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My grandma didn't have central heating, she had this wall heater that we would all stand around in the winter. It had two sides to it, one on each side of the wall. I've never seen anything like it except at her house. And that was all the heating she had, one wall heater for the entire house. It wasn't a big house and she lives in L.A., but still.
I had my "adopted" grandparents live 20 miles from us. I say adopted because my mother was engaged to their son until he was killed on Christmas Day, 1942. His parents stayed good friends with my parents. Their house had the storage room with everything they canned out of their HUGE garden in the back yard. His brother had a farm and, after his wife went to a nursing home, said if my "grandmother" would cook him a steak out of the cow he just slaughtered he'd give them some beef. So they had a huge chest type freezer back there. The breezeway between this room and the house had the windows covered with some type of screen covered with plastic. My brother and I used to stand there opening and closing the screen door just to listen to the plastic sound like a rattle. On the super big oak tree right behind the house he had a swing made out of a tire turned inside out and 3/4 of it cut out, hanging from a rope. He also had a spot to put a cage type rat trap on the tree to catch some squirrels to put in the freezer. lol Over to one side of the garden was where he beheaded and dressed chickens he'd bring in from the farm. The front porch had a metal glider where they would sit and watch the traffic go by. The one thing I remember about that house were the aromas floating around when we'd go over for dinner a few times a year.
My grandmother collected the styrofoam flats of the meat she bought. She would wash them, and dry them and put them away. Now on occasion if we had some sort of a messy cat craft project she would let us pour the glue in one of those and use it a brush to dab or a toothpick to dab and then throw it out but more often than not for some reason she would make us sandwiches and use those like they were plates.
Now here’s the thing, it wasn’t like she threw those away when we were done in order to not wash dishes like paper plates. She actually re-washed them and put them away again.
Paternal grandparents came to San Francisco late 1930's. The flat, when you entered, the toilet was to the left, all by itself. The tank was above it, you pulled a chain to flush! The bathtub, sink in a small room next to it.
Maternal grandmother, she was born in San Francisco, raised from about age 7, year, 1900, in an orphanage with her two sisters. Age 13, you went to work; she went to live, work in South San Francisco. Later years, she lived in downtown San Francisco. Remember no dining room, just a nook with benches on each side of a built-in table.
My grandmother was born in 1895. I have fond memories of he OK house which we visited once a year. It was a small house on a big lot that also had a rent house, garden and chicken house with chicken run.
My grandmother liked pink and red, and owning pretty things. Her house was furnished in a “modern” style for the most part. But I remember her kitchen the best. It seemed big to me, with its red and chrome dinette set and its Chambers range. I would love to own that range even now, with its stove top broiler, where she made toast. There was a corner china cabinet which was filled with red glassware, used solely for breakfast. I have much of that glassware now.
Outside the kitchen was the big side yard where we ate watermelon which my granddad or my dad got because my mother loved to eat watermelon. She seemed convinced that a signifier of
proper manhood was the ability to select the best watermelon from a pile of them.
Grandmother grew flowers. She gardened wearing a large brimmed hat to protect her complexion. But she never picked any for her house.
Her bedroom was furnished with birch Heywood Wakefield furniture and pink bed linens.
One grandmother lived alone in a small house on a flat lot in a smallish rural town in the middle of Kansas. She didn't like kids so when we visited, the kids were mostly in the yard when ever possible. She had a small house, we never used the front door but always went in the kitchen door. She had an upright piano with lantern brackets and other scrollwork on it, not that we were ever allowed to touch it. We didn't visit her house often, most times we'd see her and all the Kansas cousins at the annual family reunion which happened at a nearby park.
The other grandma had a lot of houses. For awhile, they were at my uncle's farm. He lived in town and kept bees, but had a small eighty acre farm outside of town with a peach and apple orchard for his bees. My grandparents lived there for quite a few years. There was a small diary with a half dozen cows, some pigs, chickens, a big vegetable garden and a pond along with the woods behind the fields. We'd go camping in the woods, pick walnuts and help around the farm.
The house was an upright two story farmhouse. The kitchen was kinda dark and there was a small parlor that had an electric clock that had a fireplace as part of it. There was a kitcat clock in the kitchen. A huge fir or pine tree in the yard had branches we could hide in. It was a great place to visit as a kid.
Then they moved from the farmhouse into a somewhat small town. We lived about five blocks apart. They had a small house with a popcorn ceiling that had big gold glitter flakes on it. A white shag rug. And a four foot tall tinsel Christmas tree that had rotating colored lights on it each Christmas. She kept a goldfish near her kitchen sink that she would pick out of the bowl and spank if he chased the other gold fish around.
Then they moved to a small tourist town about three hours away into a nice bunglow. Had a big wide porch with red steps up to it, a living room full of antiques - mostly carnival glass in a big curved glass fronted display case. African violets in the window, a wooden rocker in front of the huge console TV. A marble topped coffee table and a big maroon upholstered couch. Big dining room table at the other end of the living room. A sunny kitchen with a smaller table there and lots of African violets in the windows.
In the bathroom was swans etched in the glass shower doors and pink ceramic goldfish - three of them, from small to big with shiny gold half sphere 'bubbles' going up from their mouths. Each fish and bubble was mounted separately on the wall. I think that bath was mostly pink tile.
We adored visiting that grandma, she could cook really well and we always had amazing things to eat there.
My mother's family owned a huge stone house in Southborough, MA before they moved to St. Croix in the late 40s. My dad's parents lived in a big brick house they built in the 1920s on a hill over-looking Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Two of their children had families living near-by.
I only have vague memories of the stone house. For a long time, it was empty, but is currently being renovated in grand style. I still dream about the house in Cold Spring Harbor and the good times I had there, along with my cousins. I was married to my ex in Cold Spring Harbor when I was in the USN.
I haven't been there since. My plan is to go back next year.
My grandmother had a 2 story house only bathroom was upstairs. She had a heart attack and a stroke at a young age. I don’t know how she got up those stairs but she did.
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Solly says — Be nice!
