The Rosebud Urn

Grandpa always said Grandma had champagne taste on a beer budget, and he wasn't wrong. My grandparents were far from wealthy, and Grandma had an eye for the finer things. However, Grandma never let money get in her way. If she wanted something, she just worked until she made enough to buy whatever it was that had caught her eye and then went and got it. And heaven help anyone who tried to dissuade her mission, even Grandpa.

As a child growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I spent a great deal of time with my grandparents at their home. They lived in an old, turn-of-the-century, white clapboard house with a high-hipped roof and wide porch that wrapped halfway around the whole place. In any large city, it would have been a typical dwelling of little note, but in that small north-central Kansas town of 700 salt-of-the-earth souls, it was a showcase of domestic perfection. Grandpa ensured the lawn, hedges, and flowerbeds were in perpetual pristine condition, and Grandma…well, Grandma was Clifton, Kansas’s four-foot eleven-inch, feisty, blue-haired version of Martha Stewart.

Grandma grew up very poor, which was, according to her, the reason why she liked nice things. “I’ll be damned if I go without something I want,” I heard her say thousands of times, her green eyes all afire. Indeed, the house was a testament to her determination. It was the kind of place that could have made the cover of House Beautiful or Good Housekeeping, both of which were magazines to which Grandma had an annual subscription. Upon walking through the front door, one caught the comforting and homely aroma of Clorox bleach, Faultless spray starch, and Folger’s coffee. She filled the house with fine furniture and accessories purchased down on Main Street at Turner’s Fine Furniture, where she had a charge account, or at auctions, estate sales, and antique shops in the area.

The only thing that seemed a bit out of place amid all of Grandma’s finery was Grandpa’s old mustard-colored La-Z-Boy recliner, which sat permanently enthroned in a corner of the dining room next to the fireplace. Grandma hated that chair. She hated it so much that she once bought a new one at Turner’s without telling Grandpa and had it delivered before he got home from work, the old one carted away for disposal. However, Grandpa could be stubborn, too, and when he arrived home from work that day, the great La-Z-Boy Battle of 1983 was waged. Grandma was smart enough to know when to stand down, though, and Grandpa won the war. The next day when he arrived home, he found his old mustard-colored recliner back in its rightful place, Grandma having gone to great lengths to have the folks down at Turner’s haul it back and return the new one she had purchased.

Grandma not only kept her own house spotless but also cleaned for other people around town. They were mostly old widows who were too old or sick to keep their own houses. She charged $5.00 an hour (cash only, thank you), a tidy sum for the time. Yet, she was in high demand, for people knew when Grandma came to clean, it would be done right. Often when I came to stay, Grandma took me to work with her to help. Indeed, she had me on my hands and knees scrubbing kitchen floors with Murphy's Oil Soap by the tender age of seven, whether it be at her house or at the home of one of “her ladies.” But she paid me well, and I could rake in anywhere from $20 - $40 after spending a week with Grandma, so I didn’t mind.

Of all the things in Grandma’s house, her favorite was the rosebud urn. It was made of green jade porcelain with brass feet on a plate attached to the bottom, a brass handle and decorative spout at the top, and hand-painted roses and rosebuds in several shades of pink on the front. It occupied a permanent place of honor atop a carved oak pier table just inside the front door so that it was the first thing one saw upon entering the house. I think Grandma’s reason for liking the vase so much was not only for its beauty but also because of its sentimental value.

Grandma first spotted the vase one Saturday afternoon in May 1977 while browsing through an antique shop in nearby Clay Center. I was with her at the time, and I still remember the look in her eyes when she first saw it: it was one of almost reverence and awe, and she exclaimed, “Oh my! I want that urn!” However, when she asked the shopkeeper the urn’s price, the light in her eyes dimmed a little, for it cost $300. Those were 1977 dollars, the equivalent of which would be around $1300 today.

I remember the disappointed tone in Grandma’s voice as she told the shopkeeper, “Oh. I can’t afford that right now,” Taking me by the hand, we walked out of the store and walked down the block to where Grandpa was waiting in the car, listening to a ballgame on the radio. Grandma was unusually silent as she opened the car door and helped me into my place in the middle of the front bench seat before slipping in herself and shutting the door. “Where to next?” Grandpa asked. “Oh, I think let’s just go home now. I’m tired,” she answered. But she remained silent most of those seventeen miles back to Clifton.

I was quite young at the time and forgot about the whole thing until later that summer when I was staying with Grandma and Grandpa again before school started. It was high summer on the Kansas plains, and the heat was relentless. At one hundred and three degrees in the shade, the only sensible place was indoors if you had air conditioning. If you didn’t, the next best place was the front porch where a parched soul might be able to catch a breeze if they were lucky. Since Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have air conditioning, Grandma and I sat in the porch swing and waited for Grandpa to get home from his half-day of work (it was a Saturday). I held an empty Coke bottle in my hands, and she softly hummed while pushing the swing back and forth with her foot.

Grandpa arrived shortly after Noon and, after parking the car, came up to the porch sat down in the glider next to the porch swing.

“What do you want to do this afternoon, Mary Alice?” He never called her by just her first name. It was either “Mary Alice” or “Butch,” his nickname for her.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that urn,” she said as if the urn she saw at the antique shop back in May was universally known.

“What urn?” Grandpa was not surprised or thrown off by the ambiguousness of her statement. That kind of thing happened a lot.

“That urn I saw down at Clay Center awhile back.”

“I never heard you say anything about an urn.”

“Well, I didn’t say anything because I figured you would think it cost too much,” Grandma responded. “Besides, I didn’t have enough money at the time.” To someone uninitiated to the vernacular tone my grandparents used in their everyday conversations, the slight emphasis on those last three words would have gone unnoticed. However, nothing escaped Grandpa. He knew what was coming.

“How much was it?”

Grandma paused slightly. “Well, it was three hundred dollars.”

“You need that like you need a hole in your head,” was Grandpa’s response, one of his favorites and oft used.

“Oh well, I knew that’s what you’d say,” she responded, irritated.

There were a few moments of silence, save for the endless buzzing of locusts in the elm trees that lined the street and Grandma’s soft humming, which she had resumed. Finally, she stopped and said, “I’ve saved $275. I just need to work a few more hours before I have the rest.”

I saw Grandpa take off his hat and scratch his head while looking away. Grandma asked, “Are you hungry? I’ll go make some ham sandwiches for lunch."

“Yes, I’m hungry,” Grandpa replied, and then, after pausing for a moment, “I think I’d rather have a hamburger from Sonic down in Clay Center, though.” To me, that sounded like a much better idea than ham sandwiches, and Grandpa noticed me licking my lips at the thought. “I think Jake would rather have a hamburger, too, right Jake?”

Not a wordy child, I replied with a simple, “Yeah,” and a nod.

“Well, let me go freshen up my face and get my purse, and then we’ll go,” Grandma said as she got up and walked to the front door. As she opened it, she paused after Grandpa said, “Why don’t you call down to that antique shop and see if that thing is still there. If it is, I’ll give you the $25 so you can get it.”

“Well, I wasn’t asking you to do that, Pete,” she said, closing the door so as not to let any flies in the house.

“Just do it before I change my mind,” Grandpa responded. He may have thought Grandma needed the urn like she needed a hole in her head, but he loved her dearly and occasionally indulged her in this manner despite their very different perspectives on almost everything.

Grandma walked quickly into the house and called the antique shop. Sure enough, the urn was still there, and Grandma gave the shopkeeper her name and asked her to hold the urn until she got there in an hour or so to pick it up. She was exceptionally cheerful on the drive to Clay Center and talked pleasantly and laughed with Grandpa and me as the green Chrysler sped down Kansas state highway 9 in the 110-degree heat of an August Saturday afternoon.

We stopped at the antique shop first. I stayed in the car with Grandpa while Grandma went inside to finally purchase that beautiful urn. She returned to the car with a big smile on her face, the urn wrapped in paper and placed in a sturdy, rectangular cardboard box for safe transit. As Grandpa drove toward the Sonic, Grandma recounted to us the experience of purchasing the urn, the conversation with the shopkeeper, and expressed her joy that the urn was still there. She included a “Thank you, honey,” at the end as she looked over at Grandpa. Grandpa didn’t say anything, he just continued toward Sonic.

We all ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes for lunch. Grandpa also ordered a banana split, and I wanted a hot fudge sundae, which I got with extra fudge. After Grandma finished eating and while Grandpa and I were trying to scarf down our ice cream before it melted in the blazing heat, I saw Grandma take a little black book out of her purse and write something down in it. “What’s that book, Grandma?” I asked.

“Whenever I buy something special,” she said, “I write down what it is, where I got it, how much it cost, and the date in this book. That way, I’ll always know.”

After Grandma died, it was discovered that the urn contained over $20,000 in $20, $50, and $100 bills. It’s thought that a previous owner had used it to store away cash but died before telling anyone. Grandma wasn’t even aware the urn could be taken apart, much less that there was anything inside. What’s more, Grandma left the urn to me. It is my most prized possession, and the unexpected store of cash inside allowed me to do something I always wanted. I opened an antique shop and named it the only thing that seemed appropriate: The Rosebud Urn.