Were she still alive, today would have been my Grams birthday (she is the on the right in this pic with the white sweater, the other lady is her sister, my Aunt Alice. I think this pic was taken at my Uncle Lee's funeral to be honest, because there is ham and funeral potatoes on the table.) Today she would have celebrated 100 years. Sadly she passed away about 10 years ago; I miss her. I did just buy her old house, though, because of the memories.
Grams was pretty great. She did not have any teeth, but could gum a bite of steak faster than I could chew one. The only thing she had issue with was salad, and I shall not tell you how she ate it, gross! Every year she had a boutique in her house where she would sell wrapping paper and greeting cards to make money. She taught me how to plant a garden and shuck peas. She taught all of us the value of an honest days work for a wage, the same lesson she taught her children, the same lesson my Mom taught us. We knew not to disobey Grams, she might have been old but she was quick! I still remember her chasing my cousin around the backyard yielding 'the strap.' She used to babysit us after school and we quickly became fans of her "shows" such as Days of Our Lives (remember when Hope Brady was killed in a vat of acid but then she was alive again? That is good programing! The Brady family is wildly unlucky)
Where was I? Oh Grams birthday. So my Mom and her siblings all decided that for Gram's 100th birthday they all were going to go to Wendover, NV and spend it how Grams would have wanted: gambling. Grams was by no means a compulsive gambler, do not get me wrong, but she loved sitting at a slot machine and enjoying the buffet. Grams took me gambling once on our way home from a vacation. We were stopped in Las Vegas and she was getting too old to pull down the lever, this was before the convenient button you push instead of pulling anything, and so she put the money in and my job was to pull the lever. I was probably 15 at the time and she made the mistake of telling me that she was going to teach me a lesson to never gamble. Of course she won money that time. I learned a valuable lesson "Never gamble unless you are teaching someone a lesson, you will lose!"
Grams left my family a wonderful legacy to follow. Grams was the sort of person who would very literally give you the shoes off her feet if you needed them. Mom is the same way. Grams was quick tongued and very straight forward. She told it like it was. I will never forget her kindness and strive to live my life like she did; the way my Mom does from her example. Grams is the best kind of person, she passed that on to my Mom and Aunts, and I know that if even a fraction of her example rubbed off on me I am lucky. Two of my nieces were named after her (her name was Lottie) and carry that part of her legacy. I am so blessed to have had a Grams like her to share an example of what a truly good person is.
Happy Birthday Grams!
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