Round and About: A Memoir

By Anne B. Udy

Ramblings through a journey over continents and islands, including marriage and six children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369494035

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Copyright © 2023 by Anne B. Udy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 11/15/2023

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

1 Childhood

2 Marriage and Family

3 After Jim’s Retirement

APPENDICES

Dedicated to my husband, James Stuart Udy,

who supported me with his love,

expanded my horizons

and substantially enlarged my life experience

beyond anything I could have imagined

INTRODUCTION

T HERE WAS ONCE a bridge. It was long and narrow. It spanned a creek, and as it was only a suspension footbridge without a handrail of any kind, it called for excellent balance from any who crossed by it. You could find it between Leaning Lena and Written Rock on the Clear Creek Road south of Lancaster, Ohio. The bridge swung between the traffic and bustle of everyday life and the peace of the woods with a grotto at the bottom of a hill. A wide overhang of sandstone sheltered a dry sandy floor; rocks of different shapes and sizes begged to be climbed; and water fell into a streamlet where polliwogs turned into frogs. Above them, higher up among the rocks, dung beetles made their food from what the world calls muck. Sun shone, clouds came, and rain and snow. The magic of the grotto never ce ased.

I do not remember seeing or crossing the bridge, although it was still in use when I was three years old and maybe a year or so later. Perhaps it intrigues me because I often need to try to balance on a swaying bridge between my life as it appears in the physical world and the life which flourishes in my imagination. In any case, that bridge led to the property my parents bought, which they called Green Mansions. For me—even when I moved to Australia—that piece of land was my special place. The grotto, or cave as we called it, was for me its centre.

I left the United States at twenty-four and have always visited Green Mansions whenever I was able to return. As well I learned to think myself back into the hills and rocks of this place which I loved, whenever I needed them.

Now that more than two-thirds of my life has been spent in Australia, and I have been transplanted over and over again—living in various parts of the States, Switzerland briefly, and different areas in NSW, including the ACT—I cherish many places. Green Mansions will always be special. But I have enjoyed sunrises, sunsets, trees, stars, clouds, and beautiful views everywhere—and wonderful people. These days it is not so much the places but the people that are important to me. I miss deeply the ones who are too far away to visit and rejoice in the ones with whom I can spend time.

1

Childhood

I WAS BORN ON the second of September 1928 and was christened Anne Floyd after my maternal grandmother’s mother, my great-grandmother, Anne Floyd Swan Smith (1840– 1909).

Even at an early age I appear to be interested in reading.

I did not know my maternal grandparents who died just after I was born. Rutherford Hayes Platt and Maryette Andrews Smith Platt were respected members of society and related to Rutherford Birchard Hayes—nineteenth president of the United States. They had inherited wealth and were pillars of Trinity Episcopal Church.

My paternal grandparents had quite a different background. Frank Albert Benua’s father had come from Germany at about eighteen, and married a girl from a German immigrant family when he was twenty-two. He became a merchant. My grandfather grew up on the Ohio River at Ripley and worked hard all his life. It was probably a farming community, and no doubt there were chores for all the family. He told me that he could not eat onions because, as a child, he had stolen onions from a farmer’s field. He later worked at different times in a foundry, a jewellery business, and a men’s clothing shop. He established his own real estate company in which my father joined him, and he left a trust for his three granddaughters, which has certainly made life easier for us.

My grandmother, Helen Franklin Ellsbury Benua, was a country doctor’s daughter. I gathered that she was delighted to have her son marry into a family she would have seen as being at the top of Columbus, Ohio, society. By the time he married my mother, my father was their only child. His older sister had been training to be a kindergarten teacher but had died of typhoid—misdiagnosed by the doctors—before the age of twenty. Perhaps that was part of what made my grandmother seem such a stiff woman. She loved us in her own way, but I remember little warmth. She did try to relate to me by using skills her daughter had shown her, and I delighted in making a string of paper dolls all holding hands. My grandmother did not approve of little girls wearing shorts or trousers, so dresses were obligatory when she was around.

My grandfather always took an interest in what we were doing.

Although we were expected to be on our best behaviour, I’m sure we enjoyed outings with our father’s parents. I especially delight in memories of granddad’s electric car, with its amazing ee-uu-gah horn.

When my grandmother died in 1944, Granddad came to live with us. I was in boarding school but got to know him in the holidays. He was an extremely gentle man—a gentleman as well—and I remember him with great fondness, and I wonder sometimes why I never named a son after him. His life had been one of hard work, and he had never had time for entertainments, such as the theatre or concerts. When I took a one semester course at a local college in music appreciation, he was intrigued by my assignments and especially loved to listen to the recording of Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev.

He refrained from commenting unfavourably even when he disapproved of anything. I recall his soft response to my new full length gown, which had only string-like straps over the shoulders. I’m sure he was at least a bit shocked at such bareness, but he just asked with a smile if it was not, perhaps, too long.

Grandfathers are to be listened to and their words respected. I was glad to do this, especially when he informed me—as he often did over the years—that all the best people were born in September. Of course. That made good sense to me. I accept it as solid fact.

* * *

There was a little girl, who had a little curl

right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good, she was very, very good,

but when she was bad, she was horrid.

I did not have a curl and I do not think I was often horrid, but I did try to be very, very good. I think as well as it being a way to keep my parents’ love, I wanted to make them happy. I often rubbed my mother’s forehead and tried to think of things to do to please both my parents.

All of my DNA was from my parents and grandparents, but my emotional bond with my mother was weak—much as it might, perhaps, be for an adopted child. I felt this always, but it was many years before I understood it.

Early Years

At the time of my birth or at least for some time before it, my mother and father lived with her parents at 414 East Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio. This home was originally built by William Augustus Platt for his wife, Fanny Arabella Hayes Platt, the sister of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, who was a frequent visitor. He wrote that the house was ‘of prodigious dimensions, well arranged, and supplied with every convenience.’

Especially living there, my mother was well aware of both her parents’ poor health. Her father died three months after I was born. Her mother died less than a month later. My mother had little room in her heart for a new baby when she was consumed with grief for parents to whom she was deeply attached. She found it hard to hold her own identity apart from her mother. Until I was in my teens, she gave her three daughters each a gift every year on her mother’s birthday.

The baby nurse whom we called Nana was a major figure in my childhood and probably was with us from the beginning. But my mother was in full charge and set the rules. An early one, which she may have picked up from a book about rearing children, was that I must be left in the playpen in a room by myself for an hour (or perhaps half an hour) every day. This happened in the lounge room and no one—no one at all—was allowed to enter until the time was up.

One day the household was startled by a piercing cry or scream from me in my playpen. I understand that one or more persons went towards the room to see what the matter was. My mother stopped that. The time was not yet up. When the clock indicated that my isolation could come to an end, it was discovered that I had reached through the bars of the playpen, grasped an electric cord, and pulled it into my mouth. I had chewed on it and received an electric shock.

Grandma Platt found some joy with my birth—the first child of her only daughter. When she and her husband were in North Carolina and less than a month before his death, she wrote to her daughter-in-law, the wife of her eldest son, ‘Little Anne weighed ten & a half lbs when I left home & is beginning to tell wonderful stories & smile when spoken to. Isn’t this dawning & developing of intelligence a marvel.’

Although I grew up with only one set of grandparents, my father’s aunt Clara and uncle Ed were like a second set. They had no children of their own. Since my father had bought a piece of their farm on which he built our home, they were next door.

Aunt Clara was overweight and had poor eyesight. She seemed very old to me. She was, in fact, fourteen years older than her sister, Helen, who was my grandmother. I found it difficult to believe my father when he told me she had played tennis on the court that was on their property.

Clara had gone with their father by horse and buggy many times to visit his patients. She had graduated as an MD from the University of Michigan in 1878 and had also done some study at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1890 she married Edward Huggins, a lawyer from Mt. Orab in Brown County. They lived at Ellsbury Woods where they farmed—at least to some degree—while Ed, no doubt, continued with his law practise. When my father was a child it was a full day’s excursion to go from Columbus by horse and buggy to visit them for a meal and return home.

Uncle Ed died in February of 1938.

Well before that, we were living on their property, which was called Ellsbury Woods.

I had full freedom to roam over all of Ellsbury Woods, including the lawns with their trees and bushes at the front and the wooded hillside on the side and back of the property. I also went freely into the section behind their property. This, like all the land along the creek in that area, was owned by Mr Jeffrey who lived in Parkview Avenue, five or so houses to the south of us.

When I think of the Jeffreys, it brings to mind an incident, which occurred when I was possibly about two years old. My parents, with me in tow, were visiting the Jeffreys, and I wandered out to the area where a swimming pool was located. I would not be writing this today if someone had not quickly noticed my fall into the water and pulled me out.

Most of the relatives and cousins we knew were on my mother’s side of the family. We had Benua cousins in Columbus but my gentle grandfather had in some way become estranged from his elder brother and they were not part of our life. Only once, when I was a teenager, my father took me to meet my great uncle Louis who lived in the same area of Columbus as we did.

We did get to know Great Aunt Leila, Granddad’s younger sister, when she moved to Columbus after her husband died. Granddad’s older sisters, who lived in Ripley, Ohio, made a quilt of small hexagons for me. They began it around the time I was born and gave it to me when finished, four years later.

My mother was the youngest in her family. She had three brothers. The two older ones were married before she was and each had two children before I was born. Over the years, I particularly enjoyed any times with these uncles and cousins.

Of course, it was the cousins living in Columbus that I knew best.

I am especially fond of the memory of a particular visit from Robby and Nancy, Uncle Bob’s children. Nancy was two years older than I, and Robby was about twenty months older than Nancy. No doubt it was Robby’s idea to get three large mason jars and fill them with the tiny fireflies that lit up the grounds around the house after dark. Each of us filled a jar and then opened them in the closed garage and delighted in the wonderful show we had produced.

Uncle Joe was just four years older than my mother. The story is that when she was born, he was told there was a wonderful surprise upstairs, and he went in excitement, hoping it was a puppy. He was more than disappointed to discover the truth. In later years, he enjoyed having a sister and lived with us for a while before he was married. He took the first pictures of my early attempts at walking. I also enjoyed my uncle Rud with his stories of Snigbuglydeboozeldum and, when I was a bit older, appreciated my uncle Bob’s interest and respect for all sorts of people and his relaxed way of handling situations.

When I was only two years

old, I was given a puppy. I was too young to have any responsibility for my dog. I just enjoyed Puddy. I named him myself, telling my parents, ‘His name is Puddy Puddy Toedee Toedee, which means it walks.’

How lucky I was to have Nana and Puddy. They both enriched my life substantially.

As soon as I was old enough to have stories read to me, my mother and I had wonderful times together. We often acted out parts of the stories. I loved to act as the tigers turning into ghee—from Little Black Sambo—and was proud of the fact that I knew ghee was like melted butter.

When I was about three, my parents and I visited Bermuda, where some relatives lived. Here I am on a bicycle with my father.

While there, I met my cousin Bill Horsfall who was about eleven at the time. The next time we met, I was living with my family in Canberra, ACT.

The second child in the family was born nearly four years after my birth. She was christened Helen Maryette after her two grandmothers. However, my mother had great difficulty relating to her mother-in-law, Helen. Although she longed to have a child named after her own mother, she had the name changed by deed poll to Polly. She finally got her wish for someone named after her mother when a granddaughter named a baby Maryette.

Nineteen months after Polly’s birth, our third sister, Emily Platt Benua, was born. So as not to confuse the two Emilys, she was called Liebe.

Nana looked after all three of us.

Possibly about a year after my sister Polly was