Grandparents' Day

Mine and Hubby's grandparents are long gone, but most of our fondest memories involve our grandmothers - his maternal, my paternal.

My grandmother, Gram, was a feisty little lady of Irish descent whose favorite things included golf, gin (not the card game), wrestling on tv, sparkly fake jewelry, and yours truly. She bought an organ so that she could play the one song she knew - "Toora Loora Loora"

Dad would take us over to her house every Saturday morning and Gram would make pancakes from scratch for us kids and the dog.

She had the largest collection of jewelry I've ever seen. Most of it was fake but some real, and expensive, pieces were in the mix. She would let us kids play dress-up with every single piece of it... and her fur coats.

Hubby's grandmother, Miss Hattie, was a feisty little southern lady and farmer's wife. She could cook up the best fried chicken and butter beans I've ever had. And neither was store-bought. The beans were grown in the garden and the chicken had been walking around the yard yesterday.

My favorite Miss Hattie story:

She had been in the garden, hand-pulling weeds. I should mention here that Miss Hattie was about 83 or so at the time. A snake bit her. She left the garden, went to the tool shed, got a hoe, returned to the garden to do battle. The snake, which BTW was a copperhead, lost. Miss Hattie called her son, who called the paramedics. Another battle ensued. She refused to get in the ambulance because the crew would not allow her to take her purse. The situation was finally resolved when her son agreed to follow directly behind the ambulance with Miss Hattie's purse right beside him on the front seat of his truck.

They don't make 'em like that anymore.