My grandmother was born in 1900. My paternal grandfather, like many of the men in our family was a drunken philanderer. Sometime after her 3rd son (my father) was born she sent him packing and ran the farm by herself. Her two older sons signed on right after Pearl Harbor. My father was still in high school and she made him finish before joining the Navy (although he was sure the war would be over by then. It wasn’t.) She, like a lot of women, went to work in a defense plant. Unlike a lot of women, she stayed on after the war. She retired at 65 and, like many of our family, wasn’t very good at it. She ended up working into her 80’s. She kept a Savage 24, .22/.410 by the back door and whenever she thought she heard “prowlers” out around the barn at night would let fly with with a couple rounds of.410 out across the horse pasture. I still have her H&R too-break 5 shot.32 revolver that she carried when she thought necessary. She left us at 95.
