I likely was conceived in Amsterdam, NY, where my mother, an impoverished war widow lived in reduced circumstances with her two little children. Her husband, Captain Clinton Smith, a Hollywood-handsome fighter pilot, was killed over Germany in World War II. Amsterdam’s an unlovely sort of place, once famous for its manufacture of carpets and other textiles. Bill and Emma Smith, my mother’s first in-laws, lived there too, in a big house on the edge of a golf course. They were gentle and kind and I called them my grandparents which, of course, they were not. By the time she married Bill, Emma was on her third husband. Thanksgivings in their expansive dining room were a perfect representation of Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting, though they wouldn’t have known a Rockwell from a Dali. Emma, a stout German fond of beer, was never drunk and never sober. From her I learned two words I remember still.
© 2024 John Oliver
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