Photo courtesy of Ancestry.com
I've said many times that I wished I had paid more attention back in the day when someone was talking about "the good old days."
Well, today, I listened. Mainly because I asked questions, but still, I listened.
I had lunch with my Aunt Donna and Aunt Linda. Donna's husband, Dave, and Big Brother and his wife, Annie, were also there.
The original idea when we made lunch plans was for just me, Donna, and Linda to get together to gab and giggle. Then I fell down that rabbit hole I wrote about in the last post, and I wanted to pick their brains about family history. That's how Big Brother and Annie got involved because--hey--they like family history stuff, too!
Holy flying Dutchmen, batman, did I learn stuff that I never, ever knew!
First off, it has always been something of a point of pride--at least for me--that my Gramma Prokasky was a live-in maid for Dr. and Mrs. Plummer. I found out today that she got that job because Mrs. Plummer specifically asked her to come and work for them. Gramma had been a maid at a boarding house prior to that. I forgot to ask why Mrs. Plummer was in a boarding house, but the story is still exciting.
Further exciting is that Aunt Donna, some while back, got in touch with the caretaker or curator or whatever they call the person in charge of the Plummer House now and said that she had some pictures of Gramma when she was working at the Plummer House and did they want copies.
They arranged to meet, and the--I'll stick with curator--saw them, she wanted them very much. Turns out that one of them had several of the maids swimming in the Plummer's in-ground swimming pool which made it a treasure as the curator said it was probably the only picture with that pool in it. The winter after that picture was taken, the pool froze and cracked, so the Plummer's filled it in and made it a flower garden.
Donna took the photos and put them in one of those multi-print frames and gave it to the curator, and it now hangs in Dr. Plummer's home office! How stinking cool is that? Pretty cool, in my book.
The remarkable thing was that, while I always knew that Gramma Prokasky was a maid, I never knew that Gramma Brehmer was also a maid in Rochester at the same time for Dr. and Mrs. Judd! Can we say co-inky-dink?! And even more coinkidinkier is that because of the practice of maids for one doctor helping out when another doctor had a big party, my two gramma's had actually met and worked together at such a shindig before their kids met and got married.
They found this out when Grampa and Gramma Prokasky had Grampa and Gramma Brehmer over for dinner to celebrate my mom and dad's engagement. During the after dinner conversation, this little nugget of family history was unearthed. Too cool!
That dinner was apparently a Big Hairy Deal for all parties involved. Donna said that Gramma Prokasky, as hostess of this engagement dinner, told Grampa that her tablecloth was too ratty to have when the Brehmers came for dinner, so he had to take her to town to buy a new tablecloth. At the same time (Donna learned later), Gramma Brehmer told Grampa Brehmer that her white gloves and good hat were much too ratty to wear to dinner with the Prokaskys, so he had to take her to town to buy a new hat and gloves. The fact that they were both that nervous about that first meeting and then finding out they had know each other before was kind of ironic.
See, I told you I paid attention!
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