Share your favorite grandparent story!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

My mother’s mother had all sorts of homey little hobbies: making egg-carton wastebaskets, making rugs out of old pantyhose, stapling plastic fruit to Styrofoam and spray-painting the whole thing gold or silver to hang on the wall, crocheting hats out of old plastic bread bags . . . Once when I was staying with her as a kid, she noticed that her yellow flowered plastic kitchen curtains were getting faded, so we went down to the Ben Franklin for some PAINT and we painted them up good as new. And there was an A&W a few blocks from her house, so we always got a jug of root beer for floats and drinkin’.

She was very hard-of-hearing and you had to be loud at her house (unlike my other grandma, who felt that children should be quiet), and sometimes when you hugged her, her hearing aids would squeak. She loved to play cards and kept a rubber band or two around her wrist in case she came across a loose deck.

And she LOVED fishing. I remember climbing out onto railroad trestles and dams with her to get to the good spots. A few weeks ago we nearly had to evacuate from our house because of a wildfire; one of the first things I grabbed was her travel diary, written in her crabbed, arthritic, sixth-grade-educated hand, describing all the trips she’d taken by bus and car to visit family, and always giving the local fishing report.

When I was in 6th grade she stayed with us over Christmas vacation. One day while my folks were at work she had a heart attack in a chair in our living room. I realized something was wrong, and I sent my 5-year-old sister over to the neighbors while I called 911 (my dad was an EMT at the time). It was a scary day for that little kid. Grandma pretty much went senile after that, and she was mostly a body in a chair at family gatherings for the next 13 years until she died at age 84 in 1991.

Then there was my “pseudo-grandma,” the neighbor lady who babysat us and let us play in her big yard. She was full of piss and vinegar. I loved it when she described a stuck-up neighborhood kid thusly: “She thinks her shit’s good to eat.” We had a very small wedding, but she was among the guests (Grandpa was too ill to come, so we visited him at home in our wedding clothes that morning.) I treasure the few trinkets and pictures of her and “Grandpa” that she gave me before she died. I’ll never see the inside of that house again, even though it’s right next door to my parents.

22

This is about my great-grandmother, my maternal grandfather’s mother, and it only happened a couple of months ago.

She turned 102 in March. My grandma (maternal) and my mother and I went to Texas for her birthday party, which was held on a Saturday afternoon. When we got Grandmother back to her apartment after the party (which was a great success), there were a dozen red roses on her dining table, and no card identifying the giver. What a nice surprise!

So Mom and Grandma and I went out to grab a bite of dinner, and afterwards we went back to Grandmother’s to say good night and goodbye, since Mom and I had to take off that evening to get home. She told us she had found out where the flowers were from – the man who sits behind her in the dining room!

“I have a boyfriend!” she announced with SUCH pride! We about fell over laughing, and then congratulated her. Good for her! How many 102-year-old women have boyfriends?

There are other stories about her. She’s fabulous.

23

My maternal grandfather gave me a moment I’ll never forget. It has literally shaped my life (and I think I wouldn’t be here on the SDMB without this moment…)
He was a survivor of the Holochaust. He wasn’t in the camps; he ran like hell when Poland was being taken over, along with one of his brothers. Half his family made it out, and he came to the US with, stereotypically, nothing. He lied about his age to get into the Army to help “The country that had welcomed him”, and he trained to be a medic. He went on to become one of the most respected childrens’ doctors in his state. Whenever I’d go anywhere with him, someone would recognize him and recall some kindness or other he’d done. I looked at him with an awe and reverence, and wanted some day to be him (still do, in some ways.)
Anyway, he died a few years back. He knew his time was comming, and he did a lot of emotional and mental ‘house cleaning’. After spending an afternoon telling all of us stories about his childhood that he thought were ‘scandalous’ (who knows? By that days’ standards, maybe they were…) he told me something I’ll never forget. He was talking about his first days in America, and about how he had no posessions. He said, “I still had my brains, though. I had what I knew, what I learned, what I thought, and what I believed. No matter what the world does, they can’t take that away from you. Ever.”
I’ve lived my life remembering that ever since, and being proud of what I know, what I learn, what I think, and what I believe.

24

While not quite as inspirational as ArrMatey’s…

The smell of cigarettes, beer & Shalimar reminds me of my mom’s mom - a little lady with drawn-on eyebrows (singed off in a gas stove incident when in her teens) and a husky voice. She always had a sweater draped over her shoulders.

We were playing a board game with her once, and she wasn’t taking her turn as quickly as we thought she should. So when we asked her to hurry up - she said “Kids, Grandma’s not fast, she’s only half-fast…” We we’re old enough to get the joke, but my parents cracked up!

My dad’s mom was more the stereotypical grandma - she was a kindergarten teacher & had guniea pigs we got to play with (kind of) during school holidays & the summers. She taught the grandkids songs* , baked us cookies and read to us. She also taught me how to crochet.

I miss them both.

If you thought “Little Bunny Foo Foo” was of questionable content, how about [url=“http://www.scoutsongs.com/lyrics/johnnyverbeck.html”]“Johnny Verbeck” and “I’m a Villain”? :eek:

25

I was nearing my teens when one day I showed my grandmother a picture I had drawn. Of course, she said it was beautiful, and went on about that for a time. Then she said, “There was a young man courting me who was an artist. He drew such wonderful pictures. And always telling jokes; he could always make me laugh.”
“Then why didn’t you marry him, Grandmom?” I asked.
“Oh, he wasn’t the right sort. It wouldn’t have been proper,” she answered. I noticed a sad, wistful expression on her face.
Of course the man she did marry, the one who was “the right sort,” turned out to be a bit of a jerk; none of his children even liked him.

That was the first time I realized that even a white-haired old lady had once been young, and pretty, and liked to laugh.

26

The previous post reminds me of the story of my grandparent’s wedding.

Grandma was a schoolteacher in a one-roomed schoolhouse in Wabaunsee County, Kansas, in 1926. She and Grandpa were engaged but they quarreled and she gave him his ring back. But it was she who gave in first and made up the argument.

So Grandpa says he wants to get married, and he meant that very day. But by this time Grandma had signed to teach for another year, and would have to quit if she married. They needed the money(little as it was), and she also wanted to at least tell her parents what she was going to do. Grandpa said he would fix things up.

So the next weekend she took the train, met him in Topeka where he was living, and they traveled on to Liberty, Missouri, which is one county past Kansas City, Missouri. Grandpa figured legal notices wouldn’t appear even in the KC papers. So they picked up the license and rode back to Kansas City, and were married by the minister of a Lutheran church Grandpa had attended while in auto mechanic’s school there.

She went back to her teaching and he stayed in Topeka, and they would visit each other on the weekends. Mostly she went to Topeka, and they would check into a hotel, as Grandpa’s room in a boarding house wasn’t very private.

When I first heard this story I asked my Grandma what she thought would have happened if someone they knew had seen them going to the hotel. Wouldn’t they have thought that was scandalous(thinking the couple unmarried) She didn’t answer that, but she did say “I still remember how those desck clerks looked at us, with no luggage to speak of!”

As a kid it took me a while to understand that they just weren’t Grandma and Grandpa, they had once been a young couple very much in love(and lust too).

I also remember fishing with them, and Grandpa insisting we had to clean the fish as well as eat them. He ended up working for the Santa Fe railroad shops, and we would sit on the front porch swing and he would pretend to be the engineer of a train, announcing all the stops along the rail line.

Grandma kept an orange candy dish on the enclosed back porch of their house, filled with mints and lemon drops. We grandkids would sneak out there and raid the dish, being oh so careful to not rattle the lid, and we were so pleased to get away with it. Of course now I know that she knew exactly what was happening, but pretended not to.

She is still with us, at 98, but in a nursing home. And the orange candy dish I can see on a shelf, from where I sit typing here. It’s still got mints and lemon drops in it, and I’ve taught my nephews not to rattle the lid.

27

As kids, we would go to South Carolina and visit with Grammie.

My memory is one of peace, spent on the front porch, at the crack of dawn, sitting and rocking with Grammie.

28

My grandma and her sisters owned a bridal shop in a time when women didn’t work. Then she and my grandfather started a children’s clothing store, which did pretty well until malls became the place to shop. She helped raise some of her grandkids. I don’t know how to explain it, but when grandma was around, there was just a good feeling in the air.

She stayed with us for a while when I was a teenager. My friends would come by to pick me up and they would insist on seeing her before they left. That was grandma, even my badass teenage friends loved her.

29

This story is handed down about my Grandpa Anthony. He was working in the steel mills in Lorain OH during World War II. The steel mills literally glowed in the dark and could be seen from many miles away. One day the local air raid warden came to Grandpa Anthony’s house to berate him for not following an order to cover his house’s windows during a black-out drill. Grandpa Anthony cussed him out, saying among other colorful things, “You think the German pilots are going to see my house and not see the ****** steel mill!?!” The air raid warden steered clear of Grandpa Anthony after that.

30

I was fortunate enough to know one of my great grandmothers, my Nana. She always amazed me with energy making dinner for twelve whenever we were visiting and chasing out anyone that tried to help her. I remember sitting in her kitchen watching her make her own pasta.

Then she had to have some sort of surgery done and while she lived, my Nana never came back from the anesthesia. She dropped to the level of needing help to get dressed and not recognizing her children, So my paternal grandparents, Grandmom and Grandpop, put her into a nursing home. But my grandparents never did anything halfway. In their seventies, my grandparents started volunteering at that nursing home so they could be with my Nana every day and make sure she and the other residents got what they need.

My other major memory is that my Grandpop in my barber. Most people get their haircut for family occasions. I got my haircut at family occasions and more than any other I get to have great talks with my barber about every aspect of life.

31

All four of my grandparents were around long enough for me to get to know them fairly well. Coincidentally, I recently wrote something on my maternal grandfather, the totality of which I’ll save y’all from. But here’s a snippit and perhaps my most fond memory of him:

My relationship with him was a very strange one. On the one hand I held him in extreme awe … he was the sort of grandfather any kid loved to have. My maternal grandparents had a boat (they took us on rides in it when we came to visit), a dock, caught and ate lobster and crab, kept a pool with a really fun deep end (it didn’t get gradually deep. It was about four and a half feet deep for about three quarters the length of the pool, and then it took about a 45 degree dive to the end), had fig trees and all manner of games, cards, trinkets from foreign countries and a big map showing where in the world they had visited.

And then there was, of course, the fact that not only had he served a tour or two in the Pacific Theater, he had seen significant action in combat (three wars. As a child I doubted anyone was so lucky as my grandfather, who survived three) and played the grizzled veteran to a T. I remember on one visit I asked to see his gun. I didn’t get to see it because he spent the next half hour or so lecturing me on how it was important to be careful with guns and knives and such things and to recognize the awesome power you could have behind you with one. He didn’t scold me at all. Rather, he himself exuded a sense of reverence for a weapon that, unloaded, was just a big hunk of metal and wood, but loaded could take a man’s life and then some. I would not, as far as I can remember, see any metal weapon of his until after his death, when my Uncle Jimmy and I were cleaning out a chest of drawers and found a few pistols with empty magazines around them. Maybe it is overly romantic of me to say that his spirit guided me to treat them with the same reverence that flowed from him toward them, even though I strongly suspect they were all unloaded. We had my grandmother come and take those away, individually, in plastic bags. That might have been my first experience handling a firearm of any sort.

32

I am blessed to have all 4 of my grandparents still with us, although a couple are starting to have some health issues. I am very close to my maternal grandparents. When we were kids, they had my brother and me believing that if we grit our teeth hard, that will make the garage door open. Of course they had the garage door opener in their hand, out of our sight when we pulled into the driveway.

Also, when I was little, there was a water tower right beside this restaurant. I didn’t know what it was, so I asked him. For a long time after that, water towers were things that restaurants stored their lobsters in.

He was also a veteran of the Pacific Theater in WWII. We’ve talked alot about his experiences and I’m so grateful that he has shared them with me. Ever since I knew the definition of “hero”, he has been that to me.

33

Years ago, when I was thirteen or fourteen, my father’s mother came to stay with us for awhile while she recuperated from an illness. She was nearly eighty and very, very frail–a tiny, dour, lean old woman who rarely spoke. A few days after she moved in, my mother and I had to run an errand, leaving Grandma alone for an hour or so. This was the first time since she’d come to stay that we’d left her alone. Mom fussed around before we left, making sure that Grandma had everything she needed: comfy chair, lap blanket, cup of tea, heart medicine, TV remote, phone within reach, emergency numbers, etc. The more Mom fussed, the more I saw Grandma doing a slow burn. We bade Grandma goodbye, got into the car, backed down the driveway–and saw Grandma standing in the front doorway, arms akimbo. She yelled at my mother in her reedy old-lady voice:

“DON’T WORRY, NORMA! I PROMISE I WON’T DIE UNTIL YOU GET BACK!”

and then she slammed the door with all the energy she had. It wasn’t much, but it made the point. Mom dissolved into helpless laughter, and things were a lot less tense between her and Grandma from that moment on. (Grandma hung in like a trouper for two more years before exchanging this world for the next).

I still crack up whenever I think of this.

Grandma told me once that she could predict the future and read palms because she was born in a caul.

34

Well I’ve previously written about my grandparents here. (Along with screwing up the tags :smack: ).

But I would have to say one of my favorite things about my grandparents is my grandmother and football.

My grandmother is very active in her church. In the prayer chain, one of the elders and works very often along side the pastor. But get this lady in front of a football game and WATCH OUT.

“TACKLE HIM GOD DAMN IT!!!” “WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING.” “ARE YOU JUST GOING TO LET HIM RUN THE HELL RIGHT BY YOU?”

Lets just say football time with the grandparents is a pretty fun experience.

35

M maternal grandparents are still very much alive and kicking at 86 aand 87 years old, respectively. They are still very much in love, and most of my favorite stories about them involve the way they act toward each other or related issues. Every so often, my grandfather will call the attention of everyone in the room and say something like, “Look at your grandmother. Isn’t she beautiful? Doesn’t she have an adorable little figure?” Then he’ll pinch her butt or something, and she’ll look really embarassed and protest.

Apparently they first met when my grandmother was 16 and my grandfather was 17, dated for a while, and then broke up. They got back together a year or two later, and got married not too long afterward. Every time we ask why they broke up, we get a different answer. Once, from my grandfather, it was “Well, your grandmother wasn’t ready for a serious relationship.” Eventually one of them let it slip that it was because she wouldn’t “put out.” Ah, Grandpop: once a horny old goat, always a horny old goat. After 60+ years, he’s still pinching her butt. (She is awfully cute, though.)

Every once in a while, when she was walking better than she is now, she used to say “**Eva, ** let’s go for an ice cream cone, just us girls. Your grandfather never lets me have a moment to myself…I need to get out of the house! 60 years is too long to stay with one guy!” (Keep in mind that she’s always been very independent. She always kept her own bank account and an active social life apart from my grandfather, and ran just as much of the family business as he did.)