Nicholas Andrew (Papa) Scholl

 

Mom talks about how a “manager” from Standard Oil came into their house to inform Papa that he would be getting a pay cut.  When Papa objected, the man sat back in the chair and propped his feet on the table and said, “I’ve got men lined up who would take the job at the rate of the pay cut.”  Papa took the pay cut.

Mom would ride along with Papa and that’s when he’d tell her stories.  Stories about his father, the opera singer-coal miner with a club foot.  The story goes that when his mother delivered him and the doctor saw his club foot, the baby was laid aside and the doc said to put all attention to saving the mother.  A nurse went over to where the baby lay and attended to his needs.  We wonder if she adopted him?  Was he born to a privileged young girl of high society who would be “ruined” by her pregnancy?  That’s what we imagined.  We imagined the nurse who saw to him in the OR, adopted him and raised him.  Essentially a fantasy.  

He spoke of his parents coming over from Germany.  They were close to where the war prisoners were kept.  They got to NY and met up with relatives who had come over before and settled in Western NY.  They didn’t find what they were hoping for there so, his mom and dad ended up in the Western part of Nebraska where his father worked for a large rancher.  Their son, Papa Scholl, mom’s father then found a job on a big farm near St Ed’s where he met Uncle Chris which is how he eventually met her mom, Eva. Papa eventually started working in town delivering oil because he didn’t know farming like the others did.  

After his wife, Eva, died, he came to Tomah to live with mom and dad.  He had a small bedroom on the second floor in-between two large bedrooms on the front side of the two story house.

We loved our Papa. He was a quiet man. Hard of hearing from injuries sustained during his time in the service. His territory was our vegetable garden and his beloved rose and gladiola gardens outside our home. He was a quiet, thoughtful, observant and loving presence in our home. He was there every day to pick us up from school. He sat at our breakfast table every morning pouring a bit of his coffee into the saucer to cool it off before pouring it back into the cup and sipping it. He let my little brothers run their toy cars along his back and shoulders for hours as he sat in our living room. He shaved with his electric razor every day and got all dressed up to pick us up from school. He wore his long sleeved shirts and pants even in the high heat of summer to work in the garden. He rocked the bassinets for mom when the babies were fussing. His army green Plymouth sedan with the push button starter was a fixture in our driveway. He was part of the fabric of our lives.

The elderly man, my grandfather, stood there, slightly stooped over, dressed in his greatcoat, hat in hand, eyes on the floor in a gesture of deference. 

The woman, my mom, hugely pregnant, sat on the bed. Her posture was a mirror image of his. 

The emotion in the room was so large I could feel it from just outside the door where I stood watching this tableau. 

“Is this what you really want, Mary?” He asked. 

Did my mom nod? Did she speak words of defeated agreement? I cannot remember exact words but I can recall her defeated resignation to the decision that was clearly my father’s.  And I can recall her failure to meet his eyes.  She was looking off to the side or down to the floor.

"Yes, Papa, it has to be. You have to leave. We don’t have room for you anymore.” 

Mom and Dad were pregnant with their 11th child. Mom was due in a few weeks. The bedrooms were full, they needed the room and Dad had asked papa or should I say, told papa, he’d have to move into the nursing home located in the basement of the local hospital. 

My sisters and I, who were old enough to get a sense of what was happening were devastated, confused and heartbroken.  To think of him moving out was incomprehensible. It simply didn’t compute. 

I have no memory of him actually moving his things out of our home. I do remember visiting him in his new room at the Nursing Home and being horrified at the shiny, highly polished deeply red floors and the dark atmosphere of his room. Here was a man who thrived on daylight and fresh air and growing plants tucked away in a cave of a room where none of these existed. 

A few days later, I was sitting in my classroom making sure my books and papers were sitting on my desk in an identical pattern to the one my current heartthrob had on his desk. My large crush had to have been highly visible to everyone who knew how to look but I thought I was keeping it secret. 

The school secretary came to the door and my teacher called my name and asked me to go to the office. I met my older sister in the hall and we both looked at each other in curiosity. When we got to the principal’s office, she told us our grandfather had died. He had not been in the nursing home for a month. His birthday was approaching and we were planning a party for him at the house. Now he was gone. My 12 year old heart was unable to fathom the enormity of this news and the enormity of his absence. I went back to my classroom in a daze. Upon entering, I found everyone saying a prayer for the soul of my grandfather. I lifted the lid of my desk and hid my face behind it. 

This may have been my first introduction to what became a trend for me. The emotions and feelings in the air around our home on the day my grandfather questioned my mother and in the subsequent days of his absence from the home and then his death were so huge and so raw, I retreated into a world where I distanced myself from the pain by erecting layer upon layer of padding until I could observe what was happening without feeling it.