we decided to take the route that would swing us by portsmouth, ohio. my mother grew up in portsmouth. both sets of her great-grandparents were immigrated from germany & married & settled in portsmouth, ohio. as a matter of fact, the four families that comprise both sets of grandparents have been marrying at st. mary's catholic church in portsmouth ever since. uncle johnny broke the tradition by marrying elsewhere in ohio. i have a church pew from st. mary's church that i got from my mother when they downsized last year. it feels pretty special. my sister & i noticed that there was another catholic church in town, closer to the home my mom grew up in & i asked mom about that. she said that was the irish catholic church & that they weren't allowed to go there. that was for the irish catholics. back then a german catholic marrying an irish catholic was a mixed marriage. st mary's appears to be in pretty good shape & is an active parish today. as active as anything in portsmouth, ohio appears to be.
portsmouth is a river town along the ohio river. my grandpa owned a hardware store with his uncles that was started by his father. floods were a fact of life in portsmouth. the big flood was in 1937 (my mom was 13 years old). this picture shows the water mark for 1937. now they have a flood wall that surrounds the town. kind of like closing the barn door after the cows got out.
grandma & grandpa built a house. not up on the hill where the wealthier families lived, but down closer to town. they built a house that was impressive; however, mom said it was in the wrong part of town. mom said they were house poor. they built a duplex so that my mom's grandpa could live next door. by the time we came along, grandpa sommer had long been dead & grandma had converted the house to two apartments. betty lived upstairs & always had candy for us when we would come to visit. we went to portsmouth every summer until i was about 9 years old. that was when we started going to nagshead for our family vacations. but back to portsmouth. i remember my grandmother braiding my hair on the back porch when i was a little girl.
my brother, sister & i would play canasta for days when we visited portsmouth. we could up on the second floor & find my mom's old toys & furniture. portsmouth was the first time we encountered poor people. there were lots of kids, always dirty & without shirts & supervision. lots of dogs roaming around too. we were able to walk to a grocery store by going down the alley- mr. trigg's store. we would go & buy candy with money from grandma & grandpa. kathy & i would talk jibberish in the hopes that mr. triggs would think that we were foreign. it was so cool to walk down there by ourselves. my grandfather loved to work with wood & we all grew up with a deep appreciation for wood, quality & old things. i remember the smell of all the oak in grandma's house- the doors, especially. many warm memories. here are some old photos of my mom's family in front of 5th at adams. don't you just love my mom's hat in the second photo? although it may seem an obvious question as to who my mother is in the photo (she's on the far right), upon a second glance grandma's hat is rather fetching as well, don't you think? that pic was taken in 1944.
grandma moved to a retirement home in northern virginia in 1976. i hadn't been to portsmouth since 1969 when my grandfather died. we went to portsmouth in 1996 to bury my grandmother, who died one month short of her 100th birthday. we went by house- 5th at adams- & my mother, aunt & uncle were just heartbroken. windows were broken, the house was in general disrepair. they were so sad. they made another trip in 2001 & learned that the house had recently been purchased by a young couple who had plans to fix it up. mom left from that trip hopeful that the house might be improved.
so kathy & i decided to drive by the house & were delighted to find that the young couple had been true to their word. we knocked on the door only to find no one home. many improvements had been undertaken & the house looked so much better. portsmouth is a relatively depressed town- it did not look like much was vital there. mom said it hasn't been the same since the shoe factory left. it was a former manufacturing town (selby shoes & us shoe used to have plants there). it is like so many small towns in our country, gasping for life & somehow managing to stay alive. i drive through them or by them & look with appreciation upon the stately old homes, mourning their past glory. & each of those homes holds memories for someone. my grandmother was a true german- she sadly had no sense of humor & the most tender thing i remember about her is when she used to braid my hair while my mom shucked corn, all of us sitting on the back porch.
so the town is dying & probably has been for a long time, but 5th at adams has found some new life. it will always live on in me, of course. everytime i look at the church pew, or my grandmother's dining room table in my dining room or the side table from her house in the living room. today these things have a history that is known & stories that still get told- one day soon they won't.
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