Saturday, November 10, 2018
I have been asked to say a few words about Theresa. I always figured I scored a lot of points with her since I actually got her first kid to move out of her house. I know John got married first, but he always seemed to come back for around lunchtime. I actually got his sibling to show back up only on special occasions like birthdays, Christmases and other free meals. I also figured I scored some points with her because I could speak her language. And Theresa knew several of them. First she had pet names for her kids, bug, boom and yahn and suze. We had names for her too. The kids called her Granma Tree and I called her the mother in law from hell, which she was far from. Then there were her colorful descriptions like “backin and fillin”, “Chuggin along”, “the element of surprise”, and who could forget the classic line “hours of shopping and it’s all over in a few minutes?” She could also talk a four letter word dear to my heart…beer.
Theresa also talked farming and due to my background I could fit right in. Name a day out of the year and I will give you a conversation starter. Ex. April 20th. Are they planting peas in Caledonia Yet? How’s the silage holding out? You got the big tractor running? But you also had to know what the cupcake was. Not a cupcake, everyone knows that. The cupcake was the temporary silage holder Charlie made out of snow fence every September.
Theresa was famous for her Cadillac. She didn’t drive it to look fancy; it was mostly because she knew it could take out a deer when she drove the worst road in Monroe County… Reed road between 840 and route 19 when she would take care of her mom. Her mom cooked a lot of food. Theresa was also a master of the kitchen. I can’t tell you how many meals started with…”Is this Ralph and Rosie’s?, were having...You fill in the blank Christmas, Thanksgiving, a birthday and we need a pizza. As time went on she learned that she could get that delivered. “Bets…on tour way through Bergen…could you pick up the pizza?” Then she would show us her mastery of spacial relationships as she tried to fit 12 people around a table built for six or fit us all in the back room as she tore the bearings out of yet another glider chair or wore the bottoms off another rocker. Bob and Margaret finally separated Pizza from Christmas when they moved in to the house on Route 19.
I worked on several projects with Theresa. Who can forget the way she could take 5 gallons of Spackle and completely remodel a bathroom or her knack for giving a room a face lift with a coat of crisp white paint? Or remodel a kitchen on a shoestring budget with four cabinets I gave her? And write it off for two thousand dollars. She was always mowing the yard around those awful box elder trees that provided her with instant shade in her new ranch house, and me with countless hours of chain sawing as they fell down around 840 before and after Betsy bought it.
Theresa also took me on constant rehab trips to Batavia. After my motorcycle accident we joked about how there was an 80 year old woman that was doing better at walking than I was. For my Birthday that year I got crutches and we went to Stones (where else) for dinner. Being my first day on crutches I promptly fell as I attempted to leave. But Tree kept taking me to rehab even though there was snow on the ground.
I feel fortunate to have been blessed with several moms’ in my life, and among these was Theresa Martin Alexander Pengally.
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