Grandma Salve: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in the February 2008 issue of Marquette Monthly.
Big Bay, Michigan, rests on the edge of a bulge in the midriff of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on the shores of lakes Superior and Independence, a town of 265 or so, hanging tenaciously onto itself, its past and its future. Its past, of course, cannot be changed: There was one shining moment when Jimmy Stewart, Duke Ellington, Lee Remick, Otto Preminger and others from Hollywood came to town to make a movie based on a book that was based on an incident that occurred at the Lumberjack Tavern. It was called “Anatomy of a Murder,” nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1959. Big Bay’s future? Depending on who you talk to, the future is either severely threatened or blessedly blessed by a sulfide mine proposed for a site on the Yellow Dog Plains a few miles south.
But this story is about Big Bay’s salve.
I was introduced to Grandma Salve at a local craft show, drawn to a simple display of 2-ounce, clear glass jars stacked in pyramids, some jars open for sampling with little white plastic spoons stuck in the ivory-colored goo. A printed pen and ink drawing of Grandma’s face smiled up from the top of each white lid. A short pamphlet described the salve as being made from beeswax, camphor, phenol, and vegetable lipids and claimed it would help heal acne, hemorrhoids, scrapes, cuts, blisters, diaper rash, insect bites, and burns. I thought they should just call it “Miracle Salve,” like in that Andy Griffith Show episode when Opie tries to sell jars of an incredible ointment that is sure to cure all known skin ailments including “poison ivy, athlete’s foot, prickly rash, complexion, and spring itch.” Miracle Salve didn’t work, except on the mange. I wondered if Grandma Salve would. For $5.95 plus tax, I figured it was worth a try.
I put Grandma Salve on a funky rash and the rash disappeared. Dry cuticles? Banished. Mosquito bite? Bah. Wood stove burn? Ahhhhh …
I contacted the Grandma Salve company and soon was sitting down with Mary Cram, Joyce Cram, and Pam (Cram) Bowers, three of the nine Grandma Salve partners. The Crams grew up in Big Bay, and they told me that if you were growing up in Big Bay in the mid-20th Century, fell down and skinned your knee, or got a cut or a burn, it’s likely your medical treatment consisted of a good swathing in “grandma salve.” At that time, the salve came out of any old jar Pauline Cram, their mother and the salve’s maker, had available. Now the salve is being made and sold commercially by Pauline Cram’s nine children, who range in age from 55 to 66.
Pam told me about the salve’s origin, which she learned from her mother.
“My grandfather, my dad’s father, was a diabetic, had one leg cut off,” Pam said. “Back then [1930s] your prosthetics were a wooden leg, and he used to get sores quite a bit, and my dad used to take him once a month to town.” One month Mr. Cram couldn’t get his father to the doctor, so the sores got worse. “(My grandfather) told my mother … that there was a salve that his mother made, and he was going to make some to see if it would help. He made it. He showed her how to make it. … The following month my dad took him back to the doctor. The doctor told him: Whatever you’re using keep using it ’cause it’s working.”
Pauline Cram continued making and using the salve, especially on her children and other children in the neighborhood. As Pam explained, “You didn’t go to the emergency room unless something was dangling off and she knew it was broke. … Anything you got, it was grandma salve and band-aids, no stitches. That was the end of it. And it worked, eh.”
Even then it was called “grandma salve.” Mrs. Cram would cook some up as often as needed, for whoever needed it. “Go to Pauline, she’ll give you some salve,” Pam said with a smile. “… Right before winter she’d make it, and if you had a cold or something she’d make you stand over it, because of the camphor. … The whole house would smell of it.”
“She gave it away, but she never gave anyone else the recipe,” Joyce said.
Although the sisters carry the recipe in their heads, Pam made sure it was written down. “My mom was a really good cook, but when you would ask for a recipe she would say, ‘Oh, a little bit of this, a little that,’ you know, and that’s the way she cooked. So one day I told her – we were making grandma salve – and I said: You need to sit down and write that out.”
“We have a safe like the Bush Bean thing, right?” Joyce asked.
Laughter.
“But no dog,” Mary added.
Pauline’s handwritten recipe is framed and locked away.
Pauline, now 93, was one of 10 children and the first in her Yugoslavian family to be born in the United States. Her father, a logger, eventually settled on the Yellow Dog River.
“She only went to 8th grade,” Mary said of her mother, then paused. “She’s probably one of the smartest people I know.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Joyce added.
“A lot of common sense,” Pam said.
With nine children, common sense and a little grandma salve came in handy. For instance, there was the case of the wedding and the burned feet.
“Now tell the story about Dad when Nora’s wedding … ” Joyce prompted Pam.
“When he cut his feet?”
“When he burned his feet. Remember when the dresses caught on fire?”
Gales of laughter.
The six Cram girls shared one big bedroom in the family’s three-bedroom house. The night before sister Nora’s wedding, one of the girls hung something too close to the light in the closet – the closet which held the dresses for the wedding. A fire started.
“Dad came,” Pam said, “and we were screaming. He came to put out the fire and he got burnt.”
“The bulb had busted, and there was all the glass,” Mary added. “ … He was barefoot.”
With the help of his sons and some water from the bathroom, Mr. Cram was able to put out the fire. But his feet were badly cut and burnt.
“He couldn’t even put his feet in the shoes he was supposed to wear at the wedding …” Pam said “They slit the tops and dressed his feet with grandma salve – it seems to help the pain a lot, too.”
After using the salve for many years on their own families, sharing it with friends, neighbors and co-workers, and being told now and then that they should try selling it, about three years ago the Crams started talking about just that. Pam had recently returned to Big Bay after a number of years in Montana, and most of the others were still in the U.P. There were meetings with a lawyer, and the Grandma Salve trademark was obtained in 2006. The siblings created a limited liability corporation and started packaging their product.
“It’s all been one step at a time,” Pam said. “Now, how are we going to market it, how are we going to do it. … We haven’t really pushed it. We have a Web site. We do craft shows.”
The salve can be found in Big Bay at brother Joe’s Cram’s General Store and at local craft shows. It can be ordered online at grandmasalve.com. It’s also being sold at a health food store in Michigan’s lower peninsula and at a hardware store in Montana. Pam has emailed Oprah Winfrey, the queen of promoting good causes and good products, and also the University of Michigan Program for Injury Research and Education, which works closely with the school’s Trauma Burn Center. At this point, though, most sales have been by word of mouth.
“We’ve proven to ourselves from the … craft shows that it’s marketable,” Pam said. “People are coming back. … Remember that guy at the craft show? Remember we were sitting there and he comes up and put his elbows right in our face and I’m looking at him and he goes, ‘See them?’ I said, ‘Uh-huh.’ He says, ‘They were really bad and you sold me some of that salve. Look at how nice they look.’ Then he goes, ‘It worked so good on my elbows I put it on my dog’s elbows!’”
Maybe it is a miracle salve after all. As Pam said, “It works. It just works.”
Grandma Salve is available through our Stuff for Sale page.
Big Bay, Michigan, rests on the edge of a bulge in the midriff of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on the shores of lakes Superior and Independence, a town of 265 or so, hanging tenaciously onto itself, its past and its future. Its past, of course, cannot be changed: There was one shining moment when Jimmy Stewart, Duke Ellington, Lee Remick, Otto Preminger and others from Hollywood came to town to make a movie based on a book that was based on an incident that occurred at the Lumberjack Tavern. It was called “Anatomy of a Murder,” nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1959. Big Bay’s future? Depending on who you talk to, the future is either severely threatened or blessedly blessed by a sulfide mine proposed for a site on the Yellow Dog Plains a few miles south.But this story is about Big Bay’s salve.
I was introduced to Grandma Salve at a local craft show, drawn to a simple display of 2-ounce, clear glass jars stacked in pyramids, some jars open for sampling with little white plastic spoons stuck in the ivory-colored goo. A printed pen and ink drawing of Grandma’s face smiled up from the top of each white lid. A short pamphlet described the salve as being made from beeswax, camphor, phenol, and vegetable lipids and claimed it would help heal acne, hemorrhoids, scrapes, cuts, blisters, diaper rash, insect bites, and burns. I thought they should just call it “Miracle Salve,” like in that Andy Griffith Show episode when Opie tries to sell jars of an incredible ointment that is sure to cure all known skin ailments including “poison ivy, athlete’s foot, prickly rash, complexion, and spring itch.” Miracle Salve didn’t work, except on the mange. I wondered if Grandma Salve would. For $5.95 plus tax, I figured it was worth a try.
I put Grandma Salve on a funky rash and the rash disappeared. Dry cuticles? Banished. Mosquito bite? Bah. Wood stove burn? Ahhhhh …
I contacted the Grandma Salve company and soon was sitting down with Mary Cram, Joyce Cram, and Pam (Cram) Bowers, three of the nine Grandma Salve partners. The Crams grew up in Big Bay, and they told me that if you were growing up in Big Bay in the mid-20th Century, fell down and skinned your knee, or got a cut or a burn, it’s likely your medical treatment consisted of a good swathing in “grandma salve.” At that time, the salve came out of any old jar Pauline Cram, their mother and the salve’s maker, had available. Now the salve is being made and sold commercially by Pauline Cram’s nine children, who range in age from 55 to 66.
Pam told me about the salve’s origin, which she learned from her mother.
“My grandfather, my dad’s father, was a diabetic, had one leg cut off,” Pam said. “Back then [1930s] your prosthetics were a wooden leg, and he used to get sores quite a bit, and my dad used to take him once a month to town.” One month Mr. Cram couldn’t get his father to the doctor, so the sores got worse. “(My grandfather) told my mother … that there was a salve that his mother made, and he was going to make some to see if it would help. He made it. He showed her how to make it. … The following month my dad took him back to the doctor. The doctor told him: Whatever you’re using keep using it ’cause it’s working.”
Pauline Cram continued making and using the salve, especially on her children and other children in the neighborhood. As Pam explained, “You didn’t go to the emergency room unless something was dangling off and she knew it was broke. … Anything you got, it was grandma salve and band-aids, no stitches. That was the end of it. And it worked, eh.”
Even then it was called “grandma salve.” Mrs. Cram would cook some up as often as needed, for whoever needed it. “Go to Pauline, she’ll give you some salve,” Pam said with a smile. “… Right before winter she’d make it, and if you had a cold or something she’d make you stand over it, because of the camphor. … The whole house would smell of it.”
“She gave it away, but she never gave anyone else the recipe,” Joyce said.
Although the sisters carry the recipe in their heads, Pam made sure it was written down. “My mom was a really good cook, but when you would ask for a recipe she would say, ‘Oh, a little bit of this, a little that,’ you know, and that’s the way she cooked. So one day I told her – we were making grandma salve – and I said: You need to sit down and write that out.”
“We have a safe like the Bush Bean thing, right?” Joyce asked.
Laughter.
“But no dog,” Mary added.
Pauline’s handwritten recipe is framed and locked away.
Pauline, now 93, was one of 10 children and the first in her Yugoslavian family to be born in the United States. Her father, a logger, eventually settled on the Yellow Dog River.“She only went to 8th grade,” Mary said of her mother, then paused. “She’s probably one of the smartest people I know.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Joyce added.
“A lot of common sense,” Pam said.
With nine children, common sense and a little grandma salve came in handy. For instance, there was the case of the wedding and the burned feet.
“Now tell the story about Dad when Nora’s wedding … ” Joyce prompted Pam.
“When he cut his feet?”
“When he burned his feet. Remember when the dresses caught on fire?”
Gales of laughter.
The six Cram girls shared one big bedroom in the family’s three-bedroom house. The night before sister Nora’s wedding, one of the girls hung something too close to the light in the closet – the closet which held the dresses for the wedding. A fire started.
“Dad came,” Pam said, “and we were screaming. He came to put out the fire and he got burnt.”
“The bulb had busted, and there was all the glass,” Mary added. “ … He was barefoot.”
With the help of his sons and some water from the bathroom, Mr. Cram was able to put out the fire. But his feet were badly cut and burnt.
“He couldn’t even put his feet in the shoes he was supposed to wear at the wedding …” Pam said “They slit the tops and dressed his feet with grandma salve – it seems to help the pain a lot, too.”
After using the salve for many years on their own families, sharing it with friends, neighbors and co-workers, and being told now and then that they should try selling it, about three years ago the Crams started talking about just that. Pam had recently returned to Big Bay after a number of years in Montana, and most of the others were still in the U.P. There were meetings with a lawyer, and the Grandma Salve trademark was obtained in 2006. The siblings created a limited liability corporation and started packaging their product.
“It’s all been one step at a time,” Pam said. “Now, how are we going to market it, how are we going to do it. … We haven’t really pushed it. We have a Web site. We do craft shows.”
The salve can be found in Big Bay at brother Joe’s Cram’s General Store and at local craft shows. It can be ordered online at grandmasalve.com. It’s also being sold at a health food store in Michigan’s lower peninsula and at a hardware store in Montana. Pam has emailed Oprah Winfrey, the queen of promoting good causes and good products, and also the University of Michigan Program for Injury Research and Education, which works closely with the school’s Trauma Burn Center. At this point, though, most sales have been by word of mouth.
“We’ve proven to ourselves from the … craft shows that it’s marketable,” Pam said. “People are coming back. … Remember that guy at the craft show? Remember we were sitting there and he comes up and put his elbows right in our face and I’m looking at him and he goes, ‘See them?’ I said, ‘Uh-huh.’ He says, ‘They were really bad and you sold me some of that salve. Look at how nice they look.’ Then he goes, ‘It worked so good on my elbows I put it on my dog’s elbows!’”Maybe it is a miracle salve after all. As Pam said, “It works. It just works.”
Grandma Salve is available through our Stuff for Sale page.
