A Train Trip With Grandma Burt

Grandma Burt before she was married. I wish I could see her "figure eight" on the back of her head!

It was 1960, and I was nine years old. My sister and I had visited our relatives in Colorado, and my Grandma Burton was bringing us back to our home in New Jersey on the train. It was an exciting trip for me although I’m sure it was a tiring one for my grandmother. I don’t even know how many hours or days it took, but there is one aspect of the trip I will never forget.

To begin with, any trip with ‘grandma Burt’ was bound to be fun. She was the kindest person I’d ever known, always happy and smiling even though she'd had more than her share of difficulties in life.

My grandmother, Vienna Vivian Hicks, was raised on a homestead in Kansas, and she grew into a beautiful woman. Many admired her looks, and she was known for the way she twisted her thick, dark hair into what they called a “figure eight" on the back of her neck. Apparently it was quite the fashion at that time.

And she was smart. She attended 2 years of college when many women didn't even finish high school.

Grandma Burt with her school class.

Then she met and fell in love with a quiet man named Ralph Burton and gave up her teaching position at a one room school house to marry him. Her life quickly changed to that of a Kansas farm wife, working from morning light to setting sun, cooking, cleaning, and caring for her family. By the time the dust bowl hit and destroyed their crops and their farm, my grandmother had given birth to eight children and buried two of them. Things were so tough at times that she had to put cardboard in her children's school shoes because there were holes in the bottom and no money for new ones. She'd also done things like pick bugs out of the flour because it was their only source of bread for the week. But the dust bowl brought even these ways of coping to an end. Their only choice was to sell their farm to the government and move to Colorado where my grandfather got work as a carpenter. When grandma was in her early fifties, grandpa died and she was left to support and raise her younger children as a single mother.

It was a hard life, but, as I said, I never remember her with a frown. She was always smiling and happy, humming songs and telling little stories. And her grandchildren loved her. We all felt that we were her favorite because she showed such genuine interest in each of us.

So at nine years old, I thought a cross country train trip with Grandma Burt was a fun thing. I remember several things about the trip vividly, but one event on the trip I will always carry with me:

During our journey a family boarded the train, and immediately I knew that this family was different from the rest of the people in our train car. I didn’t really understand, but I knew that their dark skin brought hushed remarks. We called them Negroes in the early 1960's and I thought they seemed very shy. Looking back, I think they were not so much shy as afraid. This was not a kind era of American history, especially not for those with dark skin.

There was so much I didn't know, but my grandma Burt was about to give me an education. First she spoke a few kind words to this black family who no one else seemed to acknowledge. It wasn’t a lengthy conversation, but somehow, even at age nine, I knew she had crossed an invisible boundary line. They said they were getting off at a city called Hoboken, NJ, and I think the reason I still remember that detail is because I thought it was an odd name for a city. Our stop came before the Hoboken stop.

Grandma Burt with my sisters and me about the time this story occurred.

As we sat gazing out the train windows, my grandma unwrapped the last of our trip food. My family wasn’t poor, but to my grandma who had been through the dust bowl, the dining car on the train was an expensive and unnecessary extravagance. So she prepared all of our meals for the trip. I didn't think of it then, but I wonder now if the African American family was even allowed in the dining car. We weren’t in the South, but that didn’t mean things were completely integrated.

My sister and I showed little interest in the food. We were too close to home and excited to see our parents again and tell them all the details of our time in Colorado. We were in the “are we there yet?” stage of our trip when children grow even more impatient and time moves painfully slow.

And then we arrived! Grabbing our grandma’s hands, we started to climb down the train steps, but grandma had one last thing to do. She made a point to say good-bye to the African American family from Hoboken and she offered them our remaining trip food. I remember that they seemed genuinely grateful, but I didn’t realize then that it was probably my grandmother's kindness more than the food that blessed them.

My grandma taught me some important truths that day. She didn’t recite a speech about the equality of man or the injustice of segregation. She simply spoke to a family who no one else acknowledged and shared her food with them.

I loved my grandma Burt. She was the kindest person I’ve ever known. Her youthful beauty was faded when I knew her, and her education was of no importance to me. But her life was a beautiful message, and it continues to influence me fifty years later.

"A wife of noble character who can find?...She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy...She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue...Her children [and grandchildren] arise and call her blessed....'Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.' Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."

from Proverbs 31