Grandma Annie's House

My dear Grandchildren, I want to tell you about my Grandma Jordan today.  She was my Dad's mother, my grandma, my children's great grandma, and your great great grandma.  Her name was Annie Mawson before she married my Grandfather, Mister Walter Jordan.  He passed away before I was born, and my Father was only six years old.  Her house was just down the road from ours and many days I'd go to her house alone and watch her TV and drink her iced tea, just like you do here at grandma's house, and have homemade bread and butter and longhorn cheese which she kept in a cheese container on her kitchen table.  Her house always smelled like fresh tea, cheese and fresh baked bread which she made every day. 

She was very plump and round and had snow white, curly soft hair that surrounded very plump cheeks.  She had twinkling blue eyes, but she had no teeth!  So she really enjoyed ice-cream cones.  Sometimes in the evenings we would go to her house to watch boxing and wrestling on the TV and after a while we would sit on her front porch in the swing and my Dad and his brother Earnest would walk down the hill to the soda fountain and buy big ice-cream cones for everyone.  The soda fountain was like a deli today.  You could get sandwiches, ice cream sodas, hot dogs, and just about anything you can imagine.  Sometimes for my school lunch my Mom would give me money and at lunch time I would walk and skip to the soda fountain and have hot chili dogs for lunch and a cherry smash.  A cherry smash was a glass half full of ice, and cherry syrup poured over it, and then they'd fill up the glass with carbonated water and it was so delicious.  Then I'd go back to school. In the soda fountain was a counter with stools attached and they were very high.  I had a hard time just getting on the stool, but it was no problem because I loved hot dogs and nothing could stop me from having them for lunch whenever possible!

My Dad had 3 sisters and 2 brothers as far as I can remember.  His oldest sister was Lillian, the next was Edith, and the youngest was Chelsea.  His oldest brother they called Bill, but I think his real name was William; the next oldest was Earnest and he lived with their mother after he was a grown man.  He had a brand new burgundy car and I remember it was always so clean and always looked like it had just been waxed.  Once he took me to the dentist, along with my Dad, and I got to sit in the front seat between them.  I remember going back home and in my hometown the mountains were very close together and the clouds would be so low in the valleys between the mountains that the clouds always reminded me of vanilla ice cream!  I even remember the many schools I attended by what they served for lunch.  I was always chubby and I loved good food.  My other Grandma's brother, Ross, owned a restaurant and he taught my Grandma Elsie how to cook really good food, and when she came home on the weekends, she would always cook for us and it was delicious.  I learned how to cook from watching her.  But Grandma Annie was a great cook too and so was my Mother which is why I am a good cook and love to fix good food.  I also love to eat it which is why I'm soft and "fluffy", which is just a nicer way to say I'm fat!  Ha Ha.

My Grandma Annie was from England and she came to America when she was just 16 on a big ship.  I don't know how she ended up in West Virginia, or how she met my Grandpa, but they met and fell in love and got married.  She had been a maid in England in a big fancy house with other Maids and a Butler.  She kept her home spotless and I remember her big bed in the sitting room always was made up and she liked chenille spreads which are soft and have designs made in them.  I use to lay on the bed and watch the TV and I'd always fall asleep and my Dad would carry me home.  He was 6 feet, 3 inches tall and I felt so big when he would pick me up and hold me up so high.  I was my Daddy's favorite and I loved him so much.  I'll make the next story about him and you will see why I had so much fun with him when I was a little girl.

Once my brother David went to Grandma Annie's house and he had some of his friends with him.  They got into her ice-box, which we call a refrigerator, and was taking out plums and cheese and things to eat.  She was peeping at him from the bedroom doorway and was chuckling at them. She told my Mom later and said she liked for us to feel at home in her house and that we could do that anytime.  In her bedroom was a mantle and a fireplace, and on the mantel she always kept a bottle of hand lotion that smelled like cherries and vanilla and I always put some on.  She had pictures there and little glass figurines that I always liked to pick up and look at.  Sometimes I'd lay in the swing on the front porch and look at all her cactus plants which I always managed to stick myself with.  Your Grandpa Jack also likes cactus plants.

My childhood was so much fun.  I was allowed to go wherever I wanted because back in that little town everyone knew each other and it was like living where I do now in the trailer park.  It was about the same size, but was more spread out.  I had lots of friends and my cousins lived close by so we always went to one another's house to play.  My Mom told me once that no matter where I was I always knew when it was time to eat and I would always come home on time.  I remember that if we had something really yummy for dinner, I'd always go out to play afterwards and I'd go back in and get more good food after they did the clean-up.  I want to make my childhood real to you because I want you to have good memories of me after I am gone.  And I want to give you good ideas to make your own and to have fun with.  I did lots of things in my life time and my grandparents meant a lot to me, just like yours do to you.  So, I will close for now and hope you had fun reading about my Grandma Annie and all the fun I had at her house.  If I remember more about it later on, I will tell you more, but I really knew my Grandma Elsie better because she lived with us for so many years and was like a second Mom to us.  So have fun and if you have any questions about anything just ask me and I'll do my best to answer your questions.  I love you all so much and I hope to live a very long time and tell you stories you will treasure always. 

For now I'll say goodbye and I'll see you in about a week for a new story.  The next time I'll tell you about my Dad and all the fun things we did together. 

Love, Grandma Bonnie

Home Sweet Home

     I was born in Charleston, West Virginia but my home was about 50 miles away in a little coal mining town named Ameagle which stands for American Eagle Colliery.  My home was like all the rest, a little white and green wooden house.  Just inside our back fence by a dirt road we had a new coal house which was loaded in the winter months with coal for our heatrola and our cooking stove.  In the spring my Mother would open the door and the two windows and make up a large bucket of lye soap and water and scrub out all the coal dust.  She let the door stand open to let the spring breezes dry it out.

     Then she would put calico lace curtains up at the windows.  She would carry out all my toys, and I had a few because my Grandma worked and I was the first baby and was spoiled and doted on by my whole family.  My playhouse for the spring, summer and fall, was the most vivid memory of my country home and I loved it.  Among my toys I had a green card table with 4 chairs, a complete set of china dishes with red roses on them.  There was a teapot, cups and saucers, dinner plates, a casserole dish with a ladle and lid, a gravy boat and a butter dish with a lid.  I had a blue doll carriage, a Ricky Ricardo baby doll, a Mary Heartline doll, a majorette, and other dolls I didn't play with as much.  I had a cupboard for my dishes, and a little play stove and pots and pans.  I use to pull off little beads from some of the flowers for peas, and I would use water from our water barrel in the teapot and little cups.  I even had a little washing machine and it had balloon rollers turned by a handle to wring water out of my baby doll's clothes.  My friends and cousins would come over and we'd play all day in our little storybook playhouse.

     My Mom was very loving and such a kind and gentle person.  She passed away at 55 from heart disease, which I also have and my Grandpa and my uncle both died in their 40's with the same thing.  I was 35 at the time.  I am 64 now and I am so lucky to have such warm and wonderful memories of my Mom.  We became good friends as well as I grew up and hardly a day passed without me calling her and discussing the menu for dinner and to talk about the kids.  My husband and Mom both handled all the finances of the family and they would talk for a long time about things.  She grew to really like Jack and she loved my twin boys and my little girl.  She loved animals and children, but never was very crazy about adults.  She said you couldn't trust them.

     My Mom was a coal miner's daughter and married my father when she was 17.  He was in the Navy during WWII and when he came home, he too worked in the mines.  I lived a childhood that any child today would be envious of.  I lived in the coal mining town until I was eight and the mines closed down.  We moved to Huntington, which was about 100 miles away.

     The little town is a forest now and the days of childhood are far behind me.  But my memories bring back those wonderful experiences of childhood and so begins my legacy to my own 3 children, and my 7 grandchildren who mean the world to me.  I will post to this blog as often as I have time to meander and capture once more the wonderful memories of growing up a country girl who traveled much as time went by and gathered up many new memories along life's road.  You are invited to come along for the journey and I hope to bring a smile to your face and stir up your own memories of days gone by but not forgotten in the autumn of my years.