My mom was a "Little Heathen"
My mom was a "Little Heathen"
Had lifelong friendship with bestselling author.
It didn’t get a lot of attention but Mildred Armstrong Kalish, who had a New York Times bestseller at age 85 in 2007 with her nonfiction work, “Little Heathens,” passed away last year at age 101.
A family member of mine recently ran across her obituary in one of the local papers. You can read it at the link here. It was a pretty eventful and incredible life.
I had tried to check periodically online — and happy when I didn’t find anything — but I guess I missed it.
In addition to having many fans whose hearts she warmed and inspired, Ms. Kalish was very special to our family. Before her late-blooming notoriety, we knew her as “Millie,” my mom’s longtime friend from childhood.
”Little Heathens” was Millie’s account of growing up in rural Iowa during the Depression.
It was a history she shared with my mom, Margaret Ann Gardner, later Kinney, also known as “Marge” or “Margie.”
Millie and Mom grew up near Garrison in Benton County and were members of the Garrison High School Class of 1940. They were basketball teammates for the Garrison Rockets.
They stayed in touch over the years, first by letter, then by email. Yes, if you can imagine it, two ladies well into their 80s, chatting away by email over the computer. In one of Mom’s classic malapropisms, she used to call it “sending an air mail over the TV.”
When Millie was on a book tour after “Little Heathens” came out, Mom was among her cheering section of fellow Garrison alums when she made stops locally for lectures and book signings.
Millie received an honorary degree from her alma mater, Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, now the University of Northern Iowa, or UNI, in 2010.
Millie, Mom and the other Garrison "Little Heathens" were invited to a reception in the UNI Commons, hosted by then-UNI President Ben Allen his wife Pat. I took Mom.
Mom and Millie were all dressed up. Both under five feet tall, they stood there giddly chitchatting back and forth eyeball to eyeball like they were 15 years old again – like two little American Girl dolls in their gowns, all dressed up for prom.
One of their male classmates came up to Mom and said, “You dated my cousin.”
“Which one?” Mom said.
Later she leaned over to me with a smirk and said, out of the corner of her mouth, “I dated both of ‘em!”
Millie referred to Mom as her “orphaned” friend. Mom never thought of herself that way, but she pretty much was. Her mom, my Grandma Cleo Smelser Gardner, died before she was 40, when Mom would have been in her early teens. My maternal grandfather was a bootlegger and, for all intents and purposes, largely out of the picture. Older siblings and extended family took charge after Grandma Cleo passed away.
Neither Mom nor Millie nor their siblings had it easy. Neither ever let that or anything else really slow them down. And Mom pretty much imparted that on to us.
“If you don’t like your life, change it!” Mom told me once. That’s when I decided to transfer from UNI to Iowa State and switch my major from English to journalism. Mom had made a much bigger change years earlier, when she went out and got a cosmetology degree after she and Dad divorced – and then went into business on her own.
Millie and Mom both served our country in World War II. Millie was a radioman in the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve. Mom helped make mortar shells at Associated Manufacturing in Waterloo while Dad was in the Army.
Mom taught us responsibility by example.
Like when we’d awaken on a winter morning to the wake-up call of the scraping of a snow shovel on the sidewalk. Mom was shoveling a path from the street to her beauty shop for her customers - she’d completely renovated our old dining room - and we jumped like firefighters in a firehouse. We knew we darn well better get out there.
Then there was the time she nagged me that I better take typing class in high school if I was going to be a writer. Yep. Good call, Mom.
Like Millie, Mom also was occasionally in for a little fun, as I’ve noted in previous columns. When I was shooting baskets in the driveway, the old Garrison High forward would steal one from behind me for a breakaway layup. She’d also squirrel away a couple of my big brothers’ contraband Black Kat firecrackers and set one off behind the couch when we were all watching TV, getting a big jump followed by an eye roll from my big brother Mike. Or, on one instance, she blasted one off in an empty coffee can under Dad’s chair at the breakfast table.
But Mom was pretty practical — much like Millie’s stories in “Little Heathens” about her grandparents. Mom never, ever wanted flowers for Mother’s Day or her birthday; she thought it was a waste of money. But she once asked me for a new spark plug wrench for her lawnmower. She relented on the flowers in later years - from my brother-in-law, but not from us kids.
She also said I got my journalism style from her because she wrote such “newsy” letters — including her letters to Millie.
Mom was patient -- another life lesson I'm better at sometimes more than others. But patience means hanging in there like a bulldog — hardly any bark, but stubborn persistence — and she definitely taught me that.
In all those ways, big and small, Mom’s showed us all how to live a life – and how much she loved us, unconditionally.
One night I just called her to return the favor. Instead of calling to vent and tell her my troubles, I surprised her.
“Mom?” I said.
"Yeah?” she said back, as if expecting some new calamity.
”I love you.”
”You called just to tell me that?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m telling you now, because I might not be able to some day.”
”Well Pat!” she said, “I love you too!”
Mom passed away five years ago at age 97. We were hoping she’d make it to 100, but we celebrated each birthday of her final years as the milestone it was. I was glad Millie made the century mark. And at that reception at UNI, I have to admit I was pleased the bestselling author was very happy to meet her friend Margie’s journalist son.
I miss calling Mom to talk about my day, seek her advice, just vent, or, during baseball season, to let her know when the Cubs were on TV. Also, Millie wasn’t the only wordsmith of the two. I miss Mom whipping my sorry behind with impunity at Scrabble - and talking smack to me when she’d use all her letters for a 50-point bonus score. “Isn’t that great?” she’d say.
“It’d be more fun for you if you won once in a while, wouldn’t it?” she’d also say. She’d read the Scabble dictionary at night just to memorize words. And it was no holds barred. She’d use words that’d curl a church lady’s hair to win.
And I miss her goulash.
But she just never seems very far away. Her stories and sayings are the gifts that keep on giving. One of my favorite images is of her and Millie chatting away at that reception at UNI as if no time had passed between them at all. I’d like to think they are still chatting away somewhere.
I still feel that, in a lot of ways large and small, my “Little Heathen” is still an angel on my shoulder.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed below. Clink on the links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription .
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
I truly believe people who grew up during the Depression carried those life lessons with them whereever they went, it comforted them when things fell apart knowing once you hit bottom there is only one way to go, UP! I can empathise with the blackcat fire cracker episode, sometimes and impish explosion is needed to remove you from being lulled into a complacent couch potato and back to some sudden reality! Since you shared a few good examples, let me tell you about my Uncle Bill, he married my aunt who was way to young to be married, in San Fransico, California. She had graduated at 17 and left Iowa to live with her sister in the "big city". Bill was born and raised in San Franisco, and he was affored many opportunities that he passed up. He was a beautiful Irish tenor and was offered a job with Lawrence Welk that could have lead to television, but decided against it. He had come out of High School and was noted as "All City Catcher" and was given an opportunity to play professionally through the minor leagues, but turned it down to play for the Industrial Leagues in the city, where their was lots of money being passed around under the table. So Uncle Bill was a bit of a shyster, and often a convincing liar, but one summer day while visiting Iowa with his family, he found himself seated around our kitchen table with other uncles of mine, embibing in whatever was put on the table. He had been their a few hours when a rain shower came up that cooled things down a bit. My dad went outside to check on his cows when he discovered the electric fence he had up to keep the bull away from the cows had shorted out on the long wet brome grass and he needed to get the bull into a place where he couldn't get to the cows. Uncle Bill, always the volunteer since he was the "city slicker" who hadn't a clue what he was supposed to do, went along once again. About the time he got close to where the cows were, suddenly he had the urge to pee, the cold wet grass and all that alcohol was a combination that needed to be addressed. Dad was keeping an eye on Uncle Bill when suddenly Bill dropped to his knees! Thinking the worst, Dad moved around the cows to see what the matter was. Uncle Bill had unkowingly discovered the live end of the electric fence when he peed on it! Once the bull was secured and Dad and Bill were back at the house, the story unfolded to the everlasting laughter of my uncles, who were all farmers! That story never ran out of steam when ever the clan got together and the uncles were drinking and shoting the bull among themselves. It was like stepping back in time and the laughter was once again reserected all over!
I lost my Dad this spring...your story has me tearing up. Great piece.