Issue One - Grandma

My Grandmother was quite a curious woman. She raised a family filled with children who speak their minds and have a love for the outdoors, all of which possess some form of natural artistic talent. Grandma's talent was bringing that out in all of us. She, like many people that were raised during the time of the depression, would, for lack of a better word ... hoard things.

We could set out for the day, usually to some sort of discount store of sorts and Grandma would seek out off-brand art supply kits, cookbooks, crystal dishware sets from decades past and sewing patterns in sizes that would not necessarily fit anyone in the family in the near future . Most of these items were usually purchased after someone had mentioned that it may someday be valuable. I am so thankful that Antiques Roadshow was not yet invented when I was a young child, otherwise I may never have seen the light of day on a Senior Discount day at Value Village. She would always claim that these items would be good for this or that, or that the boys needed this item. Funny, she never differentiated which boys, be that her two sons, three son in laws, two grandsons, various nephews or other close male relatives of which she may have been referring. Very few of us dared to question this quest to acquire with little or no end game for the plethora of curiosities.

She stockpiled curling irons and knife sets the way that some women might keep a pantry filled in the case of a hard winter or food shortage. When I was young I remember one of the boxes in the hallway leading from the main part of the house to the backroom, the hallway I could not avoid in order to get to the only bathroom, there were three Easy Bake Ovens, stacked one on top of another. From time to time I would question whether any of these had been fixed yet, as if I truly believed that some little elf would come by and fix one up for me, but the answer was always no. Now, I'm not sure of the reason she kept these around throughout the time in childhood that we spent time at her house. Maybe she thought you could make one good one out of three broken ones, piecing them together like a broken down VW Bug. Occasionally, as an adult, I find myself perusing the sale Easy Bake Ovens at Target (the brand new ones, mind you), but I can never bring myself to purchase said toy. The toy that taunted me for many years, until I discovered that Grandma liked to buy Barbies too. Only these Barbies were purchased on some closeout sale - the brand name, yet unpopular friends that never sold well, but were still never taken out of their boxes, dare you diminish their value.

My mother once said that Grandma was no June Cleaver. Now, Leave it to Beaver was one of the few shows that Grandma allowed us to watch, aside from The Price is Right, M.A.S.H., Seasame Street and of course the news, but to be honest, I never found June that interesting. Although, maybe I was too young to be able to understand the plot of Leave it to Beaver, if there was one. There may have been other shows on television, even that far out in the country during that time, but she had us convinced for quite some time that wasn't the case.

Although she purchased second hand cookbooks with reckless abandon in various stages disrepair, I don't remember her ever cooking what could be considered a square meal. Ok, at least one that didn't come in a rectangular box, and have instructions on the side for how long to bake them. Do you know how long it takes to bake a frozen dinner? Longer that a four year old's patience, I can tell you that. But my grandmother was well practiced in entertaining children, she had raised five of her own. And not too long after most would start to relax, when their youngest had graduated high school, did I come along, and the process started all over.

Strangely she never seemed to mind that I arrived so soon, or at least she never showed it by the time my conscious brain started recording. I always thought that she liked having the company, someone that didn't have to go to work or school for the time being. I (and later, my younger siblings and cousins) was like her own captive audience in which to subject to countless hours of public television without much complaint. She would get up in the morning and fix a cup of instant Folgers, usually with canned condensed milk of some sort (sometimes the sweetened kind) and we would watch the news after being roused at such an early hour to catch the morning news. She would fix me a bowl of instant oatmeal and a glass of milk, or on what I then considered special mornings, Carnation Instant Breakfast. Now, the more of a hurry the adult was in the better, that meant that the powder didn't mix in very well and you were left with this slurry of sugary sediment at the bottom of the cup. It's kind of like suffering through the mostly plain top to get to the syrupy sweet jelly underneath in fruit on the bottom yogurt. This was the way I consumed yogurt for many years, when I wasn't caught by an adult, usually one of my aunts, who was quick to stir it to "help me".