Blanche Fisher Scoville



Blanche Scoville, far right

Blanche Fisher Scoville

When I knew my grand mother, Blanche, she was renting a small two-story house on Memorial Drive and 3rd Street NW. The Bow River ran along the south side of Memorial Drive. From the sidewalk that paralleled the raid, a long pathway leading up to the door of the house, which had both a basement underneath of it, and a gable on top of the main floor.

Grandmother had long hair, long gray hair braided and wrapped around her head, severe looking to me. When she brushed out that hair, it was full and rich, flowing down her back. She used full strokes of her arm to get to the bottom of that waist length, wavy hair. Then back up it went, into those severe plaits.

At Christmas time, Grandmother had a scene on a buffet: eight reindeer running across the top snow and her Christmas cards stacked in the sleigh behind the deer. I was not allowed to play with them.

One day she was in the kitchen cooking, something that smelled so good. I must not have been allowed in the kitchen for I remember asking her from the door of her living room, what it was she was making. “Chums for meddlers” she said. I am sure I saw popcorn balls, or puffed wheat balls. I thought she had some kind of mystery going on and that they must be for a surprise later on. I didn’t get any of them. Since then I have often wondered what chums for meddlers means.

My grandmother had a beautiful contralto voice, one that was stage worthy. And I used to have the wooden case for that music that she sang all of those years. I passed that wooden case on to Catherine, a few years ago.

My mother told me that Blanche did not like to lend her music. That is not to say Blanche was selfish. Wyora told me that Blanche had little discretionary income. Some of that income she invested in new sheet music, which she sang in church to serve others. So if someone bored the music and sang the song before she did, she felt hurt.

My father used to tell this story about Blanche. She often sang in church, a deep rich contralto voice with performance quality to it. But Blanche was always singing, never asked to speak in church. When Doral was in the Bishopric, he asked her to speak in church rather than sing. “Oh, I can’t do that.” She said.

He persisted and she accepted. Doral told this story about her talk. Blanche chose for her subject, “Women in the Bible”. He conveyed his amazement whenever he told this story, his wonder at the hours she had spent, gathering so much material out of the Bible, using only the subject: women.

When Blanche died my mother inherited four items: Blanche’s wedding ring, her rocking chair, her music case, and a few pieces of her music. When Doral’s and Wyora’s possessions were distributed, Grandma Scoville’s music case was one of the items I took. I transported it home where it housed the music by my piano for many years.

One day Suzanne Truba came to my house, went straight to the music case, rubbed her hands up and down the scratched and gouged sides of it and said, “I love antiques. Where did you get this one? What is the date on it? Look at the workmanship. I love the the tongue and groove shelving.”

I had been thinking that its simple lines and its scratched sides and had been thinking it was about time for the music case to be retired to the back alley, to the garbage, to tell the truth.

“Oh, it is nothing”, I said.

“When you no longer want it, Arta,” she said, “call me.”

The 100 years of markings on the aging music case, took on a new beauty to me.

As to the other three items in that inheritance to my mother, my daughters and I wore the thick
gold band off and on, depending on whose finger it fit at the time, until the band was lost. The second  item, the rocking chair, had thick wooden slats for its back, and the rocking chair runners had been replaced many times over the years. As soon as they were repaired, it seems another child stood on the runner for a ride and a runner would break again. When I had more children and furniture than room in my house, and something had to go, I gave that rocking chair to my sister, Darla.

I still have a few pieces of Blanche's sheet music.

Life could not have been easy for her. She had eight children and was widowed when her husband fell from scaffolding in the sugar factory in Raymond. She was paid $50 compensation for his death. I do remember the tone of Doral’s voice when he would tell that story: compensation — $50 to a widow and her children for their loss.

My mother was not 24 yet, when her father died. Wyora was the second child in the family, so there must have been a group of teenagers that had to make their way into the world with Blanche as their single parent. Blanche’s sister, Bertha, was married to Woolford Shields, a farmer with livestock. Woolford would kill an animal in the fall and give some of the meat to the Scoville’s. That is Doral’s story too, a story that went along with my introduction to Ian Shields, my Mormon friend in Salmon Arm, who is the grandson of that man.

Blanche became a practical nurse and moved to Utah before I was six years old. When I got older, I can remember the shock I felt when my mother told me that Blanche said it was OK to have weak tea if you were sick, that it would settle your stomach. I knew that couldn’t be right, no matter how sick a person was. My mother tried to explain that it was all right by saying, well, it was very, very weak tea.

(To be continued : — and as a postscript, my googling to find the meaning of chums for meddlers has only brought me this: There is an old saying, "Layholes for Meddlers" – which might mean "Traps for Nosey People". A "Layhole" could come from "Laying in wait" to trap someone and "Meddlers" are people who get involved in things that do not, or should not, concern them. There is a similar saying, ‘lay o’s fer nosy meddlers’. “Lay o’s fer nosy meddlers is the diminutive of ‘lay overs for nosy meddlers’ – as in laying a cane over someone’s hand or back for being nosy.)

(Stories remembered by Arta Johnson)