Paging KlondikeGeoff and David Simmons!
My great-grandmother, the evil Grandma Minnie, would have been 118 this year. She was born in Sicely to a Protestant family in 1990, the oldest of 10 children. Their Protestantism is what forced them to emigrate and she moved to Brooklyn at the age of 7. She worked in the garment district and witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Ugh! Writing this and not posting a lot of it is making me have good thoughts about that mean old witch.
My great Aunt Lulu Montague was born in 1889. I knew her when I was a kid. She died in 1972. She had really big hands for such a small woman. It was weird.
So she’d be 119 if she were alive.
My great aunt Mary Jane, my surrogate grandmother because my biological one lived in Florida, would have been 110 this November. She made it to 92 in any event, although her last years weren’t too pleasant after her baby brother basically talked her out of her home and into second-rate nursing care in order to get her family heirlooms. Mary, I hope you’re giving Jack hell wherever the two of you are now.
With that name and the hands as you describe them, are you sure she wasn’t the world’s oldest drag queen? 
(Lulu Montague totally sounds like a Judy Holliday or Jayne Mansfield character.)
I know, that is a cool name, but while she was a nice lady, she wasn’t as interesting as a drag queen! Her Christian name was Louise, but I only ever knew her as Aunt Lulu. Those man hands were severely arresting, for sure.
I mean, when you’re a little kid and you’re short, you tend to see hands more than the adults do. If I can, I’ll get her childhood pic out of the frame and scan it and post it and you can see what I mean. Seriously big hands, even as a kid.
Whenever I catch a whiff of Ivory soap, or hear the tick of a space heater I think of my Great Grandma Josephine (maternal G’ma). She was born in 1885, died in 1980. We would go out to the farm every weekend to see her and my “Spinster Auntie”. The farmhouse and a few acres were all that was left of what is now land full of very pricey homes. Walk in from the back porch into the kitchen with it’s wash basin (with a bar of Ivory soap in a tin cup next to it) to your right. Wood floors with rag rugs she and her sisters’ in law made. Go into the sitting room with one settee that only adult guests were allowed to sit on. I always sat on the floor beside Great G’ma. Towards the end she pretty much spoke only Czech, so she, my Great Aunt, and my Grandpa would chat.
Next door to my house was a wonderful woman named Helen. She was retired when I was little, and her elderly mom lived with her. In her kitchen was a rhinestone Krazy Kat clock which I got a kick out of. Her Mom, who I called Babka, would sit in her metal lawn chair (freshly painted every spring) and talk in broken, halting English. I would bring her lilacs or lemonade and get a “Dobro, Katja, veddy pretty”. She passed on when I was 12 (38 now)… If Helen was 65 when I was 5, and she was the youngest of 7, I can’t begin to guess how old Babka was.
I was always around the family elders, at least those on my Mom’s side. The last one left is my mom’s uncle, Ty, who was born in 1912. My mom’s mom was a twin. Rose and Annie were inseparable, including living two doord down from each other until the day Aunti Annie died. Ty still lives in the house he and Annie bought when they married in 1931.
Who, hoo, LuLu! My great-grandmother was a Lulu, too. And I remember her very well, being the first great-grandchild. She was quite Victorian age, with doilies on the furniture. She was born in 1883, and travelled to California by wagon. Wooed by a Euro-Cherokee from Missouri,( and we have the swooning love letters that made us decendants happen, quite lovely), who became the Asst Postmaster for LA.
I remember her as a supreme matriarch, in a staunch environment of that…married non bloods didn’t sit at the table with blood relatives, yikes, that was propriety then. She would dutifully send birthday cards with an immaculately crisp 5 dollar bill. We used to joke that she minted them in her basement. Very proper, yet loving. I;m glad I had her in my life, gives great perspective.
My great great aunt was born in 1890 and died when I was 9 (she was 96). I guess she’d be 118 this year. She lived right next door to me with my grandmother. She chewed each bite of food 20 times. When I’d eat dinner with her, I’d be there forEVER.
Incidentally, I have another great great aunt (different branch of the family, the two aren’t related) who’s over a hundred (104 give or take). She lives in a nice old plantation in Louisiana. She’s a racist old bat and I don’t like her very much. She doesn’t like me very much either though so it’s all good (I mentioned I was an atheist at one point…didn’t go over all that well).
There was a man who lived across the street from us when I was a kid. Though I was only 14 when he died at age 94, I had known him my entire life and spoke to him nearly every day. He died in '74, so that would make him 128 today.
His wife actually lived 15 years after his death, reaching 105. That woman was the skinniest human being I’ve ever seen in my life! About 5’4 if she weighed more than 60 pounds she weighed a ton.
My paternal grandmother was born in 1888, so she’d be…119.
It always fascinated me to think that even by the time she reached adulthood, most people didn’t have cars, radio hardly existed, and many still didn’t have electricity. Yet she lived to travel to many places in airplanes, and to see the moon landings. That generation saw so much.
I’m 50.
My paternal grandmother’s step-father was born in 1880, and lived with us when I was a child. I don’t remember much about him, other than he spent most of his time gardening.
My ex-wife’s maternal grandmother was born in Jamaica in 1896, and moved to Toronto in 1917 looking for single men (WWI took its toll). She told stories about what the city was like back then, and how she was employed as a seamstress by one of the biggest department stores to copy new French designs every season. It was fascinating to me.
By that definition, my great-grandma Laura. She was 96 when she died. If I remember the year and her birthdate correctly, that would make her 115 now. Both of her eldest children are alive, clockin’ in at 93 and 87.
I’ll be 40 in two days.