This is very similar to my grandparent's house. 404 South Park, Lyman, Nebraska. These were my mother's parents. The outside of the house was a pink stucco. Not gaudy or pastel, just a nice pink. It reminded me of a gingerbread house. Anna Margaret and George Phillip kept it neat as a pin. It had a dirt cellar dug out underneath that was used to store canned goods on the dirt shelves carved out in the walls. It had a little cot in the corner with a pillow and blanket. My brothers used to lock me in the cellar every chance they got, and Grandpa would come rescue me. It wasn't talked about much, but I had heard grandpa dug the cellar one year when grandma was mad at him so he would have a place to stay. The yard was immaculate...a weed dare not enter! I spent many days laying in that yard staring at the clouds rolling by trying to find shapes and figures. I remember the clothes line in the back yard that had laundry blowing in the breeze. The garden behind the garage that grandpa was ever fussing over. He planted his garden in rows like a field and irrigated it with a special hose he created to run down 2 rows at a time. The wells between the rows would fill with water and then he would move the hose to the next two rows. I remember him pulling out carrots for me to eat...he would wash them in the hose and hand them to me to snack on. They were so sweet. If he wasn't in the garden, he was in the garage tinkering and constructing all sorts of little things. He wore a straw fedora and loved to go to the pool hall and play pool with his friends in the afternoons. Once in awhile, Grandpa would give me and my brother Christopher each a dime. We would walk to the general store and buy penny candy. It was usually 2 for a penny, so we would get a huge bag full of candy for a dime. We would sit in the yard and sort and savor our candy for a good hour before we put what was left away to tease our older brothers with later.
The inside of the house was small, but perfect for them. I watched the Ed Sullivan Show in their living room almost every Saturday night while my parents went square dancing. They had a living room set that was brownish gray with silver tinsel woven into the fabric. I thought it looked quite expensive. An oil painting hung over the couch in Autumn colors of trees and a creek. There was a heating unit that was the size of a small desk in the living room, which warmed the entire house. Grandma had a little cast iron that she would place on the heater to warm, and she had a little child-size ironing board that she would put in front of it for me to use to iron my doll clothes. She had a rocking chair that sat beside the heater with a little stool for her feet. I would rub lotion on her feet and she would tell me that someday I would be a wonderful nurse. Grandma had a stroke that left her with limited mobility on one side. She shuffled through the house dragging one foot and had only one good arm to cook, sew, can and clean with...but she did a great job.
One of my favorite days with Grandma was when she made noodles, butterballs, and angel food cake. You have to make all three the same day...if you have noodle soup...you have to put butterballs in it...and since you make noodles with egg yolks - you have to make angel food cake with the whites. All the German ladies made their own noodles and butterballs in Lyman...and they all thought their own was the absolute BEST! The mark of a good noodle was how thin and tiny you could cut them. Even with only one hand, Grandma made the tiniest noodles as far as I could tell. She would cut the noodles and carefully place them on clean sheets she had laid on the beds to dry. It was a sight! I still love that soup...haven't had it forever. You had to grow up with it. Anyone who has ever tasted the butterballs that did not grow up with them, find them rather disgusting. They are a little like Matzo balls with butter, cream, eggs, bread crumbs, and a ton of allspice. YUM! My husband and kids hate them.
Grandma also made me fried bologna, German garlic sausage, fried potatoes, Rye bread, and Greble (a fried donut). Mmmm, the tastes of my childhood. I have to admit, it doesn't all sound as appealing as it was years ago. It is the experience that I long for. Grandma could shave the skin off a potato with her knife so close, there was hardly anything shed! There was no wasting anything! She came from the Depression Generation that saved every bread tie and bag. Her tiny kitchen was so efficient. The work space was the table you ate on that sat in front of the window. In Lyman, they would blow a town whistle at noon that everyone could hear. I would sit with grandma and grandpa sometimes for lunch. They were silent during lunch because that is when Paul Harvey was on the radio and then the hog report came on. I still don't understand why they listened to that...they didn't raise hogs.
I loved being at my grandparent's house. It was quiet and interesting. When my grandparents did talk, it was a mixture of Russian, German, and English and they always sounded like they were cussing. They were upset with the neighbors who didn't keep their yard up, with my brothers for not tucking their shirts in their pants, with the president, the weather, the lazy people, the other Germans who were trying to out-do them...I just thought that old German people liked to complain...that was their way of conversing.
Sometimes I would spend the night with my grandparents. I have the guest bedroom set that I slept in as a child when I stayed with them. A metal full size bed that is dark brown and has some paint drips on it from when my mom painted the guest room for Grandma. I have never removed the drips...I can't because that it the way the bed was when I was little and I don't want to change it. The set also consists of a vanity that had a salmon-pink covered stool that had the same tinsel as the couch woven into the fabric. I thought it was decadent to have a place to sit and look into the mirror. I never sat there as a little girl, somehow I thought I wasn't mature enough. Sometimes my cousin Stephanie visited from Colorado and we slept in the bed together. There is a tall dresser that stood in the corner and a cedar chest that held wonderful mysteries we could only imagine. The wood floors in the house creaked when you walked on them. There was a mirror in the hall that had pink flamingos on it that I liked to look at myself in. Every Saturday, Grandma would "rinse" her hair with something in a copper bottle. It made her hair have a blueish hue...but all the grandma ladies in Lyman used it and had blue hair. Grandma used to get up in the middle of the night several times to use the bathroom, which was located between the bedrooms. I remember thinking, "Why does she have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night so much?" I now have the answer to that question as I frequent the place myself in the night these days.
Grandma and Grandpa drank a glass of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine every night and took a dose of Milk of Magnesia. When I stayed with them, Grandma gave me a dose of Milk of Magnesia before bed time as well. They always had Neapolitan ice cream in the freezer, which I pronounced Napoleon. I remember cracking the ice in the metal ice trays using the metal lever that your fingers stuck to. Grandma defrosted her freezer EVERY week. I drank juice out of used jelly jars. Grandma almost always wore an apron, a flowered cotton dress, and had her hair in a bun. She never threw out old clothes, she made quilts from her old dresses as well as stuffed animals.
Grandpa and Grandma worked hard, even though they were retired. They never sat around. Grandma became angry with my older brothers once and tried to spank them with a spoon and they laughed at her...she kicked them out of the house. Grandpa smoked cigars and drank beer in the garage where Grandma couldn't see him. He stayed outside of the house most of the day, coming in for meals and when it was time to start settling in for the evening. He was creative and innovative. To help Grandma exercise after her stroke he made a pedal machine that she could use while she sat in her chair. He made stair rails out of pipe, and loved to baby and tinker with his car...a 1964 Chevy Impala that was green and pristine!
I loved spending time with my grandparents...in fact, I even pretended to be sick once so I wouldn't have to go to school, in the first grade, so I could spend the day with them! I knew my mother had to go to town and wouldn't be home to take care of me, so she packed me up with my Siamese cat and we spent the day with Grandma and Grandpa. I have a vivid memory of my grandmother's purse...she always carried Juicy Fruit gum in her purse and you could smell it as soon as she opened it! I loved the gum, but the flavor would run out quickly. I would tell my grandma that the gum had no more flavor and she would get out the sugar bowl and rolled my chewed gum in it and hand it back to me. I thought that was great! I loved her Juicy Fruit smelling purse. Every once in a while she didn't have Juicy Fruit...she had these big, soft, pink wintergreen candies that reminded me of the smell of the stuff they would sprinkle at school any time someone threw up. I hated those.
It was wonderful...my time in the Little Pink House that made my childhood special and made me feel loved. I will forever cherish my memories of my grandparents in that house. They didn't always live there, but it is the memories that are most vivid to me when they were "In the Pink."
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