Nanny. What does that nickname conjure up for you? For me it’s my paternal grandmother, Josephine Melinda Bodle.
Nanny lived with my family for as long as I can
remember. In my younger days, she was a “snowbird”,
meaning that she would spend most of the summers in Pennsylvania and winter
with us in Florida. I remember
walking with her through the airport for her to fly “back home” as she called
it.
She was a native of Pennsylvania, born 27 March 1885 in
Williamsport, Pennsylvania. She married
Herbert J. Campbell (no idea what the middle initial stands for, but probably
James, his father’s name) on 20 Jan 1909 in a United Methodist Church in Williamsport.
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| The marriage book with Herbert & Josephine featured. |
Nanny was a most excellent cook. She had her own restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania during the great depression of the 1930’s. She also told me she ran a boarding house, and in the 1940 census she is listed with two boarders and says she owns a restaurant. She also told me that she was the first cook hired by Penn State University. I do have a letter from the school where she was hired to be the lead cook for an engineering project, but the kind folks at PSU couldn’t determine if she was the “first” cook to be hired as this was for a project and not the school itself.
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| Nanny's BBQ in Altoona, Pennsylvania. |
She also ran a kitchen, “The Friend’s Union”, in State
College, Pennsylvania. This was a Quaker
run facility I’ve been told. I have many
pictures of the house that served as the meeting place. I love the hand written note on back of the second one, “This is where the cookies come from”.
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| Two photos of the Friend's Union. |
But that’s just background on Nanny. I have one particular story of many to tell
you. It involves Nanny, my parents, and
me. The year would be about 1970 or
so. I do remember that I was not yet in
high school, so still considered (to my mother especially) as a kid.
The house I grew up in was a small 3 bedroom, probably no
more than 1100 square feet. My parents
had the master bedroom, Nanny had the small bedroom up front and I had the room
in between, both in location and size.
The doorway into this room was odd shaped. Once you had came in the room you had to make
an immediate left then a right to get to the main area. Not really a hallway nor a foyer, just odd
walls due to the closets in the rooms on either side. This did allow the placement of an extra
dresser on one of the walls.
I didn’t use that dresser at all. Mom would put extra linens and other stuff in
the drawers, except for the top drawer.
I don’t why she didn’t use the top drawer, but Nanny used that
drawer. Maybe they had some kind of
agreement.
And what did Nanny put in that drawer? There were several keepsake types of items,
such as this huge scrapbook. She had
taken an old wallpaper sample book and glued pictures, cards, and even leaves
in over the samples. I still have that
book and I’m trying to somehow salvage the pictures. Most times I just have to cut the entire
picture, with the backing out. There are
several pictures that are back to back in the book, so I can’t just cut one out
as that would destroy the picture on the other side. I haven’t cut out all that many pictures yet.
But that’s not the interesting thing she put that top
drawer. It seems that she would take my
father’s old Playboy magazines and put them in that drawer. Now dad didn’t have a subscription to
Playboy, and as far I could tell back then, he didn’t buy every issue. It just may be possible that he was
interested in the articles (as well as the visual aspect). My first purchase of Playboy was specifically for the
interview with the then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. I was not old enough to vote for Mr. Carter,
my 18th birthday was three weeks after the 1976 election. But I was very interested in what he had to
say. Along with those visual aspects of
the magazine as well. But back when this
story took place, I honestly borrowed my dad’s magazines for the cartoons. I may not have understood all of the
cartoons, but I still enjoyed them.
Nanny was a very strong Christian woman. Why she was taking the Playboys and putting
them in this drawer is beyond me. I
would have thought she would have just thrown them out. But she made sure that I knew what she was
doing when she put the first one in there.
I was in the room playing some music, an old 45 RPM most likely, when
she brought that first magazine in. She had
an odd smile on her face as she watched me watching her. Nothing was said, just a smile. Naturally, I immediately checked it out. I could leave the magazine in the drawer to “read”
it.
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| Nanny's membership card. It's dated 17 September 1940. This should be in Altoona, PA. |
It was about six months later that my mom found them. First, she accused dad of hiding them there. Of course, he could honestly deny that. In fact, I don’t think he knew where the
magazines were going. He may have
thought that either mom or Nanny had thrown them away. I used to refer to my mom as 20th
century Puritanism at it's finest. That
was until I found some rather racy pictures of her. Anyway, next on my mom’s hit list was
me. Surprisingly, I wasn't at the top of the list this time. How she thought I could have grabbed
the mags and hid them away I’ll never understand.
But while she was yelling at me about it. Over and over asking me if I had put them
there, Nanny walked up and said she that she put them there. Mom, of course, didn’t believe her, and
continued to blame me. In the end mom
threw the magazines out and I was grounded.
That didn’t bother me all that much.
I only had two friends anyway.
Nanny later told me she was sorry that she got me into
trouble. She also put some Life
magazines in that drawer and turned down any pages that had anything my mom
would have disapproved of. My older brother didn't get along with Nanny as well as I did. But it was thigs like this that has endeared her memory to me.
Peace,
B
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