Ramblin' Rose Part 1

I am going to try and write about this topic in one post, but I don't know if I will finish it. Or if it will end up being a two parter. I will try to add comedy that will not only hopefully make you laugh but also help me laugh and alleviate some of the sadness I feel. And maybe it says something about me or my emotional state that simply writing about this will probably illicit strong emotions. At least stronger emotions than I've allowed myself to fully feel and/or embrace. This also has potential to be incredibly sentimental.

My Aunt Rose is in the hospital with pneumonia and a urinary tract infection. She wouldn't really want me to share her age, but I will say she was born in the late 20s. Before the hospital, she was in a nursing home. And as far as nursing homes go, it's a fairly decent one. While we had no intention of her staying in the nursing home longer than a few weeks, she has been there for over a year now. And it's been sad to watch her decline.

And her first name is not really Rose. But I won't tell you what it is because she wouldn't like that either. She never really liked it that much, and that's why she goes by Rose. It is a cool first name, though. It begins with a Z. That's all I'm going to say. 

Rose grew up as the only girl in a poor tenant farming family with four older brothers. She told me that she would often have to wear hand-me-down overalls to school. And because of that she got made fun of.  That is, until her older brothers beat the tar out of who ever made fun of her. They were pretty protective of their little sister.

Later in high school I think she was pretty popular at school and had a good amount of friends. About the time she was ready to graduate high school, all of her brothers were already married and had kids.

And also, her family wasn't really that anymore. My Grandpa owned a plot of land north of St. Elmo. He and his sons built a house and farm on a plot of hilly land north of St. Elmo. Much to their good fortune, Exxon Oil arrived in area in search of oil. And they found it. Lots of it. More importantly, they found oil on my Grandpa's land. With the permission of my grandpa, they built oil rigs and started drilling for oil. Grandpa reaped the financial benefits of having the oil rigs on his land. Grandpa saved quite a bit of the money, but he also used some to help Rose as well as my dad (who hadn't been born yet). Later they replaced the rigs with pumpjacks (see below). See-sawing pumpjacks peppered the country north of St. Elmo for many years. And many of them are still pumping. And my family still gets checks. But they are much, much smaller.

At any rate, just as my Aunt Rose was leaving the homestead, my Grandma developed a tumor. Well, they thought it was a tumor. It turned out to be my dad. So now my Aunt had a little brother to fawn over and spoil. Since my dad pretty much grew up as an only child, my aunt came home often to visit, and I believe she always brought gifts.

While my dad was growing up in the "house on the hill" north of St. Elmo, Illinois, my aunt worked for Western Union's telegraph service. I believe her first job was wiring money and messages from a Western Union shop in a hardware store in downtown St. Elmo. At the time, St. Elmo had a lot of oil money coming in and had a pretty lively downtown with a movie theater, department stores and street dances on the weekends. It wasn't Times Square, but it was lively for a little burg. 

Rose quickly...um...rose in the ranks at Western Union. She was eventually asked to travel and fill in for other operators that were on vacation, sick or let go. It was through these travels that she meant many people that she would visit later on in life. When working for Western Union, she often stayed in a mother-in-law apartment or some small room with a local family. At some point during her travels she met the man who would be her husband many moons later, Robert McGuire. Bob was a salesman and traveled quite a bit as well.

Due to the increased popularity of the telephones and computers, Western Union changed its focus to primary wire transfers and Fax transmissions. I never really fully understood this when she talked about it, but she was a part of the beginning of Fax machines being used to send messages and important documents. In fact, she was eventually promoted to a position that involved closing some Western Union offices and training others on how to use the new Fax technology. She was always pretty proud that she was involved with that. 

I found out recently she worked in Western Union offices close to where I live now in Skokie. I believe it was while she was working at Rockford that she started taking Arthur Murray dance classes.  While I never saw her dance, I know she loved dancing. Before she entered the nursing home, she watched Dancing with the Stars religiously. She was pretty much the only reason I knew who the contestants were. 

While Rose was doing well at Western Union, she saw the writing on the wall. She knew it wasn't going to last much longer, so she made a plan to go to a Beauty Salon School. I think that's what they called them then. I don't recall where she attended the salon school, but I know she used the money she saved up from working Western Union to pay for her schooling. When she was finished, she asked her father if she could borrow money to start her own shop in Springfield, Illinois. He agreed and soon after that she started "My Fair Lady" on South Grand. It was right across from a Sears store. A really great place to be situated at the time. At the beginning she had no other stylists working with her. She would often go to the Sears parking lot and put flyers in the car windows, or she hired a young kid to hand them out in the neighborhood. It was tough getting started, but she made it. 

Over the years she was able to bring on other stylists. Her salon did pretty well. She also paid her dad back every bit of the money she borrowed. She would want you to know that. 

When I was around five or six, I visited her a few times at the salon. I remember she had an office in the back with a safe. She was once held up by a drug addict looking for some cash. I remember her telling me the thief shot his gun into the floor and herded her and her stylists, and their customers into the tiny wood-paneled office. She said he told them to stay in the office and not come out or he would shoot them. I also remember Rosie telling me the thief asked for everyone's money, but she didn't tell him about the money in the safe.  They eventually caught the guy a few days later.

I think it was then she was driving one of her many Cadillacs  I believe this one was gold-colored. It was a boat of a car that required a large berth anywhere it went.  It fitted how she thought of herself, I think. A Ramblin' Rose.  

It was during this time she also traveled the world with Bob McGuire, the man who she had met while working for Western Union. He was an incredibly wealthy man at this time. He had owned some Christmas stores in Indiana. He also owned some restaurants. I believe he sold most of these businesses and invested in some property in Monterey, California. Specifically, the famous Monterey Bay Canning Company building (seen in two images below) in Monterey, California. It was the cannery featured in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

My Uncle Bob owned the lease on that building. He also had a lot of money in Swiss Bank Accounts. He was a shrewd business man.   

They used their wealth to travel to Egypt, Australia, China, Japan, Ireland, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and other places. She always brought us gifts back from these far away places. And pictures. Pictures of her on camels. Pictures of her holding a koala. Pictures of her near the Straits of Gibraltar. Pictures of her in front of of the green valleys in Ireland. I lived in a town of 700 people, so these places she visited might have been on Mars as far as I was concerned. They were so exotic and otherworldly.

Well, I hope to continue this post later. It has turned out to take longer than expected.