Saturday, June 1, 2013

My Mother Lillian Mae Rolo Sinor

My Mother was named Lillian Mae Rolo Sinor.  Her family called her Lilly but for some reason my Dad always called her Sally.  Most of our friends didn't know that her name was Lillian.

She died when I was 11 years old.  But she managed to teach me a lot even so.  I remember when we moved to California for her health she was in bed a lot.  She would write out a menu for dinner and write the recipes down for what we were having and I would fix dinner and if I had a problem I would go ask her what to do and
she would tell me how to fix it.

My Dad's parents really loved my Mom.  Grandma told me once that she was ashamed to admit it but she loved my Mom more than her own kids.  I really could understand it.  She was just a lovable person.  Grandpa Sinor and her would wrangle over who got the back of the chicken when fried chicken was for dinner. ( I know most of you don't know what the back of a chicken looks like as store bought cut up chicken doesn't have a back piece, They cut it right up the middle and it is part of the thigh.) After she died and I was living with my grandparents we were having fried chicken and Grandpa didn't take the back.  I asked him why and he said he didn't especially like it but just enjoyed arguing with my mom for it. 
She was born in Washington State and lived in Kansas for most of her younger years.  She married my dad when she was only 16. They lived in Arkansas when they first married. One day my grandpa Sinor and she were doing something in the field and Grandpa asked her to go to the barn and get a tow sack.  She went and then came back and told Grandpa all she could find was gunny sacks.  For those who are ignorant about terms in the South, tow sacks are burlap sacks and so are gunny sacks.   Grandpa thought it was really funny that she didn't know what a tow sack was.

I remember when we lived in Detroit when she went shopping or anywhere out of the house she always wore a hat.  Women did in the thirties and forties.

My Mother was a very Independent thinking woman. 
She didn't take any guff from my Dad.  One time they were playing cards with some friends and Daddy started giving her a hard time about her plays and she picked up a unopened bottle of beer and whacked him along side the head.  He decided her plays were just fine.  My Dad was very self centered and she kept him in line.
She didn't let him run over her or us kids. 

When she went to the hospital in California where she died we children came up to Washington to stay with her parents. My Grandma and Grandpa Rolo in Klickitat Wa.  She wrote us and my cousin Patty found some of them after her mother died.  I don't know how Aunt Elsie got them but I am glad she did.  It is nice to have something that she wrote to me.
 
Lillian Mae Rolo
 


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