Followup Friday (Aggie Style)

It’s no surprise to me that Grandma Agnes was an instant hit here and, like I said, I really only covered the tip of the iceberg. Uncle Bart (UB, if you will) sent along some other fantastic memories of the GGGOAT¹.

Words in italics= direct quotes from UB’s email:

Mowing the lawn would be a 5-day operation:
Day 1 – “That lawn sure is growing fast.”
Day 2 – Make sure the oil is checked, gas is in the mower, and the door is open.
Day 3 – The actual mowing of the lawn (later on, this would be a 2-day job).
Day 4 – “I’m so glad I got that lawn mowed.”
Day 5 – “That lawn looks so nice.”

After supper, Grandma and Grandpa would go out and walk beans until dark all summer long. (Yes, we say supper. Always have, always will)

Grandma’s children and grandchildren could do no wrong. Anyone who crossed one of them was her sworn enemy for life. This was especially true for cousin Timmy. Keep in mind, he’s the only boy of seven cousins (great-grandkids to Agnes), and literally could not do anything wrong in Grandma’s eyes. One summer, I was living near Mayberry and working full-time at a factory during the day (ask Agatha about that summer; we were roommates) and taking a college course at night. Obviously, this was a pretty busy summer, and I’d say that (even according to Aggie’s standards) I was working pretty hard. She never said a word to me about my busy summer of work and school. However, Timmy was in high school at the time and one day after he’d spent a few hours helping Uncle Bart around the farm, he stopped in to Grandma’s before his baseball practice. As soon as he left, she went on for about twenty minutes about how hard Timmy worked. Cool, Grandma. Cool.

Her most repeated phrase – “We’ll just do the best we can. That’s all we can do.” Dude, not sure how I forgot about this one. Smoke still says it about three times a week.

She was always under the delusion that I had suddenly developed a taste for gravy and nuts. I’ve never seen Uncle Bart eat gravy or any kind of nut in my life (Mama G is pretty much the same). However, Grandma would always try to shove it down his throat. “Don’t you want any gravy on that, kid?” 

When she was in her early 90’s, I caught her up on the ladder cleaning her gutters on the north side of the house. She said she didn’t think anyone would catch her back there. I told her, “That’s the problem. If you fall, nobody will find you for hours.” She just shrugged. Page family- do we have copies of her X-rays anywhere? I’d also like to add (as Maude reminded me in the comments of the last post) that Grandma fell backwards onto Smoke and Mama G’s car after Christmas Eve services once, causing the biggest dent I’ve ever seen on a Goldenstein vehicle. (we didn’t discover this until much later… she probably weighed 120 pounds and, again, acted as if she was in no pain whatsoever. Does osteoporosis secretly come with some kind of superpower?)

She would be out cleaning the windows in the tractors every morning when we went to the field. One morning when she was near 90, she put a step ladder on the drawbar of the tractor so she could reach the back window. The ladder slipped and she landed flat on her back. Her feet must have been five or six feet from the ground and she landed on the hard rock. She acted as if she wasn’t hurt, of course. This may partially explain her serpentine back x-ray. Page Family- see above comment on X-rays.

Grandma was always worried about something. If any of the kids were gone from home (which was frequently) she would talk about it until they got home, and then, “Thank God they’re home.” Her default worry was the weather or fire. You knew if she was worried about a storm or the house burning down, there wasn’t a whole lot of strife in the kids’ lives. She always unplugged the TV despite repeated warnings that if the TV got struck by lightning, it would undoubtedly come in through the antenna. I can’t tell you how many times I went over there to see her tiny little self crawling behind the TV stand to unplug it (or plug it back in after a storm).

Oh, Grandma.

-Bev

¹Mom, Dad, Nan, Jean, other readers above the age of 40: GOAT stands for Greatest Of All Time. I think you can all figure what GGGOAT means.