My Grandma

My grandma Lettie was a character.  She was a wonderful woman.  She was strong and didnt take any nonsense from anyone but had a wacky sense of humor.  During the war (WWII) she and my grandfather worked in a steel mill.  Grandma drove a forklift which is strange because she never did drive a car.  She used to say she was little but she was mighty.  At only 4' 10" or so she was little but she would tell everyone she was 4' 12".  She would say it fast to see how long it took people to actually understand what she had said. 

She showed me how to crochet yarn with my fingers when I was five or so and she sewed clothes for my dolls that she gave me that were my mom's.  She played the piano by ear. 

One day my mom called my grandma because there was a snake in our garage.  Mom is terrified of snakes but not Grandma.  She came over with a shovel and divided that snake from its head just like that....  She killed a lot of snakes.  She also was a strict grandma.  When we misbehaved when we were at her house while she was watching us she would have us go out and pick a switch off of the lilac bush.  One time my brother being a little you-know-what decided that he would pick the littlest switch he could find.  Needless to say, the smaller they are the more they hurt which he found out the hard way! 

We would help her pick acorns which she would turn into little ski-men.  She always had canaries in the old house.  It used to amaze me that they would go to sleep if you covered their cage up.  Grandma was a good cook too...pies, noodles, cakes, canning, bread, you name it she made it.  She had to sell the old farmhouse when I was in grade school. My grandfather had died a few years before and she just could not keep up with the furnace in the wintertime (coal) and the upkeep so she sold it and moved into an apartment and eventually bought a brand new trailer.  I still remember the summers you would go into her trailer and there she would be with a big dishpan kneading bread her face all red and sweaty.  Grandma what are you doing I'd say and she would say I'm baking bread.  My mom used to have a cow.  But that was grandma and you couldnt argue with her. 

As she got older her eyesight and memory started to go.  She made some chocolate bar cookies with the candy bars on the bottom and told us to have some while she got us something to drink one day.  When my mom took off the cover the cookies were covered in ants!  Grandma came back in and said "you dont like my cookies?"  Mom said "well they are covered in ants".  Well Grandma got to laughing and said you don't like chocolate covered ants?  The memory thing started later when she kept forgetting to turn off the water in her bathroom.  Pretty soon she would haul out the bathroom carpeting (not rug the carpeting) and throw it over the clothesline.  She would hide money in her bible too, forget what she did with it and then accuse my uncle of stealing it.  She also didnt like the fact that my aunt was living in sin with him.  Which he wasnt.  They had been married a long time and Grandma had attended the wedding. 

If you hadnt noticed I really miss Grandma.  She was my best friend when I was growing up.  She taught me a lot like how to chop off a snake's head lol. 

Talk to ya later!

Denise