Editor's Note: This is a guest post from writer Christopher Amato, and his short story about his firecracker grandmother, who was born in 1896. She was a lifelong resident of the Roanoke/Salem area except during her service in the U.S. Navy in World War I. Besides being a veteran, she was also a lover of motorcycles, and tended daily to a huge rose garden. As Amato puts it, "Ralph was a plain-spoken and direct individual, that is, you always knew where you stood with her." Please enjoy his short story below.
Courtesy of the Amato Family
Ralph, about 19 years old here, drives her motorcycle with her friend in the side car.
Her parents would have settled for a girl the next time, but the first one had to be a strapping boy—someone they’d be able to count on to do a man’s work around the farm, like handling the machinery, doing the heavy lifting, and one day, having children of his own to carry on the family name. Even after it was clear to the mother, the midwife, and God Almighty herself that the newborn baby wasn’t a boy by any stretch, they had the name Ralph Eugene recorded on the certificate anyway, noting the accouchement took place on the first of August, in the year 1896.
Ralph Eugene Drumheller. A name Ralph laughed about her entire life. She sometimes wondered if her parents meant her name to be funny. Unlikely. They were serious folk who had pressing issues to worry over. Fickle weather. Insects. Depleted soil. She concluded the name they gave her was her parents’ way of expressing their vehement disagreement with the birth’s outcome. Still, Ralph found it humorous. The name provided all the proof she needed that wanting something badly didn’t always make it so.
As a child, she defied society’s norms and embraced the role of being her dad’s farmhand. By the time she was ten, she could handle any plowing, planting, or harvesting machine. Moving parts and loud tractors didn’t scare her. Why would they? She figured there was nothing wrong with a girl who could look after herself.
Ralph wore boots that didn’t mind a little manure, a straw hat to keep the jungle of blonde hair tucked away from the wicked grain thresher, and bluish overalls with one side perpetually unsnapped. Her father called it her farm uniform, but it wouldn’t be the only uniform she’d ever wear in her life.
The young man’s question didn’t have time to echo off the garage walls before eighteen-year-old Ralph responded. “Betcha I have.” As she spoke, her fierce blue eyes tore through him like a powerful steam locomotive barreling through Afton Mountain. She’d never operated a motorcycle before, but the harmless lie poured from her lips like honey from a jar.
Ralph hadn’t intended to story, but the way he looked at her—acting like he already knew the answer—compelled her to utter the falsehood. Besides, she thought, who was this tall drink of water questioning her, anyway? The reality of the situation was she had wanted to drive a motorbike since, well, forever. It wasn’t her fault the opportunity had never presented itself. And although the logic didn’t lessen the size of the lie, she reasoned the truth was like taffy: it could be stretched and pulled in either direction, but it was still taffy in the end.
Before he spoke again, Ralph already knew that the soaring, branchlike, good-looking fellow standing before her would be the man she would one day take as her husband. He was much taller than her height of six feet and cast a gigantic shadow on the wall of the mechanic’s shop behind him.
Courtesy of the Amato Family
Six in his Army uniform, circa 1918.
“Well, let’s see what you can do,” he said the words playfully, almost sweetly.
No matter. She took it as a challenge—like she did everything else in life. Cornered, but not for long, she said, “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Alford,” he said, brushing the shaggy golden locks of hair from his eyes.
“Was that Alford or Alfred?”
“It’s Alford with an O, but don’t worry about it.”
She ran her hand along the motorcycle: an almost new Harley-Davidson, model 11F, equipped with a spirited 11-horsepower V-twin engine. “I’m not worried about it or anything else.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I meant don’t worry about it, because no one ever calls me that.”
“Well, if no one calls you that,” she said, rooting her thumbs in the front pockets of her jeans, “then why’d you tell me your name was Alford?” She paused for a second, allowing a hint of a smile to sneak out. “Hmm, Alfooord?” She stretched out the second syllable of his name, making it sound like the upstart Ford Motor Company.
When he laughed, she knew she had him right where she wanted—a long way from her fabrication about her ability to drive a motorcycle.
His worn leather boot kicked up dirt on the ground while he spoke. “The truth is most people call me Six because of my height. I’m six feet six in stockinged feet.”
Her gaze swept over the length of his body. Broad shoulders. Large, masculine hands hanging by his side. A shy but warm smile. Her voice was flirtatious when she spoke. “I’ll say you are.” Then her eyes almost swallowed him whole. Standing before her was a man she wouldn’t have to lean down to for a kiss. “Listen, Six. Can I tell you the truth?” She didn’t wait for an answer—Six would have to like it or lump it. “I never drove a motorcycle before, but I’d like to learn.”
By the end of the day, she had become a lifelong fan of the two-wheeled contraption.
A month shy of her twenty-first birthday, Ralph stood with her hands on her hips, reading the poster hanging in the window of the F. W. Woolworth Company five-and-dime store.
Beat back the HUN with LIBERTY BONDS
Like most Americans, she felt the pull to do her patriotic duty and support the movement. Her eyes shifted to the next poster.
IF YOU CAN’T ENLIST—INVEST
She scratched around inside the pockets of her dungarees, searching for money. The most she could come up with, including loose change, wouldn’t even cover the cost of the minimum ten-dollar bond. The last poster had her fuming. A pretty girl with a white sailor’s cap and blue uniform stood smiling at her.
GEE!! I WISH I WERE A MAN. I’D JOIN THE NAVY.
But it was the words at the bottom that made her blood boil.
BE A MAN AND DO IT. UNITED STATES NAVY RECRUITING STATION.
She unpeeled the poster from the window. As she marched toward the joint Army-Navy Recruitment Center a few blocks away on Franklin Avenue in downtown Roanoke, she tapped the rolled-up poster against her leg in sync with her rapid pace. With a quick shove, the door opened.
The surprised look on the two uniformed recruiters seated behind their respective desks further emboldened Ralph to forge ahead. “I’ve got a question.”
The Army recruiter spoke first. “Yes, ma’am. How can I help you?”
Courtesy of the Amato Family
Ralph, pictured here, was probably in her forties and doing some sort of nostalgia photo. She still fit into her uniform from when she was 20 years old!
“You can’t.” Then she turned her attention to the other side of the office and unrolled the poster. “Sir, would you tell me what this is supposed to mean?”
The Navy man stole a quick peek at the paper she held in her hands. With a toothy smile, he said, “It means we’re looking for the best, the brightest, and the most able to help us win the war.”
“Well, what’s wrong with me? I fit every qualification you just said.”
He glanced toward his partner seated nearby. Ralph figured the Army fella was too busy with his own recruiting problems, though, as he spun in his chair to wrestle with a stack of posters behind him.
Abandoned, the Navy recruiter removed his glasses before speaking. “There are many ways a young lady can help their country in a time of war without enlisting—”
Ralph interrupted. “If this is going to be a problem for me to sign up here, I can go to your recruiting office in Salem. They might show more interest in someone who can fix any mechanical device on Earth. I have a cousin named Betsy who’s starting with the Navy next week. I’ve been told there’s a need for torpedo assemblers, cryptographers, truck drivers, and radio operators.”
By the look on the Navy recruiter’s face, she could see the threat of taking her offer of services to a nearby recruiting office had worked. The fact she didn’t have a cousin named Betsy, or any cousin at all, didn’t matter one whit.
The recruiter held out his hands, palms up. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Please take a seat and let’s start again.”
An hour later, Ralph sat next to Six at the lunch counter in Woolworth’s, clutching an ice-cold root beer.
“I don’t know how you always manage, Ralph, but you’ve beaten me to the punch again. I’ve been working up the nerve to tell you I’ve been thinking about signing up with the Army.”
“Good for you, Six. After we lick the Krauts, we’ll pick right back up here in Roanoke. So, gimme a smooch and let’s seal the deal.”
“You promise, Ralph?”
She could see the worry in his eyes. “Come on, Six. Think about it. What is the chance I’m going to meet another fella that’s as tall and kind as you are? Of course, I promise. Now give me a little sugar and pass me a straw, please.”
Courtesy of the Amato Family
A group shot of several Navy folks, including Ralph, seated in the middle. Ralph was around 21 years old. She served in the US Navy from 1917 to 1919.
Germany surrendered on November 11, 1918. Yeoman Ralph Eugene Drumheller had been one of thirty-five thousand American women to serve in the military during World War I. She worked in a munitions factory, finding her service to be worthy for her country, but the actual day-to-day work was repetitive.
During the war, she wrote letters to Six from her post in Norfolk and was sure he wrote to her as well, or at least thought about writing. Then again, she reasoned, he might not have had time to scribble a note while fighting the Germans in France. They never received a single letter from each other; nonetheless, by 1919, Ralph and Six had restarted as a young couple in love, ready to give marriage a go and have a family.
Six worked as a building inspector for the city of Roanoke while Ralph toiled as an assembly line worker under her newly married name: Ralph D. Howell. After six months on the job, Mrs. Howell rose to a first-line supervisory position. The fact that men working at the company complained about having a woman as their manager never bothered her. What stuck in her craw was she knew she was far too talented to be limited to a first-level manager job.
Married life was swell for the Howells, but the miscarriages added up. Ralph always reminded herself that—whether it was a management position she couldn’t attain or a baby she couldn’t carry—wanting something badly didn’t always make it so.
One early Saturday morning in July, they rode their motorcycles to Moneta to check out a rumor. A man was selling a cabin and thirty acres nestled on the shores of Smith Mountain Lake—or so the story went. When the story turned out to be untrue, they motored down the road, stopping off at Warbler’s Corner Mart to gas up and drink cool lemonade before heading home.
By one in the afternoon, Ralph had taken a sponge bath and dressed in a lovely, light gray dress, cotton turban hat, and black low heel pumps. When she came downstairs from the second-floor bedroom, Six’s jaw almost hit the table.
“Gee willikers, Ralph! What’s the occasion?”
“Just felt like dressing up is all. I’m running errands, and I’ll be back after a while.”
Six shook his head. Ralph knew he wouldn’t press if she didn’t volunteer the information.
Their two-year-old 1925 Ford Model TT truck started with vigor—and off she went. But Ralph was in no hurry, and besides, there didn’t seem to be any sense pushing it past the recommended top-end speed of fifteen miles per hour.
Three hours later, her errands complete, she came ambling up the drive, arms filled with store packages. She passed through the back door, dropping a bag and a box on the sofa next to Six, then took a seat in the rocker by the fireplace.
“Hey, Sug, what’s you got there?” Six asked.
“A baby girl. Almost brand new—four days old is all.”
Six tossed the newspaper aside and stood to his full height, peering down into the basket on her lap. A tuft of dark hair poked out from a tiny opening in the pink quilt.
“You’ve got a what? Whatcha doing with a baby?”
“At present, I’m just resting a spell. It’s been a long day. Hot and humid too.” She dabbed at her forehead and cheeks with an embroidered hankie. “I’m going to need to warm milk soon. Faye’s going to be hungry.”
“Faye? But why, I mean, are you sitting the child for someone, Ralph?”
“Six, I’m sitting this baby for us. Say hello to our new daughter.”
He stammered, “I … I’m not sure I’m following you.”
“I stopped at the Salvation Army’s home for unwed mothers.” Ralph laughed, then said, “Can you believe they asked me if I could take two? It’s so sad. Those little babies don’t have anyone.”
“But Ralph, what I mean is—”
The baby began crying.
“Dang it, Six, now you’ve gone and woken her up. You’ll need to warm the milk right away. There’s a new bottle in the bag on the couch. Rinse it first.”
“But, but, Ralph, what are we going to do with a baby?” There was more than a hint of panic in his voice.
“Well, for starters, we’re going to feed her. Then we’re going to love and raise her.”
Three weeks had passed, and Ralph noticed Six hadn’t yet held little Faye. She crafted a plan to change all that. Another Saturday, a day off for the young couple. Six sat on the sofa, reading the paper, while Faye fussed in her basket.
“Six, I’m running to the store. I’ll be gone for a couple of hours and can’t take Faye with me.”
“What am I supposed to do?” His eyes grew wide. “I’ve never cared for a baby before.”
Ralph smiled to herself, thinking how those exact words spoke to the core of her plan. “It’s time you learned.”
Courtesy of the Amato Family
Six, Ralph and Faye, circa 1932.
“But, Ralph, I don’t think—”
“Yeah, you can.”
“But what’ll I do if she cries and—”
“Check her diaper. Give her a bottle. Then a hold. It’s that simple.”
“But, Ralph, I’m not any good with a baby. I’ve never—”
Ralph cleared her throat. “Six, people have been having babies for thousands of years. I say you can do it.” She breezed through the living room and scooped up her pocketbook. “I’ll be back after a while.”
She closed the front door and chuckled, knowing her plan was underway and working to perfection. After she started the Ford TT, she looked left, then right. With nowhere specific to go, Ralph drove to S.H. Heironimus Co. to see if the department store was running any worthwhile sales.
When she sneaked in the back door three hours later, she heard a voice—a singing voice—coming from the den. She slid off her heels and tiptoed around the corner. Her plan had come to fruition. Six cuddled Faye, singing, “Cry no tears, my little dear. Dry those tears and make 'em disappear.”
Ralph was not prone to weeping, but the sweet scene caused her to sniffle as she entered the room. “I thought you’d be good with a baby, Six.”
He looked up. “Well, you forced my hand, and I’m glad you did. She’s darling, isn’t she?”
“That she is.”
Ralph followed the news in the daily paper. She guessed World War I, the so-called war to end all wars, hadn’t quite worked out as advertised. Now, madmen around the world were angling for yet another. Even more terrifying: people had learned a lot about killing in the last twenty years … now they could do it faster and more efficiently.
When Six raised the idea of joining the military again in 1941, Ralph supported her husband. However, fate intervened. One evening, Six asked Ralph to look at a painful sore under his tongue. Days later, a doctor broke the news. “Six, you have a cancer. It’s a type that grows rapidly, but I think we’ve caught it early enough that we can kill it with radium.”
Three months later, Ralph and Faye stood at Six’s grave site, saying their goodbyes. No doctor would admit to it, but the treatment had made the cancer worse, causing it to grow faster.
In June 1942, Ralph sat alone in the kitchen, working with numbers on a pad of paper. Math had never been her strong suit, but she could add two plus two and see that without Six’s regular income, her pitiful take-home pay would result in losing their home within the year.
In the 1930s, they had put a small mortgage on their home to weather the tough times. Kinfolk, pretending to help, waited for Ralph to surrender so they could swoop in and take over the payments—and the house. Despite being widowed, brokenhearted, and near financial ruin, Ralph wasn’t one to quit. She called her teenage daughter downstairs.
“Honey, we need to shutter the house. There’s no good work in Roanoke, so we’re moving to Norfolk. With the war, that’s where the jobs are.”
“But, Mama, I don’t want to leave my friends.” Faye pleaded her case to no effect.
“Your daddy and I built this house brick by brick with our own hands, and I’m not losing it to the vultures.” She hugged her daughter around the waist. “Now we can only save it by leaving it.”
After an ocean of tears, Faye complied. They spent a day moving furniture together, then covered all of it with sheets and blankets. The following day’s nine-hour bus ride made brief stops—Lynchburg, Appomattox, Farmville, Blackstone, Petersburg—before ending in downtown Norfolk. It was like déjà vu for Ralph, walking the same roads in the navy town she had left in 1919.
She worked at a company that made munitions. The plant had changed hands but maintained the same basic purpose—manufacture weapons to kill the enemy. Ralph worked any shift she could get, day or night. If there was an extra shift, she was always available.
On the first day in their one-bedroom apartment near the naval air station, Ralph told fifteen-year-old Faye, “Do your homework during the daylight hours. Only use a lamp if it’s too dark to see. And I’m sorry, but we’ll have to get used to eating our fair share of rice and potatoes.”
Ralph deposited half her paycheck into her account at Norfolk Savings and Loan and mailed the other half to Mr. Davenport at the First National Exchange Bank in Roanoke, who agreed to pay the mortgage and taxes on time. Even in the middle of a world war, she knew the vultures would be watching.
A year after the fighting stopped, Ralph took her passbook to the Savings and Loan and withdrew the entire amount: $1,864.36. She gave a small portion to Faye, who had married a young Norfolk man fresh out of the Navy.
Ralph caught a bus going west on U.S. Route 460. Her first stop—even before going home—was the bank on the west side of S. Jefferson Street in downtown Roanoke. With a suitcase in one hand and a bankbook in the other, she shouldered the door open.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Davenport,” Ralph said.
“Ralph? Ralph Drumheller Howell?” His smile was as big as Roanoke Valley. “Well, I had no idea you were coming to town.”
“Nothing wrong with keeping people guessing. I’m here to pay off the mortgage and put the house in my name, and my name alone.”
“You want to pay off your loan? Do you want to talk about it first?”
“No, sir. If I wanted to talk about it, I would’ve called you on the telephone.”
“You’re all business, aren’t you, Ralph?”
“I am when I need to be. Besides, I’ve never warmed to the idea of being in debt.”
“There’s a great deal of wisdom to those words,” Mr. Davenport said.
“It was my mama and daddy that taught me—neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
When they concluded their business, Mr. Davenport said, “Do you think I could ever interest you in dinner with me?”
“Someday perhaps, but right now, I need time to grieve properly.”
Mr. Davenport clasped her hand. “Well, Ralph, it’s been five years.”
“Yes, sir, it has, but Six was a big man, and I’ve been busy.”
The banker’s smile disappeared for a moment. “I’m sorry. So, what are your plans?”
“After I unpack and get the house belongings straightened out, I’ll load up the shotgun with rock salt and shoot the first vulture square in the buttocks if he dares to trespass on my property again.”
“Ralph, this is 1947. They’re not still after your house.”
“Mr. Davenport, Six was a good man, but the Howell family has some strays in Danville, and they don’t care what year it is.”
In 1956, Ralph founded the Roanoke Women’s Club, a place where ladies could meet, gossip, discuss ideas, and talk about local and world events. Dues started at a dollar a month but increased over the years.
She asked for the biggest increase in the spring of 1968. There was resistance before she even had a chance to explain why she was proposing to raise the monthly membership from three to five dollars. The scuttlebutt about the near doubling of fees was fierce. Even dear friend and fellow club member Mrs. Peacock flitted about, using the word shocking to describe the notion.
When Ralph cleared her throat to speak, the room quieted. “I’ll be brief. I know there’s been talk about the significant increase I’m proposing. Let’s see if there’s any argument to the idea once I’m done. As always, there will be time for rebuttal.” She stood at the front of the meeting room, leaning against the heavy mahogany table supported by cast-iron legs. “We’ve seen and heard too many times when ladies find themselves in domestic situations, and they can’t work their way out. I’m talking about women trapped in an abusive marriage with no escape.”
She gazed around the room and made eye contact with every member, then she said, “Or so it would appear.”
A quiet murmur of agreement bubbled up from the group and continued until Ralph spoke again.
“The idea I’m submitting is to raise funds for a home where these women will have a way out until they can stand on their own two feet again. I imagine everyone has heard the story from a while back about the young lady in Vinton. She had two small children and felt like she had no choice but to stay put with her no-good, wife-beater of a husband. A day too long and a day too late. That’s where we step in. We’re fortunate and able to help; therefore, that’s what I’m proposing we do.”
Ralph rapped her fist on the table with authority. “We’ll hear rebuttals now.”
There were none, but the volume of conversations that arose because of Ralph’s proposal grew from a buzz to noisy excitement.
Ralph was pleased and held up her hands. “I’ll remind everyone that wanting something badly doesn’t always make it so. This won’t be easy … there’ll be plenty of screwballs out there resisting our plan. And it’ll take more than money too. I’m talking about hard work, cajoling, pressuring, and even fighting to create this.”
A year later, the club established The House for Strong Women through fees, donations, and pro bono work from various professions, providing mothers and their children a place of temporary refuge until the women worked their way to independence.
In 1976, despite protests from club members, Ralph stepped aside as president at eighty years young. She remarked during her last speech, “Twenty years is enough. I want to make room for the next generation with fresh ideas and a renewed energy for the club.”
As was her habit before sleeping every night, she sipped whiskey from a heavy crystal tumbler and studied passages from the King James Bible. She knew she was not long for the world and took pen and paper to make necessary notations.
This Bible was a gift from Mama and Daddy on my twelfth birthday. It’s always been special to me even though I’ve quarreled with it from the first time I read it. It’s plain to see that men wrote in such a way to fix their place in this world first. God didn’t fashion a woman from the rib of a man. She made it so man was born from a woman. And surely, God didn’t create women to be owned or told what to do. I’ve never accepted that teaching and now at eighty-five years and a day, I don’t plan to start.
Satisfied with her thoughts, Ralph tucked the note between bible pages. Minutes later, her head found the comfortable crease in her pillow, and she slipped away to another world.
About the Author:
Christopher Amato, who spent a career as a federal agent, turned to writing in his retirement. His second book, Shadow Investigation, a police crime thriller, was recently published by Black Rose Writing in May 2023, and he has a third book called Peace River Village, a psychological thriller being published March 14, 2024. You can check out his website at christopheramato.org.