Grandma recorded a bunch of stories from her life and I have been typing them up over the last, um, lots of months. I recently realized that if I am going to complete my goal and have them finished by Christmas, I need to get cracking! Today I spent over 2 hours listening and typing, and have learned some new things about our dear grandmother, and thought you all might be interested. Here they are:
Did you know...
1. the first time Grandma had electricity was on her farm and it was powered by a windmill? Her dad hooked up a windmill to a battery, waited until several batteries were fully charged, and then hooked them up to their house for light. They just had single light bulbs dangling from the ceiling.
2. Grandma's Uncle Jess was killed at 24 when he was playing a game called "stick horse?" He apparently tried to jump over a broom handle, landed on it, it pierced his backside and went into his intestines. He immediately came down with an infection and died shortly thereafter.
3. Grandma cheered for the Brooklyn Dodgers?
4. at one time they had TEN people living in their tiny, four-room house? Her mother and father, brother and sister, her Uncle Loren and his three kids, and one of her uncles. Whew! Imagine cramming all those people into four small rooms--just two bedrooms, a kitchen and living/dining room. (And we think apartment living is bad...)
5. they used to cut chunks of ice from the lake in the winter and keep it in an ice house, insulated by straw and hay, for use in the summer? Grandma said she had delicious homemade ice cream many times from ice from the ice house. (It reminded my of Bye Bye Birdie.)
Isn't all this interesting?!?! I have really enjoyed learning about Grandma, especially from her perspective. This project has been wonderful. Thanks, Mom, for the idea!
7 comments:
I can help you type if you want. I'd love to help.
Those are really interesting. I'm glad you took this on, Jana. All of that trivial stuff would've been lost and we would've never known it. Thanks.
P.S. That's a neat picture you included.
I can help type! It would so cool to hear...but then I guess you would have to mail the tapes...but I'll still help if you want to send some my way. What are you doing with these stories besides typing them? Are you putting them into a book or are we adding them to the book of stories Mom made? Also, I don't know that I've ever seen any pictures of Grandma or Grandpa, for that matter, before they were married-who would have those and can we make copies? I don't know that I've even seen a wedding picture. I probably should just call Grandma.
Thanks, Hillary and Kari, for being willing to help, but I'm nearly done. I only have one side of one tape left, so I don't know how I'd split that up.
I'm planning on printing them out and putting them in a book for Grandma and Grandpa, and also for Mom and Dad. I will email the file to the rest of you and our aunts and uncles. I'm hoping to get Grandma to collect some pictures for me when I see her before Thanksgiving so I can scan them and add them in. We'll see if we get that far.
We'll be there next summer-so if you can't get them at Thanksgiving, I'll get them then.
Thanks Jana. I didn't know those things and I lived with her for about nineteen years. These will be treasured memories and I suspect my siblings will be extremely anxious to get copies too.
Hope you will get the same type of response from Grandpa as well.
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