memoir

Grandma J

Knowing Grandma J was a pure pleasure. Having spent fifty years on an isolated Kansas farm, she truly enjoyed her cushy life in town with a gas stove, refrigerator, and wringer washing machine. She’d raised eight wild boys and three girls. Though she’d lost a young baby early in her marriage, it had been so long she no longer mourned. She’d been widowed many years by the time I knew her, and was well- satisfied in her neat little house in town. Should one of her many children not come by, she could walk to the store, beauty parlor, or church. She had neighbors in or went to their kitchens for coffee.

Though she was built like a refrigerator on spindly legs, she was a very attractive lady. She always dressed in floral cotton dresses with a freshly-ironed apron tied around her waist. Her silvery hair was always softly curled. Should she be going out on a windy day, it was ensconced in a hairnet for summer or scarf for wind or cold. Before Grandma went out, she always donned a freshly ironed housedress and good apron, both of her own making. She always picked up her big black purse last thing before heading out the door.

She still adhered to many lifelong habits: washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, and baking bread and pies on Friday. It would have been a rare weekend to not have some of her huge family or to visit in their homes.

As you might expect, her house was filled with beautiful hand-made items, quilts, rag rugs, doilies, and embroidered dresser scarves, napkins, and tablecloths. We still have a pair of crocheted trivets she made us for a wedding gift fifty-three years ago.

As you can see, they are well-loved.

Bucket List for a Spring Chicken

Reblogging a post just before Mothers 90th. She turned 96 May 5, 2024. She still lives at home with a lot of help.

Mother will be ninety in May.  A few weeks ago, my youngest sister asked if she had a bucket list. “Not really,” she answered.  “I’ve seen London, …

Bucket List for a Spring Chicken

Good Jokes

Boyfriend trouble

A teenager brings her boyfriend home to meet her folks. They’re appalled by his haircut, his tattoos, his piercings.

Later, the girl’s mom says, “Dear, he doesn’t look like a very nice boy.”

“Oh, please, Mom!” says the daughter. “If he wasn’t nice, would he be doing 500 hours of community service?”

Holy cow!

A pair of cows were talking in the field. One says, “Have you heard about the mad cow disease that’s going around?”

“Yeah,” the other cow says. “Makes me glad I’m a penguin.”

Grandpa and the Corn Thief

Grandpa J was a mighty man. Though of average height, a lifetime of farming and good genes he was barrel-chested with the arms of a blacksmith. A man to be reckoned with, he didn’t tolerate fools lightly. It was unlikely any of his neighbors would have wanted to tangle with him, so he was mystified to find someone had been slipping in and stealing corn from his corncrib at night, but it was the depression and times were hard.

Determined to put a stop to the theft, Grandpa and his son,Frank, made their way to the shed well before daylight, Frank carrying a shuttered lantern. Grandpa whispered, “When I open the door, open the shutter.”

Sure enough, when Grandpa flung open the door, the lantern revealed the thief. A half-grown white-face yearling stared blindly at them. Reacting instinctively, Grandpa hit the surprised bovine between the eyes, knocking him out.

Grandpa jumped back, cursing and cradling the fist he’d just pounded into the unconscious yearling’s bony head. Enjoying the story later, one of the family asked Frank, “Did you laugh?”

“Hell no!” He replied. “ He still had one good fist.!”

Have you ever broken a bone?

Not one of mine. I am a retired register nurse. Sometimes with frail patients, ribs break with CPR.

Saddle Shoes and Pointy Bras

That is me in my despised saddle shoes.  I was too young to hate them, yet.

The first, longest lasting, and most redundant misery my was frizzy, old lady perms.  Mother did this so my sister and I would be social outcasts.  Vastly overestimating our sexual attractiveness, from the time we went into puberty until we got old enough to fight her off, she maliciously inflicted home perms on us.

She bought our underwear at the Dollar Store or the cheapest thrift store or fire sale around, should Grandma lag in keeping us rigged out in home-made torture underwear.  Long after pointy bras were unavailable in normal circulation, Mother managed to ferret out pointy padded bras in the cheapest stores known to mankind, never mind the fact that the stiff cups caved in if they were bumped.  I’d have loved some not-too badly-worn cast-offs from the lucky, poor kids down the street, but they laughed when they caught me going through their trash. I tried to hide when changing in gym to keep anyone from seeing my Grandma’s home-made drawers.  They were made without benefit of elastic in the waist and tended to lengthen your legs by several inches as the day went on.  Grandma didn’t worry a lot about soft, cotton fabric.  Coarse, woven prints were good for the soul.


I was stuck in saddle-shoes for years because they were durable and Mother had loved them in high school.  Never-mind the fact that no other kid would have been caught dead in saddle shoes.  Best of all, I was a total slob, not the kind of kid who would ever voluntarily polish a shoe.  Most of the time, I didn’t even remember I had shoes till the school bus driver was honking the horn outside our door and I was simultaneously looking for my books, trying to get a note signed (bad news) and looking for lost shoes.  My shoes were inevitably, wet, filthy, and most likely stinking from ripping through the barnyard.  Not a good look for black and white shoes.  A more forward-thinking mother would have dressed me every day in a slicker and rain boots, so she could have hosed me off.

In his grandfather’s overcoat pocket, John Smith finds a ticket for shoes left for repair in 1955

John Smith is cleaning out his grandfathers home after the grandfather’s death  at 90.
In one of the grandfathers old overcoats pockets he finds a ticket for some shoes that the grandfather had left to be repaired in 1955. Out of curiosity, he checks online and is amazed to see that the shoe shop is still in business at the same location.
John enters the shop and starts talking to the owner who explains that he is, in fact, the grandson of the original owner and has worked in the shop all his life. John gives the ticket to the shop owner who heads into the back of the shop just to see if the shoes are still there.
After some time he returns from the back of the and exclaims “Amazingly I was able to find the shoes! They will be ready on Monday.”

“And to my son…”

An elderly gentleman was on his deathbed as his wife, three children and nurse stood close by.

Then he spoke his final wishes:

“James, you take the Maple Hills houses”.

“Nicholas, you take the Kings Forest shops”.

“Joshua, the apartments at the Limassol Marina are yours”.

“To my dear wife, Anne, you take all the residential buildings in Highland Park”.

The nurse was really impressed. She said, “Your husband must have been quite a man, amassing so much property to leave to all of you.”

The wife responded, “What property? … the schmuck had a window cleaning round!”

Granny’s Death Watch

Bud grew up in a huge nuclear family. His maternal grandparents reared their children on a farm in Kansas. Grandma Johnson moved into a full household upon her marriage. Grandpa’s second wife, she instantly became the mother of two and four-year-old boys. The icing on the cake was Grandpa Johnson’s mother and her dependent grandchild rounding up the menagerie to sixteen. Naturally, the babies started arriving regularly, till they finished off with twelve.

Apparently, Great Grandma Johnson, her mother-in-law wasn’t cut from the same cloth. All the family had their own tale of misery she’d dealt them.  At some point she had a stroke and was initially paralyzed.  Grandpa and Grandma left her care to whichever of the bevy of unfortunate young adults and teenagers within the range of her demands.  Her constant complaints and criticism failed to endear her to any of them. They all swore she could get around when she chose, as evidenced by missing food and her meddling in their business.  

Bud’s grandma was a delight. I never heard her complain. The only thing I ever heard her say that could be construed as a criticism was, “as soon as Tom (her husband) died I got down his first wife’s dishes and started using them.”

Time dragged on.  Periodically, one of the boys took his turn shuffling in the house. Hat in hand,

Eventually, time took it’s toll on Granny’s health. Granny never had been sweet, so by he time she had another stroke, the kids were thoroughly sick of her.  Despite this, they conformed to the social norms, laying low as extended family and friends gathered tor the death watch.  The nine boys gathered in the barn, while the girls cooked, served food, and attended guests in the home.  No farm work was done that day out of respect for Granny.

Time dragged on.  Periodically, one of the boys tiptoed into the house, hat in hand, for news of Granny.  It was getting late. Time to start evening chore.  At last, the youngest of the brood was coerced into taking his turn to check the situation out.  He was gone, and gone, and gone.  The boys in the barn grew irritated, thinking perhaps they’d misread the situation.  Maybe he’d gone in just in time to get to eat!  They were all starving!

Finally, Bob rejoined them.  They all clustered around him , demanding news.  “What happened? Why were you so long?”

He regarded them all somberly.  “Well, Old Granny Bitch is dead.”

I guess he’d never heard. “Don’t speak I’ll of the dead.”