we, and all the other mineral owners in that unit, benefit.
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What else? I have a new boss, brand new. He's only been on the job two days. I've been surprisingly nervous and have made a couple of careless mistakes, something I rarely do. Hope I haven't made a terrible impression.
Well, I guess that's about all. Long one this time, right? Time to go feed the horses.
Till next time...
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