During my childhood, more often that not on Saturday night you would find me, my brother Jason, and my cousins Tammy and Steve at Grammy and Poppy's house. I think this was a function of our mother's doing their saturday shopping together and us begging to stay together at Grammy's rather than go on our separate ways afterwards, or our parents having "go out on the town" plans on Saturday night and us being babysat by the grandparents.
Either way, it was such a part of my childhood that I can barely remember NOT staying at their house Saturday night and getting up to go to church on Sunday morning, unless it was the occasional stay at the other grandparents.
Saturday afternoon would generally be spent outside in the backyard, which as a child seemed enormous. There was a sweet gum tree to the right side of the patio that was fairly easy to climb, if we had something at the base to give us a boost. The little prickly seed pods or "bombs" as we pretended they were, made awesome props in our imaginary play. The best climbing tree was the Mimosa right in front of the patio. I loved that tree with it's fluffy pink flowers and the leaves that you could "zip" from top to bottom. We used to fill little cups with the little leaves that zipped off and pretend it was a salad or greens we were serving for supper.
To the left side of the yard was two larger oak or hickory trees. They were just close enough together that we could string a line between them and Grammy would let us bring chairs and old blankets out to build a really cool fort to play in. That fort would become anything from a teepee during "cowboys & indians" play, to the IGA while we played store.
One of the treasures in backyard was behind the big HVAC unit. There, during certain times of the year there was a bush that we could pick raspberries from. For us kids, it may as well been manna from heaven!
If the weather happened to be bad we would find things to do inside. Forts were made in the Blue Room or the back bedroom. Hide-n-Seek was fun in a house that had two-sided closets, and there was no better place on earth to play dress up than in Grammy and Poppy's closets. Then, there were those really special times when Grammy would sit down and dress your dolls and barbies with you. She had a laundry basket full of clothes for them, most of which she had made herself.
These times were usually when it was just Tammy and I at Grammy's and us girls would sit in the floor and dress up our dolls. Grammy had the best imagination and could make voices for all the dolls. She would have us dressing our dolls for going to balls, going to the dentist, going camping, etc. She would give them funny names and hilarious back stories until Tammy and I would be rolling around on the floor dying with laughter.
After play time, Grammy would start supper and Poppy would turn on the TV. I believe it was usually the Lawrence Welk show that would be on. By the time we sat down at the table to eat, it would 6pm and the Hee Haw show would be on. Poppy loved Hee Haw. After Hee Haw we watched Love Boat and then Fantasy Island. After that it was bed time.
Well, one night I remember Fantasy Island wrapping up and it must have been an especially "magical" one. I can just imagine Tammy and I jabbering on about it and wishing we could go there and have something fantastic happen to us (most likely having to do with having perfect hair and straight teeth) and Grammy must have got it into her head to pull a fast one on us, as we were in just the frame of mind to fall for it.
"Would you like to learn something my Mommy taught me when I was a little girl?" she asked us, all innocent acting. Of course we said sure. After all, it was close to bed time and anything to get us out of bed time was awesome.
"If you go outside in the dark and run around the house two times just as fast as you can, and then look behind you while you are still running, there will be two white calves following after you." How she said this without laughing, I will never know.
Now, Tammy and I were probably around 7 and 8 years old and were standing there in our little Strawberry Shortcake nightgowns (we always changed into them between Love Boat and Fantasy Island in case we fell asleep before it was over) wide-eyed and just wordly enough that we had to verify... "Did it work for you?" I asked Grammy.
"Sure enough did" She said. Again, not even a hint of a grin.
So out the patio door we went - legs flying, fists pumping, breath huffing. As we closed in on the second lap I felt the hair on my neck starting to stand up and the goose-pimples breaking out on my arms. I just knew those calves were back there! I could feel them breathing down my neck and their big brown calf eyes rolling around looking at me!
"Look back" I said. "Nuh, uh" Tammy said "you look."
We were almost back to the patio. It was now or never. Come on, do it fast like ripping off a band-aid.
I whipped my head back over my neck as fast as possible and saw two quick flashes of white before my head was looking back to the front. Wait, was that... surely not... those were much to small... but, she didn't say they would be the size of real calves...
At the patio door, Poppy was waiting with the door open and we ran right in. Now, there was laughter. I'm sure it had to do with the looks on our faces and the width of our eyes. Naturally, we didn't think it was too funny when we found out we had been had, but you better believe I loved it when she repeated the prank on my brother and cousin Steve a couple years later!
Heeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaawwwww and Salute!
In His Blessings,
Tracy
Monday, April 11, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Gollywhopper tore up Ol' Jake
My Grammy was easily the single biggest influence on my early life. A lot of my early memories are of her and Poppy and life at her house.
Now, Grammy wasn't your average grandmother. She was amazing in every way; she could cook anything you wanted to eat, knew every story a kid could want to hear, she could fix anything you broke, and could make the very best forts ever. She also had a secret language. At least I thought it was a secret language when I was a kid. None of my friends seemed to know what I was talking about when I used her words, and my teachers always told me they didn't exist. But my cousins and I and Grammy knew what they meant. It was cool, like a club.
So to ease you into some of these I will start with some of the easier ones:
Fiddlesticks - this is the word Grammy would use if we made a ridiculous statement, which kids are wont to do. For example, "Grammy, Jason and Steve are in the back bedroom playing with their GI Joes and they said they are going to kill all our Barbies!" Her response would be "Oh, Fiddlesticks, now go on and play." And we would.
Scissorbill - This was her word for you when you got a smart mouth going. My mom was the first person to be bestowed with this moniker. Amazingly enough, I earned it a couple times, too. When I was a young mom, I was watching The Little Mermaid with my daughter, Erika, and one of the Seagulls used the word Scissorbill. I was stunned!
Whomperjawed - this was used for things that were just... wrong... Things that got all kinds of messed up or just off-kilter could be whomperjawed. Now, if something was specifically crooked, then you would say it was "crooked as a dog's hind leg".
Gollywhopper - this was one of my favorites. Grammy would play a game where you would lay on the couch with your head in her lap and she would start with her finger on your "noggin" and she would trace around to your ears, eyes, etc, until she would land on and "get" your gollywhopper (your throat) and send you into fits of giggles.
Now, while there are many, many others I am going to focus on one other saying because for a long time this one really messed me up. Why I never asked anyone to explain, I can only chalk up to stubbornness, or embarrassment over the fact that everyone else in my family seemed to know who Ol' Jake was.
Grammy and Poppy's house had two living rooms, the one that shared space with the kitchen and had a TV in it, and the formal "Blue" living room. The Blue room was where us kids went to play many times while the adults were visiting in the other room. The standard admonishment before heading in there was "Now, don't go tear up Ol' Jake".
In my young mind I had no idea who Jake was, but I accepted that he was old. Hanging on the main wall in the Blue room was an old black and white photo of Grammy's parents. Of course, then I had no idea who they were, just that they were old and very grouchy looking. Naturally, I assumed the man was Ol Jake. One question answered, but that opened others in my mind, such as:
1)Why wasn't anyone concerned about us tearing up the old woman? I felt kind of sorry for her, I mean no one even called her by her name.
2) How did they think we would tear him up when he was safely up on the wall? What did they think we did in there, anyway?
Then one day we were going to the back bedroom to play and Grammy said "we're gonna be leaving soon to go over to the church, so don't be tearin' up Ol' Jake back there." What? Jake's in the Blue room, not in the back bedroom. Is he? I remember looking real closely on the walls of that room and no Ol Jake! So my theory changed that day and I decided that Ol Jake just might be a ghost, although how some kids could tear up a ghost was more than my 6 year old little mind could logic through.
Then, the ultimate wrench was thrown one Saturday when my Mom, Dad, me and my brother were at my Dad's folks house and my Mom yells down the stairs at me and my cousin Bobby "It's awfully loud down there, you kids don't be tearin up Ol Jake, okay?"
Seriously? I looked over at Bobby expecting a look of horror as he realizes that a creepy old ghost has followed my family over to his home, but... nothing. Maybe he didn't hear, or more likely, Bobby - lover of all things that normal people cringe at - loved the idea of having a creepy old ghost. Heck, he probably was making a pallet for Ol Jake in the downstairs living room and planning to pop popcorn and charge his friends a quarter a piece to see the creeper.
I don't know exactly how long it took me to figure out that Ol Jake meant whatever room or area you were in. I still don't know why it's called that, but I do know for absolute surety that Grammy's daddy was not a ghost and his name was not Jake!
In His Blessings,
Tracy
Now, Grammy wasn't your average grandmother. She was amazing in every way; she could cook anything you wanted to eat, knew every story a kid could want to hear, she could fix anything you broke, and could make the very best forts ever. She also had a secret language. At least I thought it was a secret language when I was a kid. None of my friends seemed to know what I was talking about when I used her words, and my teachers always told me they didn't exist. But my cousins and I and Grammy knew what they meant. It was cool, like a club.
So to ease you into some of these I will start with some of the easier ones:
Fiddlesticks - this is the word Grammy would use if we made a ridiculous statement, which kids are wont to do. For example, "Grammy, Jason and Steve are in the back bedroom playing with their GI Joes and they said they are going to kill all our Barbies!" Her response would be "Oh, Fiddlesticks, now go on and play." And we would.
Scissorbill - This was her word for you when you got a smart mouth going. My mom was the first person to be bestowed with this moniker. Amazingly enough, I earned it a couple times, too. When I was a young mom, I was watching The Little Mermaid with my daughter, Erika, and one of the Seagulls used the word Scissorbill. I was stunned!
Whomperjawed - this was used for things that were just... wrong... Things that got all kinds of messed up or just off-kilter could be whomperjawed. Now, if something was specifically crooked, then you would say it was "crooked as a dog's hind leg".
Gollywhopper - this was one of my favorites. Grammy would play a game where you would lay on the couch with your head in her lap and she would start with her finger on your "noggin" and she would trace around to your ears, eyes, etc, until she would land on and "get" your gollywhopper (your throat) and send you into fits of giggles.
Now, while there are many, many others I am going to focus on one other saying because for a long time this one really messed me up. Why I never asked anyone to explain, I can only chalk up to stubbornness, or embarrassment over the fact that everyone else in my family seemed to know who Ol' Jake was.
Grammy and Poppy's house had two living rooms, the one that shared space with the kitchen and had a TV in it, and the formal "Blue" living room. The Blue room was where us kids went to play many times while the adults were visiting in the other room. The standard admonishment before heading in there was "Now, don't go tear up Ol' Jake".
In my young mind I had no idea who Jake was, but I accepted that he was old. Hanging on the main wall in the Blue room was an old black and white photo of Grammy's parents. Of course, then I had no idea who they were, just that they were old and very grouchy looking. Naturally, I assumed the man was Ol Jake. One question answered, but that opened others in my mind, such as:
1)Why wasn't anyone concerned about us tearing up the old woman? I felt kind of sorry for her, I mean no one even called her by her name.
2) How did they think we would tear him up when he was safely up on the wall? What did they think we did in there, anyway?
Then one day we were going to the back bedroom to play and Grammy said "we're gonna be leaving soon to go over to the church, so don't be tearin' up Ol' Jake back there." What? Jake's in the Blue room, not in the back bedroom. Is he? I remember looking real closely on the walls of that room and no Ol Jake! So my theory changed that day and I decided that Ol Jake just might be a ghost, although how some kids could tear up a ghost was more than my 6 year old little mind could logic through.
Then, the ultimate wrench was thrown one Saturday when my Mom, Dad, me and my brother were at my Dad's folks house and my Mom yells down the stairs at me and my cousin Bobby "It's awfully loud down there, you kids don't be tearin up Ol Jake, okay?"
Seriously? I looked over at Bobby expecting a look of horror as he realizes that a creepy old ghost has followed my family over to his home, but... nothing. Maybe he didn't hear, or more likely, Bobby - lover of all things that normal people cringe at - loved the idea of having a creepy old ghost. Heck, he probably was making a pallet for Ol Jake in the downstairs living room and planning to pop popcorn and charge his friends a quarter a piece to see the creeper.
I don't know exactly how long it took me to figure out that Ol Jake meant whatever room or area you were in. I still don't know why it's called that, but I do know for absolute surety that Grammy's daddy was not a ghost and his name was not Jake!
In His Blessings,
Tracy
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