Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline
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Thanks for coming jenn.
If you didn't know my paternal Granmother you might say the same thing. She was very outspoken, and that is the understatement of the millenium. She pulled no punches.She was German. Gramps was a Polack. Their Parents were all leary of the marriage because of that, that form of racism. Now maybe people can see what I mean, if their Parents had their way, those two would have never married. That is the way it was.
Grandma as I said, was very outspoken. Even to Grampa. He was hard of hearing and she would lower her voice and give us some of the best rush hour freeway driving language possible in English. He did not hear her. We did. Nobody ever said a word. In this family the children, once able to talk were supposed to know what words are not used in polite company, and when it was just family, there was no prestense whatsoever that this was polite company. Another understatement I might add.
I mentioned I used to go there and Grampa and I would take things apart, try to fix them, figure out how things work and are put together. He liked to work on sewing machines, and back then there were alot of them out there and yes they were used. They wanted these things to work and he found out they would pay.
He was an accomplished job shop machinist, which means he could work from a print unsupervised and make the part. That came after a certain experience however. It was in the early 1950s sometime I think. He worked at a knitting mill. I believe they were Lyons machines and every mill in the country who bought these had problems with them. His place of employment as well of course.
Well someone apparently noticed the lack of complaints from this company because the manufacturer of the machines took notice. They made him an offer, if he would come and show them at the factory, what he did to make these machines work, he could write his own ticket, literally.
I knew him and I think he was thinking 'OK, fly over there, eat in restaraunts, big pain in the ass' , he told them $500 a day. They paid it, and all his expenses for a week. He made $2,500 in a week before I was ever born. Of course that was only one week but think of it.
When a Man like that talks you listen.
Not Grandma though.
One day Grandpa and I were walking back up from the basement and he had given me a cigar box full of radio tubes to try in something I had at home. He was saying that he wanted the cigar box back and Grandma tore into him. "You old ___ fucking bastard, let the kid have the fucking cigar box, Jesus Christ". If you want to know the missing word get me on the other side.
But Grandma was a trip. She would confuse me with the dog. They had a dog named Godfrey and my name was Jeffrey. For some reason she had a problem seperating the two. Sometime when she called for Godfrey we both looked at her like "what". Godfrey was a small terrier and had the exact personality you would expect. He wanted that ball and dammit he didn't care, he wanted that ball. Sometimes we played with him being under the couch, and after a certain amount of growth he could no longer slip under the front so had to go around.
How did he get under the couch ? Simple, Grandma yelled "Who shit in the basement ?".
I am not making this shit up, if I could do that I would either be a best selling author or in an insane asylum somewhere. Or both.
T
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RE: Grandparents - 
Profile
It brought back a WHOLE lot of unwanted memories :(( Oh well, onward & upward. Back to Random Polls/Stupidity!
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