Shaker Days

Joe missed his mother a lot. He missed her kindness and her smile. He missed her tucking him in at night and telling him to have nice dreams. He missed her hugs. He knew she had seemed tired, but thought it was from working too much and, probably, not getting enough sleep. She would get up at 6:00 a.m. and prepare breakfast and sack lunches for Joe, Katie, and her husband, George, and then head off to her job as a clerk at St. Joseph’s Hospital. She would leave work at 5:00 p.m., come home and prepare dinner, clean up afterwards, and then come into the living room to sit with the family for an hour or so while they listened to the old radio.

On Saturdays, she would prepare meals, do laundry, mop the floors, and, sometimes, pick up an evening shift at the hospital for some extra money. Sundays meant church in the morning, then home to prepare lunch, and if time and money permitted, she would take Joe and Katie to the Sunday matinee at The Broadway.

This was how she spent nearly every week, and with the exception of sitting in a movie theater for a few hours a month, she rarely took a break. As Joe got older, he began to notice that his mother worked at an exhausting pace. When Joe’s friend, Jackie, or some of Katie’s friends would make comments that their mothers thought Alida Hodge looked tired or thin, Joe just chalked it up to her workload. To him, she looked as beautiful as ever. She was just a young woman of twenty-nine when she passed away in the summer of ‘31.

            That day was a shaker day, and she had weakly commented that morning that there was going to be an earthquake sometime soon. As the family huddled by her bed, a weak temblor moved the earth. His mom whispered, "A shaker." She winked at Joe, and an hour later she was gone.