City Grandma

Over the years, many of my Blogger friends have written beautiful tributes to their grandparents or other relatives long gone.  I thought I'd start out the new year by doing the same, although I know my writing isn't very flowery or as descriptive as others I've read.  I hope you enjoy my fond recollections anyway.  I'm always surprised when someone my age talks about their living grandparent, since mine have all been gone for decades, but certainly not forgotten.

 

I will start out with the grandparent I knew best, my Dad's mother, who lived about 10 minutes away from us.  Grandma was born in Altoona, PA in 1903.  Her parents were of English and German descent, and the stories I've heard were that her ancestors were here since the Revolutionary War.  Her father worked on the railroads and was killed on the job when she was 3 years old.  She and her two brothers were placed in a Lutheran children's home because her mother could not afford to raise them.  I remember being shocked by this when I was a child, but I don't think it was that uncommon for widows to be forced to do this.  After she graduated from high school, her brother got a job in the tire industry, and the family moved to Akron, Ohio in the 1920's.  Her mother remarried a much younger man, who also worked in the tire industry.  Grandma met and married a man (also a tire worker) in the late '20's and they had a son a few years later (my dad). Grandma miscarried another child later on and never had any other children.  I do not know very much about my Grandpa because it always made Grandma cry to speak of him.  He died a year before I was born of a sudden, massive heart attack.  My Dad is not much of a talker, so I have learned next to nothing about my Grandfather from him either.

 

I call her my City Grandma because she always lived in the city.  She had a small cape cod house within walking distance of a grocery store and other amenities.  Grandma never learned to drive.  She relied on others to take her places, or she took the city bus.  I remember her taking me on the bus to go downtown to shop.  This was a strange experience for me, who was used to only go to the mall.  The department stores downtown had wooden escalators and elevators with metal gates.  Grandma would tell me I could pick out anything I wanted, but I was always too shy and overwhelmed and would tell her I didn't want anything!

 

I used to stay for three nights at Grandma's house every summer and I have fond memories of cooking meals with her for just the two of us.  But Grandma ate some weird stuff.  She always had a glass jar of pickled eggs in her fridge (hard boiled eggs, floating in purple liquid) and braunschweiger, both equally disgusting to me.  She kept a tin cup by her kitchen sink and always used it to drink tap water.  Every fall, she would make concord grape pies, another oddity to me. On Friday nights, we would often go to her house and she would serve us pop and potato chips, warmed in the oven.  I have never heard of anyone else doing that.  We would watch Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family, and then the Rockford Files.  Grandma loved her James Garner.  She also was a religious watcher of  'The Johnny Carson Show.'  Other memories of Grandma's house was her candy jar, filled with butterscotch discs or those green spearmint jelly leaves.  Her bedroom dresser always had a few bottles of perfume, with those squeeze pumps, and lots of costume jewelry.  Grandma even got her ears pierced when she was about 70!  Every Easter, we would go to her house, dressed in our finest, and get our picture taken in the front yard under her dogwood tree.  She loved that tree.  Then my brother and I would go inside to look for the Easter baskets she had hidden for both of us.  Mine was always hidden behind the door in her 'back bedroom' and my brother's was always in the bathtub!  That still cracks me up.  Come on, Grandma, find a new hiding spot!

 

I think what tells the most about Grandma was her group of friends.  She had a lot of friends, most of them in her 'card club,' as she called it.  They were all widows and would take trips together.  I remember her going to Seattle once, and to Hawaii two times.  I can still picture us picking her up at the airport, when she stepped off the plane wearing an orange muumuu and a lei.  Her friends had names like Evelyn, Margaret, Vivian, Viola and Boots.  She also had an older friend in the neighborhood, Mrs. Cobatitz (I'm guessing on the spelling).  As custom had it, she used Mrs. for anyone older than herself.  I would walk with her to Mrs. Cobatitz's house on Sunday afternoons.  The only thing I remember about her was that she was always watching 'Polka Varieties' when we arrived.  They would chitchat for half an hour, and then we would walk back to Grandma's.

 

Grandma passed away at the age of 79 when I was in college.  What I will always remember is that even though my Grandma lived alone for her last 20 years of life, she was never lonely.

 

ETA: It just struck me that tomorrow is the anniversary of her death.  It must have been in the back of my mind!  Oddly enough, her brother died on New Years Day, after being involved in a car accident with a drunk driver in the 1950's.  Grandma seemed to lose the men in her life too soon.