| Notes |
- Madesse Ames' Story...
She was named "Maudess" based on her wedding invitation and a census record from 1910 but somewhere she must have changed the spelling to "Madesse." If I know my grandmother, she likely changed it because everyone mispronounced her name – to this day, I’ve never heard of anyone else named “Madesse.”
Madesse had a few nicknames, including “Dess” which went back to her youth, and “Mo,” which many of her work colleagues called her in her later years. She asked her grandchildren to call her "Bada," a word we believe she simply made up, instead of the traditional monikers for grandmothers. She always wanted to be different and it didn't seem fitting to call her "Grandma" because believe me, she did not embody the spirit of a traditional grandmother.
One word can sum up our Bada: FUN. She loved to sing songs, play cards, tell old family stories, reinvent traditional fairy tales ("Little Red Riding Hood had to stop at the Quonset for some pizza and beer"), tell dirty jokes, and just "have a few laughs." Her favorite beer was Schlitz and it was the only alcohol I ever saw her drink. It was always fun to go visit Bada, no matter what the occasion. One 4th of July, she took us grandkids aside and asked us to help her fill water balloons. She squealed with delight as we surprised some of our other party guests from a landing above the entryway. Of course, she launched the first attack with her raucous laugh and that gleam in her eye.
Madesse met Philip (Phil) Truax in Wadsworth and theirs was a very passionate romance. Phil and Madesse married in 1923 and moved to Waukegan where they rented a room in a home owned by the Bradbury family. The Bradburys were more than just landlords; one of the children was Ray Bradbury, who would become a very famous science fiction author. Madesse used to baby-sit Ray for the Bradbury family and decades later, she was thrilled to get a return letter from him after sending him a note. She had written about how happy her time was living with his family.
Phil proceeded to build the house at 914 McAree Road, Waukegan, where their daughter, Geraldine (“Gerrie”) was born. The family lived in Waukegan until Gerrie graduated from high school in 1945, after which Phil asked Madesse for a divorce. Phil and Madesse had a stormy relationship, often arguing loudly when Gerrie was a young girl; Phil had fallen in love with another woman and he would relocate to Florida shortly after the divorce.
Madesse was a modern woman well before her time. She worked outside the home when most women did not and she clearly valued her ability to financially contribute to the household. She worked at the Waukegan Dry Goods store in the 1920s and 1930s, and then she spent many years at Hein’s, a fashionable department store in downtown Waukegan. I think she enjoyed her work and the friendships she developed from it.
I can also guess that her work was probably a constructive escape from an obviously unhappy marriage to Philip Truax, and then over the years it also brought her financial independence. She was determined to provide for her only daughter, Gerrie, and her extra income during the Great Depression gave the Truax family a boost. My mother once told me that in grammar school in the 1930s, many of her classmates attended school in tattered, dirty clothes, often showing up to school without shoes. With both her mother and father working during the Depression, Gerrie’s family always had enough food on their table, and enough money for school clothes and other necessities. They were quite fortunate at a time when so many others were struggling.
There was an underlying fierceness in Madesse’s strive for autonomy that probably stemmed from the breakdown of her marriage to Phil. I think she had so much resentment about the divorce that she decided to move forward in life with fun and laughter. She never seemed to look back, though she did keep love letters Philip had written her when they were courting -- my mother Gerrie was surprised to find them among her possessions after Madesse passed away in 1990. Perhaps Madesse kept them so Gerrie would have a reminder of how much she and Phil loved each other, how much they loved her. We will never know her motivation.
Madesse remarried Alex Gust in the late 1940s. Alex was a widower with three younger children, and Madesse eagerly filled her role as stepmother. Alex eventually became our "Papa" and Alex' children and grandchildren became our extended family. We maintained the closest relationship with Alex' son, and their children. They lived close to us and we always enjoyed summers together swimming at Brentwood, as well as spending every Christmas Eve together. As he neared his final years, Papa frequently acknowledged how much he appreciated my mother and our family, as we appreciated him.
My Bada was a true fashion and style guru, with lots of color and flair in her wardrobe. I used to love to play dress up in her closet, with all the vibrant colors and neatly stacked shoeboxes. After all, she worked at Hein’s department store, so she always had the latest clothes.
Bada and I also had a running joke about how much I loved onions; even as a very little girl, I ate raw onions on just about everything! Whenever we were having a cookout with hamburgers and hot dogs, we would sing in unison "bring out the big onion."
My Bada taught me how to play many word games, including Crossword Cubes, of which the modern version, Boggle, remains a favorite of mine. Sometimes I spent the night with her and we would play cards all evening, staying up well past my bedtime. I also learned rhymes for pegging while playing cribbage from her – “Fifteen two, fifteen four… and the rest won’t score” and “Fifteen two and the rest won’t do.”
I loved Bada’s spaghetti, even though it was not homemade but a doctored version of the bottled Ragu brand sauce. To this day, I always smile when I see a Pepperidge Farm coconut cream layer cake as she frequently had one for me during our visits. Bada also took care of me on days when I was sick and my mom had to work. Her pet names for me were "little-little" and "baby," reflecting my youngest position in my family.
Bada was wise and strong and offered me sage advice whenever I needed it. I loved her dearly.
I remember one of her favorite songs was "We Just Couldn't Say Good-bye" and as a young girl, I used to beg her to sing it because she would always sing with such character, adding facial expressions and ad-libbing the lyrics every once in a while. Bada would explain to me that while it was a funny song on the surface, it was really about true love. It was the perfect song for a woman who loved with such passion while always bringing laughter into her world.
Here are the lyrics:
We thought that love was over, that we were really through
I said I didn't love her; that we'd begun anew
And you can all believe it, we sure intended to
But we just couldn't say good-bye
The chair and then the table broke right down and cried
The curtains started waving for me to come inside
And you can all believe it, the tears were hard to hide
But we just couldn't say good-bye
The clock was striking twelve o'clock, it smiled on us below
With folded hands it seemed to say, “I’ll miss you if you go."
So I went back and kissed her and then we looked around
The room was singing love songs and dancing up and down
Now we're both so happy because at last we found
That we just couldn't say good-bye
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Simmons-Truax-Godbout-Ames Family Tree
1903 - 1990 (86 years)
