There is a spider in my ear

Is what I told my Maternal Grandmother when I was about 4 years old. She leaned down and pulled on my ear to see better and looked in my ear. Just then my ear infection burst. It was my ear infection that caused me to think I had a spider in my ear.

The first memory I have of being at my maternal grandmother’s house was in the winter, either at Christmas or Thanksgiving. It had to be then because there was a big pile of coats and scarves on the bed. In our house if we went to Dad’s mom at Thanksgiving we went to Mom’s mom at Christmas. The next year was reversed. I was at the foot of the bed playing with a doll. The doll was as tall as me. She had dark hair. Someone else got that doll that year.

One joke us kids had was that we actually had to go over a river and through the woods to our grandmother’s house.  Our maternal grandmother was green before green was cool. This was way back in the 50’s. She planted trees every year. That is where we got our Christmas tree. Dad would take one of us kids and go find a tree and cut it down and we would take that tree home and set it up.

When you walk in the front door to your immediate left is the dining room. Farther left was the living room. To your right in the wall were two doors leading to the bedrooms. Between the doors on the wall was the wooden telephone. It still had the old fashioned fastenings. Yep, you had to take a hold of the metal and wind it up so you could make a call.

Across the room in front of you as you enter the front door, was the door to the kitchen. There was about three steps down to get to the kitchen floor. Immediately in front of you was the back door and turning to your left was the kitchen. You had to walk all the way down the kitchen to get to the bathroom. The kitchen was added after the house was built. Standing there to your left was a counter and above the counter was the cupboards. You opened the doors and there were the dishes. The really neat thing for us kids was opening the doors from the dining room side at the same time as the kitchen side doors were opened. You could see into the dining room or kitchen, really neat.

Grandmother had a stereoscope that kept us kids entertained for hours. When we were tired with that, then there was tons of Look and Life. Then there were piles of National Geographic. Then there was the Carrom board with all the games to be played. We were very quiet because that is the way that Grandmother preferred it. Children were seen but not heard. Mom had us trained.

At Christmas grandmother made cookies and fudge. There were all kinds of cookies, single cookies and sandwich cookies. She made the kind of cookies that you need a cookie press for. She made Pfeffernuesse. She also made jellies and jams. I remember the jar had paraffin on top and over that was a piece of wax paper fastened to the jar with a rubber band. She had ribbon candy and filled hard candy and just hard candy.

I remember her wearing a pair of Khaki pants tan colored. She wore her white hair short (it was curly). She wore a short sleeved white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She may have worn other clothing but this is what I remember her wearing. She had a rock and gem collection. She found all the rocks in her collection.

When she got sick in the 60’s mom’s brother made an addition to the house. Where the bedrooms used to be is where the addition went. First came the bedrooms down a long hall and at the end of the hall was the kitchen and living room for my uncle and his wife and kids. The new addition was very modern. The old house exterior was made entirely from rocks with mortar in between.

The last time I saw my grandmother was in one of the new bedrooms lying in bed. She was thinner than normal. I guess  she had cancer. Later she wouldn’t allow us to see her. Then she died. For us kids death in the 60’s seemed normal what with all the death and dying. John F Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Dad’s oldest brother and his wife died six months apart and then grandmother. It seemed normal to me except I began thinking it was more serious than that because the first time I saw my Dad cry was at his oldest brother’s funeral.

I heard somewhere that John Lennon

Used to read all the daily newspapers. You can become a pretty smart person if you do that. I know the newspapers are biased but the facts can be disputed. Newspapers print retractions all the time about how a previous article or ad was incorrect, they list the wrong data and then list the correct data “we printed x24 when we should have printed x23”. Unlike the Internet which is not the same.  The Internet isn’t the same yet I should say because perhaps sometime in the future there will be more fact checking and retracting.

Anyway my gut tells me that is where John Lennon got the inspiration for ‘A Day In The Life’ song 1967 released on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I heard he used to eat Kellogg’s Corn Flakes also. My gut tells me that is where he got the inspiration for ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ song also on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The TV ad for the Corn Flakes featured a Rooster and it went ‘good morning, good morning’ and so on and so forth.

Yesterday I was looking at videos on www.youtube.com. I was looking for videos of Ayn Rand and I found some. She was interviewed by Mike Wallace, Phil Donahue and Tom Synder. When I was done looking up Ayn Rand I started looking at Penn & Teller, then I started looking at other stuff. I got this bright idea to look up stuff for the Beatles. I found some interviews of all the Beatles. I also found interviews with Julian Lennon and interviews with Sean Lennon. I discovered that I like Julian but I don’t like Sean. Julian sure looks a lot like John Lennon but Sean makes himself look like John only because he wears the same type of glasses and has a similar beard. If Sean takes off the glasses and shaves the beard he will look like himself.

But while I was doing that I decided to look up on the Internet anything about my mother’s mother. Well I found her all right. Some distant relative of mine has done extensive research into his past. It isn’t a complete genealogy but it has a lot of information anyway. I don’t know the date she married but I do know when she was born. I also know when her husband was born and when he died. I also have a picture of my Great Grandfather and a picture of my Great Grandmother. Here is the picture of my Grandmother:

 

and here are her mother and father my Great Grandparents:

    So I was reading the genealogy and then I went back to finding stuff. It hit me all of a sudden.  Maybe it listed where my Grandmother and Grandfather were born!!! So I went back to reading the genealogy. Hmmmmm my Grandmother was NOT born in Norway.  The picture above is of her high school graduation and I know this because of the name on it was her maiden name. The genealogy goes way back to 1567. My ancestors on my mother’s side were English. The ancestors on my father’s side were English, Welsh and Celtic.

So then it bothered me that my Grandmother was not Norwegian. I remember my mom saying that they were both Norwegian. So then I had to find the answer. I went to a place on the Internet and found some information about my Grandfather. It looks like he went through Ellis Island at the age of 12. He was in World War One. He was a carpenter specifically a house carpenter. He was 10 years older than my Grandmother. At the time of the 1930 census he was NOT a naturalized citizen. At the time of the census neither of them had any college. My Great grandfather was dead and my Great grandmother was listed as head of household. It also listed that it was a farm. It did not list the address though. I mention college because my mom said my Grandmother graduated from Michigan Normal College in 1920.  So then if the census is correct my mom is wrong. But she also said they were both Norwegian.

So…..in the final analysis I am not 50 per cent Norwegian I am only 25 per cent Norwegian.

On my Father’s side, I had an Aunt named Zippy

Aunt Zippy was so named because she ran around all day singing ‘Zip-a-dee-do0-dah, Zip-a-dee-day, my oh my, what a beautiful day.’ She was my Father’s youngest sister. The song was featured in the Walt Disney movie ‘Song of the South,’ an animated film released in 1946 and still popular in 1947. I also have an Aunt named Weezy. One of us kids couldn’t say Louise so Weezyshe became. Aunt Weezy was married to my good looking Uncle John my Father’s brother.

My Uncle Dave, another one of my father’s brothers had a wall-eye. This scared the shit out of us kids. We couldn’t tell when he was looking at us or not. I had a bigger problem, I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me nor could I hear if he was talking to me. I didn’t freak out though, because I could tell my brothers were scared of him also. My brothers and I tried not to act scared and tried to answer his questions. His wife was Aunt Avis and she was the coolest Aunt anybody could ever have. She was not a busybody and she was sincere.

Whenever we had a family reunion we rented out a park and we took up a LOT of tables. I have a picture somewhere of the word Reunion on a banner spelled wrong. ‘Runion’ was painted on the banner and one of my Aunts holding the bottom of the banner and smiling.

One year my paternal Grandmother said not to get her a gift because she couldn’t buy that many gifts anymore. Apparently her list had grown to 200 plus. This is the Grandmother that told the black light bible stories. In the 1960’s she got breast cancer and had one breast removed. So she got a fake boob and wore it in her bra. She took it out very often and showed anyone that asked about it.

On my mother’s side my maternal Grandmother had a brother-in-law named St.Clair and his wife (her sister) was my Great Aunt Margie.  One day my brothers and I were playing in the mud in the back yard and we noticed a strange car in the driveway. It was my Great Uncle St.Clair and my Great Aunt Margie. Apparently they wanted me to come stay with them for  a week. So I did. I had lots of adventures in just one week.

I remember going to the dentist with my Great Aunt Margie and then driving through a park on the way back to her house. She gave me some money to get some Popsicles. So I got in this long line and by the time I got to be waited on I had forgotten what I was supposed to get so I got something else instead. So she was real nice about that and said not to eat it all at once. Well we all know what happened. So that was an adventure. The first night I was there I couldn’t get to sleep so I sat at the top of the stairs and she walked by and noticed me. She came up and taught me the prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep….” So that was an adventure because  up until that time I had never slept upstairs before. The next adventure was when she took me to my Great Uncle St.Clair’s place of business. He was an architect that specialized in underground houses. He had an employee that was Asian and I played with the Asian architect’s children.

Another adventure was playing with the neighborhood children until I heard my Great Aunt Margie calling me inside. The last adventure was on the day we were leaving to take me home. My Great Aunt Margie had bought some goodies to take to my parents and brothers. One goodie was marshmallows. One of the neighborhood playmates convinced me to open the bag and take some out because a few wouldn’t be noticed. But I went back in to the bag so many times that my Aunt noticed and took me on her lap and explained why it wasn’t a good thing to do. She was so nice about it that I didn’t cry nor did I ever do anything like that again.