my "third" grandma: Granny

Yes I have a third grandma ... well actually I had four but the one last really never had an interest in me at all.

So this post is about my Granny. Now I can pretty much sum up this relationship in one word: FOOD! cause this granny could cook!

One of her sons lived with her.... all his life (that's right, he never married and stayed home so his mom could take care of him. but that is another story)

Now granny never really "TALKED" to her grand kids verbally. She talked to them by feeding them well. And did I mention she chewed tobacco?

Most of my memories of her are about her cooking and her garden, burning papers in the back yard burn barrel, and her 'spare bedroom' with the vanity.

I think mostly why we did not talk a lot is because us kids were always outside playing or had our mouths full.

Her living room was icy cold and the spare bedroom was warm. She slept with her windows open and I loved sleeping in her bed and listening to the sounds of "outside". I rarely fell asleep with my head where it was "suppose to go" because I could lay at the foot of the bed and be even with the window sill and listen to outdoors and watch fire flies.

But back to the food. Peach cobbler and pot roast. Oh My God! I wish I had watched her more often make these. It was like she had a magic oven: put in dish, pull out heaven! lol!

Her kitchen was SO small the oven door almost hit the "opposite" wall. If there wasn't a nice big doorway... about four feet wide; you would not have been able to bend over to pull anything out of the oven. Seriously, her kitchen was so small the frig was in the dining room. I'd say about six feet wide and MAYBE four feet deep. On the back wall was: wall -> stove -> itty bitty counter space -> double sink, with small window above -> another itty bitty counter space -> wall.

But again back to the food.... another great thing she would do is each morning cook up a bunch of sausage patties... a plate full and over flowing. Then we could help ourselves as the day went on and we got a hunger pain or two.... what kid doesn't? lol!

Now this was all new and exciting to me since my mom never did anything like this. In my home, we had to ask for everything and any snack we felt we needed. But granny would get upset if we DIDN'T eat when we came over.

So when I was little she would toast a slice of bread... barely toast it... cut or pull it apart into four sections, place a sausage patty on one and cover with another and give me and my cousin each a small "sausage sandwich".... Oh My God! I have no clue what brand of sausage she used. But it was great! not too spicy but real sausage.

Back to the spare bedroom and the vanity. My cousin and I would spend hours at that vanity or laying on the bed, just talking about all kinds of things. Usually one of us would be on the bed, the other at the vanity brushing our hair.... girly things, lol! That was our 'haven', our home away from home. And granny had a box or two of 'jewelry' and just 'stuff' we could play with.

I had more free reign had granny's than at home; but shouldn't it be like that?

Now back to FOOD again, lol! In the summer, the bottom drawer of the frig was filled with cherry tomatoes. I'll never forget my cousin introducing me to them. I was always like "ick tomatoes?" and she dared me to try one.... so me being me, I did and never hated tomatoes again. We would grab handfuls of them and run outside to devour our treat! Granny would just smile and nod her head.

At this point I will mention that while granny was my granny, she was my cousins great granny... but my cousin is about two years older than me. My family dynamics is very complex and complicated. :)

Ah, I also should mention the "phone". See Granny had a party line phone and for those of you who may read this and not know what I'm talking about: see long long ago instead of those nifty cell phones we can carry around, phones use to either hang on a wall or sit on a table connected by a wire to phone lines...similar looking to electrical lines.

These were large heavy duty phones with the mouth piece and ear piece separated from the dialing part ... yes dialing part... of the phone by another wire. And in the "old days" many people would share one phone "line" although they would have different phone numbers.

So if you wanted to make a call, you picked up the handset and listened -if someone was already talking, you would politely hang up and try again later.... (well unless you are a curious young child with an older cousin who loved to teach you new tricks...then one of you would hold the button down on the phone while the other unscrewed the mouth piece, removed the microphone thingy...and then you both listen to the neighbor boy talking to his girl friend and laugh hysterically).

Anyways.... so we kids would also answer the phone and it took someone calling like four times asking for "Beulah" and me telling them they had the wrong number for Granny to finally ask who they were asking for. Well I thought Granny's name was "Granny"... but it turned out it was "Beulah".

And I hope you've enjoyed these memories of my "Granny".