So, somebody grabs you by the elbow and tells you that a book written by a little old lady who looks like Mrs. Santa Claus is really well written. Then the elbow-grabber adds that it is the first book the little old lady has ever written, that it was self-published, and that if you want to buy a copy, you can get it only at Horton Hardware in Afton, Henry’s Diner, or directly from the author.
You respond by saying … what?
“Let go of my elbow, you lunatic! Have you lost your mind?”
New scenario: I am holding a book in my hand. It is called “Remembering Hazel & Ed,” and it was written by Edna Lockwood, the aforementioned octogenarian. I am not Edna’s daughter, publicist, next-door neighbor, or friend, and I am telling you: This is a damn good book! Buy it! Read it! Give it as a gift to your parents, your children, your siblings, your friends.
It is memoir about Edna’s parents, Hazel and Ed Angle, and it is part adventure story, part disaster movie (how many fires can one family endure?), part psychological study, and part paean to the human sprit. Specifically, to Edna’s mother’s indomitable spirit.
Clearly, Hazel is Edna’s hero. After we finish the last page of the book, she is our hero, too.
I could tell you that the book starts out in a thrillingly terrifying way with a devastating fire in which Hazel’s four-year-old grandchild dies after being enveloped in flames. Or how, after an explosion involving an acetylene torch, Hazel’s son-in-law dies in a fire, too. Or the third fire that burns their life savings and everything that they owned. Or even the fourth fire that started in a baby chick incubator in which their entire house was “pretty much consumed.”
Instead, I will let you eavesdrop on Edna after that fourth fire.
“As I watched my mother that morning, I had wanted to comfort her but before I could find the words, she straightened her shoulders … and watching the last wisps of smoke rising in the morning air, she quipped, ‘No breakfast this morning. The one I had prepared is a mite overcooked’.”
With such understated elegance and in such a manner do we meet and fall in love with Hazel Angle. But we’re only on page three! There are still so many stories left to hear, so many virtues left to discover, and so many adventures left to endure.
A few insights into Hazel’s beginnings, what she became, and what she had to overcome: She was born prematurely in 1888 weighing only one and one-half pounds. She was illegitimate. She was a hunchback.
Edna envisioned a conversation between newborn Hazel and the world:
