Thelma and Bernice

Thelma and Bernice or...

My sister and I used to think it was so funny when our Grandpa Smith would call me Thelma and Tudy, Bernice.

Our Grandma and Grandpa Smith had thirty-one grandchildren but Tudy and I spent the most time with them as children since they took care of us while our parents worked.  We moved to the San Francisco bay area when I was eleven and Tudy was nine but we still spent a lot of time with them since we were so attached to them. 

As Grandpa got older, he would forget and call us Thelma and Bernice instead of Helen and Tudy.  We would laugh between the two of us and go ahead and respond to Grandpa when he got our names wrong.

Aunt Thelma was our Mother's oldest sister and Aunt Bernice was her second oldest sister.  Mama was the youngest child out of a family of six children.  Actually, Aunt Bernice's name was Helen Bernice, but she went by Bernice and didn't use the Helen. I was named after her with my name being Helen.

Sometimes if one of us wanted to get the attention of the other one, we would call each other Thelma or Bernice and then laugh.  We loved both of our aunts very much and we loved our Grandpa very much.  We just thought it was funny and cute.

They are all gone now.  Aunt Thelma, Aunt Bernice (Nicey) Grandpa, and my baby sister, Tudy (Doreena), but I have very fond memories of all of them.  This is one that I thought I would share.

Tudy and Her Bottle

Looking for Tudy's Bottle

I remember when my baby sister was about 18 months old, my Mom and my Grandma Smith were trying to put my sister down to sleep. 

They were putting her down in the bed in the room that served as the kitchen, dining room and bedroom. The front room served as living room, and bedroom for Grandma and Grandpa. That was when Grandma and Grandpa only had two rooms to their house.

Anyway, Tudy would say she wanted her bottle.  Every time Mama would give her the bottle she would throw it and cry for the bottle again. Tudy wanted to go outside to get her bottle.  So we all went outside (except for Grandpa) with the flashlight looking for Tudy's bottle. We get out there and what does Tudy do?  She crawls under the house and comes back out with one of Grandpa's wine bottles!

That was back when Grandpa still drank alcohol. He would drink wine and beer.  Grandma never allowed anyone to bring alcohol into the house so Grandpa would drink outside and he hid his wine bottles under the house.  Tudy must have been watching Grandpa and decided she wanted to try out some of the stuff Grandpa was drinking.  The house was up on blocks so there was space under the house.

Of course Tudy wasn't allowed to have any of Grandpa's wine but leave it to her to have us going on a wild goose chase right from the start.  Never a dull moment with that girl, I tell ya even when she was a baby.

Tudy and Me

This is Tudy (Doreena) and me at our Grandma and Grandpa Smith's house on Rd 198 in Poplar, Ca.  I was about 7 or 8 here and Tudy was 5 or 6.  We were born almost exactly two years a part.

The house was still two rooms at this time.  The front room served as a living room/bedroom combination and the back room served as the kitchen/dining/bedroom combination.  Our Grandpa built the house himself.

Tudy and I spent more time here than we did at our own house since Grandma took care of us while our parents worked.  I thought it was the most wonderful place in the world and felt very safe and secure there.

As you can see, our skin was tanned from playing outside so much.  Tudy would always get much darker than me since she inherited the skin tone of our Father.  I would burn first and then get a little tan.  In the summertime, it would get so hot we wouldn't stay outside for too long unless we were in the shade.  We would run around in the  sun a bit, back in the shade, and back into the house to cool off.

Grandpa only had a swamp cooler in the front room that had to be sprayed down with water from the outside periodically, but it did a pretty good job of keeping us cooled down.

I don't know how my parents, Grandpa, and other family members stood the heat to work in the fields to support us.  Thinking about it now, I have a whole new respect for them and what they had to endure.