Holding Hands - Nez

Stunning in her white wedding dress and handsome in his new suit and tie, Florence Mae Van Sickle and Clark Alexander Nesmith were married on the 3rd of May 1916, in her widowed mother’s home in Shields, North Dakota. Clark and Mae were crazy about each other and already had plans for their lifetime together. He was 22, she was all of 17. 

They drove fifteen miles in his horse and buggy to catch the train for their honeymoon in Bismarck. He had promised her a house but their first home was a two-room sod hut on a small farm on the North Dakota prairie. Seventeen months later their first child was born, so they moved to South Dakota, where he worked for the railroad. In February 1920, they used his railroad pass to take the train to Bellingham, Washington. He resigned from the railroad, and Clark and Mae Nesmith made northwest Washington their forever home. 

Clark delivered milk from farms to the dairy processing plant and built houses on the side and Mae popped out kids from 1920 to 1928. He finished the first house in Bellingham and  presented it to Mae and they moved in, and then he built another, and another. Evey time he completed a house they moved into it and sold the last one. Their growing family moved four times in seven years, and each time they celebrated by having another kid. Each kid was born at a different address. By the time Mae was thirty, she had given birth seven times in eleven years, and was raising six kids. They were on plan and happy.

With six young kids when the Depression hit, Clark joined the Carpenter’s Union and rarely lacked for work which was mostly in Seattle, so he moved the family there. He became a “master finish carpenter” who was known to hum, whistle or quietly sing to himself as he worked, normally with a home-made toothpick in his mouth. Grampa told us grandkids the best carpenters “Always Measure Twice, Cut Once,” and we should, too. That was his motto for life and work. Quality craftsmanship, like his, was always in demand. 

Gramma loved telling the story that during  construction of the old Federal Court building in Seattle, four sets of ten foot tall teakwood doors were ordered for the entrance, eight doors in all, four outside and four inside. Teakwood is very heavy and each door weighed more than a ton. It was requested that Grampa hang them. He did such a masterful job they claimed a three-year old child could open and close each of those huge teakwood doors with ease and without risk, yet they would stop a truck. He was highly praised during in the dedication. Gramma was so proud. (The building has now been repurposed but those doors are still there, almost eighty years later. A plaque still bears his name.)

After WWII, they stayed in Seattle several years, but now in his fifties Grampa suffered three heart attacks, all on the job. After his first one, the most major one, he recuperated in the hospital for three months and another month at home before he was allowed to return to work. There was no heart surgery. Gramma never left his bedside but fretted with worry over him and their lack of adequate income. After his recovery from his third attack, at the age of fifty-nine, doctors urged him to take a medical retirement, but he figured they wouldn’t have enough income so he refused and returned to work. 

Between 1941 to 1962 Gramma and Grampa became proud grandparents twenty times (yes, twenty, no twins). Whenever us grandkids stayed over with them Grampa always got us up each morning to line up and march behind him, to his rendition of “Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In”, to the kitchen where he made the best, thinnest “flapjacks” ever. With syrup or fruit jam they were so delicious we would eat several. Gramma would take us to the zoo “to see our other relatives”, or to the lake to splash and have picnics or ferryboat rides. Wherever we went she had us hold hands. And we were all very aware that wherever Gramma and Grampa went they always held hands. That was their thing.

My grandparents seemed to always be on the same page. They talked about everything and worked through their differences before bed. They told us to, “never go to bed mad at one another. It makes tomorrow a better day.” And they laughed and sang a lot (he mostly hummed, …the toothpick). They had their faith, their respect and deep devotion for each other.

Grampa finally retired at sixty-five and they moved back to Skagit County. He never had another heart attack. They leaned on each other and he built her another house. And she wanted to travel so he quit taking side jobs. 

Nobody knows why but Grampa liked Chrysler cars but at sixty-eight he bought a new silver Chrysler Imperial to pull their new silver Airstream trailer. They traveled America in that Imperial and Airstream and saw most of the country, except for Alaska and Hawaii. They would never fly yet they marveled at new technology and were amazed that they saw a man on the moon, had color tv, and drove an Imperial and to think that their first home together was a sod hut and travel was by horse and buggy; all this in their lifetime. A great romance of sixty-one anniversaries. My Gramma and Grampa. He was 22, she was all of 17.

p.s. - After Gramma passed away in 1978, Grampa was lost, in a daze. He mourned her for a year then he simply laid down and joined her. 

Nez Nesmith – January 2024