My Grandma

Here is another of my lists!  I'll probably write separate entries on some of the things, but this will give you an overview of my many memories of my dad's mother and things that happened on her place in rural Texas.  I know I'll remember more things later.  I only have a few memories of my Grandpa because he passed away when I was 5 years old.

- Having family reunions.  My grandparents had eight children and 23 grandchildren.  So it was quite a crowd with lots of food!
- My uncles butchering a goat for us to eat at a reunions  (And that is another story!  This city girl says yuck!)
- Drinking iced tea from tin cans.
- Playing Chinese checkers with my sisters and my cousins.
- Grandma and her quilting.  She made many, many quilts in her lifetime.
- Grandma putting a tablecloth over the food on the kitchen table after we had eaten.
- Granddaddy long legs in the bathroom (on the window screens and in the corners).
- The green wooden toy box on the porch.
- The wood-burning heater in the living room.  In the winter, heating bricks on top, wrapping them in newspaper, and taking them to bed to keep our feet warm.
- Wooden crank telephone that hung on the wall that was connected only to my uncle's house who lived a quarter of a mile way. As soon as we arrived at my Grandma's house, my dad always called my uncle to tell him that his cows were out!
- Photographs of family under the glass of the coffee table.
- The outhouse, then indoor plumbing.  The bathtub was metal.
- An outside wall of the added-on bathroom made of flat, native rocks and cement.  My dad and some my of aunts, uncles, and cousins wrote their initials and stuck marbles in the cement and carved their initials or names in the soft rocks.
- The shed where Grandma did her laundry.  She also boiled water in a big cast iron pot by the clothes line. She used wood to heat the water.  She used a wringer washing machine next to three galvanized tubs on legs—one to wash, two to rinse.
- Doodle bugs in the shed.
- The smell of the room next to the shed where they smoked meat.
- Grandma raising chickens to eat.  She also ate their eggs.  She would kill a chicken by grabbing one of its legs and wringing its neck.  I think she then put the chicken's neck over on a tree stump to chop off its head with a hatchet.
- My Grandma's garden.
- My Grandma wearing a sunbonnet.
- The prickly pear cactus and mesquite trees all over the place.
- Swimming in the creek.
- Exploring the 600 acres that she owned.

Below is a photo of my Grandma.  The photo was taken in 1974 when she was 82.  Click to see her better.  I think that I have her chin.