05/20/2026
The Family Who Shaped Me.
Episode Two.
At the age of 35, he was the handsome town bachelor with a bay mare, a fine carriage, a successful business, and a yen to settle down. Just like grown kids today, Monroe was still living at homeβmeals cooked, socks washed, no rent to pay. Actually, it was his mother, my great-grandmother Nancy Cloer, who told him it was time to grow up and move out. He did. But not til he met a beautiful young country girl from Hudson, NC.
Fannie Belle Bush grew up in an unpainted house with a swept yard and a passel of siblings. They entertained themselves by walking from farm to farm, enjoying tea parties and card games. Shades of Jane Austen! They would pick flowers along the way and present tussie mussies, Google that, to their hostess and her mama. In the summer, everyone grew watermelons of different varieties, and there they went, trooping over hill and dale, to enjoy each otherβs watermelons. Try that on your iPhone.
I have no idea what possessed my grandfather, Monroe, to take his fine buggy along all those pitted, unpaved country roads, but one day there he was, in the country at a skating party on a local lake, and there was Fannie Belle Bush, as pretty as a speckled pup, with a broken umbrella handle. That umbrella handle was the only thing my grandfather ever βfixedβ in his lifeβhe tied his nice, clean, starched handkerchief around the handle and handed it back to her like he had hung the moon.
They married in 1916. Mama was 23.
Did they live happily ever after?
I hate to tell you this, but they most certainly did not. Nope. Not good. He had terrible bouts of depression and could be violent. What did Fannie do through 50 plus years of this? Carried on. Made it through. Prayed night and day. Hung the wash. Baked the biscuits. Fried the chicken. Milked the cows. Raised two grandchildren. Trusted God.
To add a little color, though there was plenty of it, Monroeβs brother, G, drank heavily, played pro baseball, and drove his wife to su***de. His brother Jim ran a printing press, regularly brought bedbugs to our house, and carried a revolver at all times. And thatβs just for starters. You should hear about the rest of the family who shaped me!
As far as we know, there are no horse thieves in our DNA. We can do way better than horse thievesβ¦like the great uncle on my maternal side who found his wife with the Jewel Tea manβ¦.
- Jan
