Growing Up in a Lumber Yard
 In an earlier blog post (Our Home-Life at the End of the Depression), I wrote about my earliest memories of my family and the circumstances of our daily life before World War II. In this post, I am writing about the years just afterward.
The death of my grandfather, George Luther Bell, brought significant change to our family dynamic. My grandmother, Clyde Bell, then had nowhere to live except with us.
Grandma Bell was totally blind, the result of a non-malignant brain tumor pressing on her optic nerves. This left her close to helpless. Had she lived in the present age instead of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, an early operation might have restored her sight. My grandfather spent everything he had or could earn trying to find a cure, but the most the doctors of the time could recommend was to try to keep her comfortable. So the tumor grew year by year, horribly distorting the shape of her skull. Grandma required a great deal of attention, and most of this responsibility fell on mother. Being a good Christian woman (think Olivia on The Waltons), she just added the work to her already heavy burdens, never neglecting either her husband or her children. The old saying, “Man’s work is measured by the sun, but a woman’s work is never done,” was never truer than in the case of my mother.
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