The Edmonds at Holidays

My Mother and Father’s families were so different in their social skills and morals. Father’s people from Missouri rarely made it through the third grade, yet they were a loving and caring community of blood, family and neighbors. Church attenders, frugal, aware not only of their family but also of those around them best describe them.

Mother’s family on the other hand were from Pennsylvania, where they had worked as coal miners. All graduated from High School and according to my grandmother had excellent social and manners training. They drank, fought and often sought revenge. Mother luckily did not fall into the mold of a typical Edmonds. 

Mother’s father held various Union positions. He was best known as an enforcer for the Solidarity Caucus at United Auto Workers Local 659 in Flint, Michigan. Stories such as legs being broken and beatings in the Local’s parking lot abound. Court paperwork reflects that Grandfather’s worst punishment was to apologize to the broken man and pay his Doctor’s bills. I have been told he was an explosives expert in the mines and left because of an accident. He bore no visible scars and  still had all of his appendages. If he had been hurt in the mines you could not tell it. History paints a violent picture of life in Scranton Pennsylvania in the 1930s. I have always believed that he left town to save his neck, we will never know.

Mother’s siblings included three brothers. The youngest was a raging alcoholic who only cared about himself and the pleasures he could find. It was not unusual for Father to be asked to bail him out of jail after a night in the drunk tank. Upon arriving at the jail he would find a beaten man who had pissed off the arresting officers. Various warrants for his arrest including back child child support sent him fleeing the state. Landing in Arizona, none of us ever saw him again.

The brother just older than Mother was a convicted sex offender, spending two stints in Jackson State Prison, he was loud and obnoxious, ready to get drunk and cause a fight. He always wore a filthy sweatshirt that he would brag had been worn, “Front and back, then inside out back to front. No need to launder a shirt unless all four sides are dirty.”

The oldest brother was perhaps the most sane of the family beside my Mother. Yet he also had issues with anger and money management. Father often floated him a loan to pay monthly bills. Loans that were never repaid.

When this mix of questionable bred men got together nothing good could happen. I can never remember a family holiday or celebration at Grandmother Edmonds that did not end in violence and someone being taken to the Genesee County jail if Handcuffs. The Mt Morris Police knew them all by name and understood the violence that resided inside them, never letting themselves get in a position that might endanger themselves. 

In my childish mind, all of their fights were over who had called the police during the last altercation. They would gang up on one as the obvious culprit, first verbally and then physically. By the time the Police would arrive, all allegiance was gone and it had become a free for all. Most usually, the most bloodied was cuffed and taken to the dunk tank.

I would hide in my Mother’s arms as she cried and begged them to stop. Father I assumed had learned long ago not to intervene would go start the car. After the Police left and Mother had tried to console grandmother they would wrap me in a blanket and lie me in the backseat of our car. The trip home was always filled with reassuring words that contained love and concern.

Roy Richard
July 2024