The thread about dads and the other one about moms made me want to start a thread about grandmas. Might have to share a few things I ought not to, to put things into perspective. So get ready for my normal overshare.

Momma didn’t make the best choices when I was little, and definitely didn’t choose the right men. Welp my grandma came over one day to bring something for my momma and the man I knew of as my dad at the time was beating me with a coat hanger. Probably one of my earliest memories, this was before kindergarten. My grandma hit him so hard, I think she sobered him up. This man was a criminal, outlaw biker type that did not think twice about hitting my mom, but he feared my grandma. She took me home and I don’t think I ever saw him again, not real sure what happened to him.

After that, i still spent some time with my momma, but grandma kept me most of the time. From that point on in my life, everything was country country country. Country style country music country breakfast country life and i was happy happy happy. But we lived on Bruton Road in Mesquite. It was a little different then, early to mid 80’s. Lots of woods and sunflower fields, but still it was a fairly suburban area. Good places to trespass and fish, couple public places too. Hodges park and City Lake Park come to mind. Used bacon, hotdogs, canned biscuit dough, whole kernel corn, stuff like that for bait. Sometimes we made our own dough bait out of just flower and water or milk, or soda pop. Grasshoppers are probably my favorite bait of all time. We caught all species. I fished and explored, shot birds with my pellet gun, all that stuff. I stayed with her until mom sobered up and got it together, when i was about 11 I think.

My grandma worked full time for the phone company during this time, while she raised me. She also took care of her sister, who was crippled by a fire when she was little, and kept a garden. She canned a lot, made huge jars of pickles, we had home grown watermelons and tomatoes. And she was active in the church and helping the GA’s until the church split at some point. Grandma taught me about hard work, the importance of family, how to shoot a gun and clean and catch a fish, and how to cook. My Aunt Ada helped a lot, too. And Aunt Ada *tried* to teach me about Jesus and lead me to the Lord, but I had to experience life a little bit more to get there. Aunt Ada might have been crippled but i would not call her handicapped. And my Aunt Ada made the best fried chicken there ever was.

They made sure I did my schoolwork too, and taught me how to read and do basic math, and taught me the alphabet. I probably wouldn’t have graduated high school if she had not gotten me a jump start. Yes grandma whipped me but only when i deserved it, you better believe it was not easy to take care of me. She made me get her a switch, and go back and get a better one. Better find a good one or you’ll get the fly swatter!

“Grandma why do you whip me with the handle”
“Because the other end has fly guts on it”

I have more stories about my grandma. Everyone I know has some. She took care of almost everyone I knew in some way. And probably disciplined everybody’s kids, too. Cooked all the time, cared for and fed everyone’s kids that we knew at one point or another. Took care of most of my cousins at some point or another. I absolutely loved her beans and cornbread. I never thought of that as a struggle meal or a poverty meal, grandma made pinto beans and cornbread because it was fan freaking tastic. I have an uncle that used to come over every time she made a pot of beans.

She did everything herself. Would not hesitate to dig a ditch or mix and pour concrete on her own. I remember one time she was hanging and repairing gutters on the roof. She put a drill bit clean through her arm and couldn’t get it out. So she just left it in there and tried to just deal with it on her own and finish hanging the gutters. She was something else. She might have stayed home and died of an infection or something if my uncle Wes had not come over to visit that evening. My Uncle Wes and Uncle Richard are also great men and I am a better person for their influence in my life. My Aunt Pat, too. So many awesome relatives.

She did her own roofing and shingles, too.

Another time she paid somebody (a relative) to build a extra room onto her home, but he laid the foundation and framed it then disappeared for a few days. By the time he finally got around to working on it, Grandma was out there laying bricks.

She did not care about men at all, after her husband died that was it. He was her person, and apparently pretty amazing also. But he died when my momma was only 10 or so, and I never met him. But she told me great stories about him too. I also have some awesome uncles, and Grandma had lots of interesting friends. I remember one was an auctioneer named Mutt Meeks, used to come over and show off his skills with the way they do, you know how auctioneers do their speech and that. And she had other cool friends too, a group of ladies they all used to walk together. I loved them and referred to them as my aunt or my uncle, i had no idea they were no relation until i grew up a little bit.

Another good story about my grandma, this is a second hand story as I was not there. I am pretty sure it made it into the news paper. But apparently a guy had dressed and made himself up to look like a little kid, rode a little kids bike up next to her in her car at night and nocked on her window and begged and begged her to let him in before he gets killed, said he was being chased. She let him in to the back seat. And as soon as she started driving he put a knife to her throat and his voice became deep like a man. She beat and clawed and scratched that man so badly. I think she may have gouged an eye out, the way she tells it she just went for his eyes. She tore him up so bad he begged her to let him go.

You would never know she had it in her. She was as sweet as sugar and helped everyone she could, no limit to her generosity either.

In her older years when she could not get around and do for herself that well, she used to make dresses and other clothing and mail them to Africa, for impoverished kids. Something to do with a Christian missionary I think. But she was that kind of person.

Grandma passed in 2019, 12 days before Christmas. She was 98 years old. She lived a full and selfless life, eager to help anyone however that she could. I don’t think I ever heard her utter a dirty word. I have no doubt she has her place at the right hand of the Lord. But we miss her.

I was in Grandma’s back yard, shooting sparrows out of the pecan trees, when the neighborhood bully showed up. He took the BB gun from me and shot me on the butt. That hurt. Grandma saw that, came into the back yard, took the BB gun from the bully and told him to grab his ankles, and shot him on the butt. That really adjusted his attitude, and he never came around again.

More of a memory of the simpler way of life with grandparents, my brother and I would spend the whole summer break (2-3 months) there. It was always hot there, but a lot to do.

Lawn, Texas my grandmother and great grandmother lived near there, actually my great grand mother lived in town and grand mother two miles outside on HWY 84, on a small ranch. I cannot recall how many birds my brother and I killed over the years but it was a lot with BB guns. We actually wore them out shooting them so much had to get new ones every two years. We also got bow and arrows and on one accession I accidentally got an arrow stuck in the big tree in front of the house about 15’ high, I was trying to shoot a hornets nest on a limb. So my brother and I got our BB guns and shot the arrow down that was buried in the trunk . It took us hours to get that shot on the wooden part. Couple of years later we graduated to .22’s and started hunting jack rabbits, there were tons of them.You could see bunches of them by looking for the ears in the high brush.
After a hard day of being mischievous and “hunting” we had to take a bath in red tank water, there was a pump house that pumped the water into bathtub and the water was dark reddish brown when tank was low. Even at 8-10 years old I remember thinking how is that going to get me clean? It did get us clean though and was glad to have it, no matter how earthy it smelled. Still remember how well I slept those days.
Also grandmother would walk us ( she was about 65 at the time) to the tank about 1/2 mile away and fish with us. We catch some catfish and she would carry that stringer back to the kitchen sink and skin them and cook them that night. Made homemade cornbread in these red and white porcelain cookware, wish I had those now.
Once a week we had to go into Lawn (great grandmothers) to fill up gallon jugs for cooking and drinking water. I remember the jugs in back seat floorboard and having to sit legs spread to not put my shoes on them.
We would go out to the barn and shoot rats on hot summer days, kicking bales of hay to get them to scurry. Grand mothers(s) were watching Days of our Lives inside and didn’t care, we were just being boys. On some occasions we would straddle the hog pen fence and jump on the penned hogs like we were bull riders. Those pigs would run fast, didn’t last long on the back of them, but fun as heck! My grand mothers always warned us about rattle snakes and there were a mess of them everywhere. I believe there was a den of them under the house by the front door ( we never used that entrance always drove to back porch on the graveled road). Scorpions (the big black ones) do well that another story, we were all in the den one evening and the biggest scorpion I saw in my life scurried across the floor. Saw one almost every time I stayed there. In the evenings it was outside on the back patio and my grand mother and great grandmother would just sit for hours and talk while my brother and I hunted anything that moved. It was hot in the evenings and no one cared.
When we would call my mom back at home in (Dallas) we had to listen to see if someone else was using the line, and if they were we asked them to get off so we could make a call. This was asking the neighbor about a mile away to let us use our phone.

My Grandmother, worked midnight shift at Abilene State School watching the “challenged” children. She would drive 24 miles one way in the dark for over 30 years. Then walk into that ranch house alone. (Grandfather passed when I was 8 months old). Her work ethic was amazing. She was only 5’4” and very very sweet person. My Grandmother passed ( I was her full guardian- dementia) in 2011, she was 94.

My great grandmother was a tough woman and had a hard life. Lost her oldest daughter to Polio and my grand mother (her sister) never got over it. It bothered her until the day she died. She grew her own vegetables, no grocery store close, had a burn barrel, no trash service but got by. My great Grandmother died in 1983 of pancreatic cancer, was tough for me to see. My great grandfather passed away in 1967, she never remarried.

Those times are gone for me and my memories of those cannot be relived but brings me a little smile to share them with you guys and gals here, it’s just the way things are (were). I know long winded but all these memories just started coming back.

Sounds like a fine example of our greatest generation. These ladies were truly independent women yet also traditional and morally grounded in their minds and in their hearts.

Another TXHOGSLAYER Offspring

Thanks for sharing 10 gauge and Superduty.

10 Gauge my bad and apologies for being a butt head should have read grandma stories before assuming it was another HOGSLAYER knockoff.

Your grandma was obviously one heck of a woman, glad you have so many fond memories of her

Excerpts from you description of your Grandma that to me embodies what a great woman your grandma was!

:My grandma hit him so hard, I think she sobered him up.
:Grandma kept me most of the time. From that point on in my life, everything was country country country. Country style country music country breakfast country life and i was happy happy happy.
:My grandma worked full time for the phone company during this time, while she raised me. She also took care of her sister,
:Grandma taught me about hard work, the importance of family, how to shoot a gun and clean and catch a fish,
:I have more stories about my grandma. Everyone I know has some. She took care of almost everyone I knew in some way.
:She did everything herself. Would not hesitate to dig a ditch or mix and pour concrete on her own
:Grandma passed in 2019, 12 days before Christmas. She was 98 years old. She lived a full and selfless life, eager to help anyone however that she could

Superduty sounds like you and your brother had good times around Lawn, TX

Shooting an arrow out of a tree with a BB gun
On some occasions we would straddle the hog pen fence and jump on the penned hogs like we were bull riders. Those pigs would run fast, didn’t last long on the back of them.
Question; have you ever put a nose ring on a big sow? I did once and had the task of trying to hold her back end still, got bruised up a little but a fun memory.

Ruby, my maternal grandmother, was a sweet, short little woman from Upshur County in East Texas.
An incredibly strong woman, who raised nine children during the Great Depression, she and Grand Daddy learned how to make a little bit go a long way.
When we would show up at Grand Mama’s, sooner or later she would head to the kitchen to make some dinner. Supper was in the evening, dinner was lunch.
That woman could whip up a five course meal out of nothing and do it in about twenty minutes.
She was amazing in so many ways.

Love her and miss her.

I was referring to real pigs, not those bedroom brawlers……haha, you know I am kidding but thought this would be a funny comeback.

No malice intended towards you.

To honestly answer the pigs were kept there for extra income for my grandmother, she sub leased part of the farm/ranch to a neighbor on the hill. So no never put a nose ring on a pig.

Woke up to a couple of Coyote ugly's in my much younger years, no sows though

No memories of Grandma on my dad side, she and Grandpa passed away before I was born, darn shame to because the pics of them and few stories sound like grandparents a kid would love to have.

On my mom side there was Grandma Loraine Hodges. She and grandpa lived in Oak Cliff also off of Cedar Crest Blvd loved to gold and travel. Grandpa and his brother owned the Hodges grocery stores way back when. Were very generous bought every house we lived in (3) as kids. Grandma loaned me $1,000 dollars in 1974 towards my first car, a 1972 Olds Cutlass Supreme with a Rocket 350 engine whoo hoo.

Loan terms were; I would come by her house once a month, pay her $100 and some Williams fried chicken was the interest on the loan.

We had a sort of surrogate grandma Jessie (it is a long story and not going to go there) She was a huge woman, probably 5'7" and well over 300lbs. That woman could cook and swear like no other.
Her lunch spread on the weekends were like a buffet at Luby's and it was so fricking good.
They lived off of Falls Dr. in Oak Cliff , in the mid 60's when we would stay over we would walk to the Heights movie theater watch the matinee for like .25¢.

No pic of Grandma Jesse but have this one of me and Grandma Lorraine.

My one German immigrant grandmother from the suburbs of Chicago who could make, bake, grow, can, fix anything. Depression influenced. Fed a family of six off the family garden. I have her DIY spirit. My other Minnesota grandmother was funny and the church organist. Crazy musical talent. Sat many evenings next to her on the Hammond/Lowery bench mesmerized. Got my minimal guitar picking and ear talent from her. Amazing women.

My grandma was a great southern girl. The older she got the cooler she got, and she was sharp at a tack till the day she passed. I thought she was awesome.
She voted for the first time in her life at 91 years old. My mom was to fill in the ballot as grandma told her what she wanted. She voted for McCain (that was painful) and said that she didn't care about any of the other choices, she just didn't want Obama to be president.

Great stories guys.

The grandmother on my dad's side was something. She was a model in the late 1930s and was on the cover of Vogue magazine. Modeling didn't pay much back then so she went to work for Ford Motor Company in 1938 and retired in 1982. Retirement was boring so she became a parole officer for the state of Michigan. She said it was pretty easy work and quite familiar to her since she had been keeping tabs on my dad, my grandpa, and my two uncles for the majority of her life. She divorced my grandpa and had a long-term boyfriend for I believe 24 years and his name was Mac. He was a great big hulking man and I believe he had Latin blood in him. One day I called her and she was very upset and told me that her boyfriend was in the hospital. She was doubly upset because she couldn't go visit him. When she said that she couldn't visit him I was mystified and asked her why. She told me that he was married and I started laughing. I asked her why she was dating a married man and her reply to me was that she didn't want to wash his underwear. She passed away about 8 years ago and was either in her late 80s or early 90s. She never let her hair go grey and dyed it the same raven black her entire life.

The grandmother on my mom's side was a lunatic. She was born in India but graduated high school in Washington DC. She was a WASP and ferried war planes from their factories to the East Coast until she was injured during a test flight somewhere out of Oak Cliff. After that she went to work for Ingles in Canada where she's the one that sighted in and test fired the new Browning High powers. She married a man in Canada, had my mother with him, decided she didn't like living under a man's rules so she divorced him which was completely illegal in Canada back then so she claimed that he was a homosexual and petitioned Parliament to Grant the divorce. They gave it to her and then she moved as far away as she could from Canada into the Rio Grande Valley where she lived the majority of her life outside of a few years that she lived in Portugal and South Africa. At some point she picked up 1100 acres of land out in West Texas that I think she gave a case of scotch and a few hundred dollars for. She would go out there with my mother and they would literally live in a hole in the ground for a few months at a time. When they caught the Unabomber her story reminded me of his. She was also brilliant and spoke either seven or nine languages and had multiple phds. She was heavily involved with the Confederate Air Force until her health declined and she could no longer fly. I'm pretty sure she was also a lesbian or selectively a lesbian. When I would go stay with her in the summers as a little kid she would always make a big deal about saying that Auntie had to sleep in her room with her because I was sleeping in Auntie's room but there was always a new auntie.

My Grandmother on my dads side was my favorite. She came from Czechoslovakia around 1910. She recalled that they were quarantined on their boat for 3 months before coming aground in Indianola Texas (she was 3 years old at the time). They moved inland and settled in Cornhill Texas. She met my Grandfather there and they sharecropped a small place until they were able too purchase 250 acres and she resided to being a farmers wife. She was a simple woman who loved her gardens and her chickens. She taught me how to drive. I wished she would have taught me how to cook because nobody has ever come close to cooking. She was a strong but silent lady always standing behind her husband. She owned two dresses one blue for going to church and one black for Funerals.

My Grandmother on my moms side also came from Czechoslovakia around the same time frame. Her family settled in Marak Texas were she met my Grandfather. I never met my grandfather he died early leaving her with four kids to raise. She was a hard woman who would discipline everyone child or adult. I never bonded close to her and regret not seeing what all the accomplishments she achieved. She was always happy to see you and made the best homemade noodles.

I had awesome grandmas.

My dad’s mom was from Nuremberg Germany and came here as a young twenty something after she met my Grandpa who was stationed over there.

I spent a lot of time over there as a young kid. Germans didn’t raise children, they raised little adults, and therefore I wasn’t coddled to as a child in many ways. She loved 80’s action movies and I got to go to her house and watch Predator, Rambo, Bloodsport, Missing in Action, etc.

She went in for a routine procedure and ended up getting an infection at the incision, went septic and died. Very sad.

My mom’s mom was hilarious. She was 4’11, maybe weighed 90 lbs and smoked unfiltered pall malls and drank between 6-12 Milwaukee lights a day. She rarely left the house but would always have fresh pies baked for us when we would come over. She loved to play dominos and would outlast everyone, it was nothing for her to still be playing at 2 or 3 am. She was a real firecracker and would tell you exactly what was on her mind. She died the year after I graduated high school of lung cancer.

Great stories, wish I had know my Mothers Mother, she died 7 years before I was born.
As for my Dads Mother, she was old when I was a kid. She did however have a passion for catfishing. She lived with one of my Dads sisters North of Moulton, Tx. There was a nice creek between the house and the railroad tracks that she took us to every time we were there. She taught me how to catch them with night crawlers. She passed away before I was old enough to drive, wish I would have had many more years with her.

Great stories. Nothing is stronger than grandma’s love. It is the glue that holds the family together ❤️

Besides shooting the neighborhoods bully with my BB gun, she was a joy to be around. We, the 5 kids, would spend Saturday nights with her and grandpa, and later we did so on Wednesday nights too. It might have been to give our folks a little time for privacy, though we never figured that out.

When I played high school football, she’d cook me a small steak and tater before every game. “Tea, toast, taters and tough meat” was what the coach said we should eat, though she subbed in tomato juice for the tea.

It’s a shame that everyone can’t have a grandmother like mine.

She was born in 1898. Never owned a car. Lived through the 27 Flood in the Louisiana Delta. Was made penniless by the Crash of 29 and suffered through the Great Depression and the years of WW2. After all that, she was still as positive as anyone I ever knew.

Got to the age (5 or 6) where I could flick a self striking diamond match and have it light itself upon being "jettisoned. Was flicking them in the back on to the wood wall of the garage. Nene Altwein came around the corner, saw this going on and lit me up. For the next so many years, if I saw a fire - I would run. .

Got a pic of Mom's mom as a kid in a mud school(SE KS), only white in Indian school, Quaker family. Her dad was some sort of Indian agent, worked with a guy called Humpy Joe. She made a killer peach cobbler. Everything she cooked was great. Dad's mom's family was in NW Mo in the 1850s. She couldn't keep me out of the Lemon Drop cookies. All farming people but none hunted or fished that I know of. Of all the trouble I caused, don't remember a cross word. Slide down the bannister firing cap guns at bros, etc.