My Interview with Grandma Gertie

If you're reading this, that means I'm on vacation.  I'll miss blogging!

I hope you'll enjoy this interview with Grandma Gertie.

 

What's the one item you'd grab if your home was on fire?

When I was younger, my twin sisters (Deb and Di) who were 3 at the time, set our house on fire. They were playing upstairs in my brother's bedroom. He made model airplanes and had matches on the floor. He had newspapers all over that he used to set airplanes on to dry after being glued. Deb and Di were blowing out matches and they must have dropped a match on the papers. They said they tried and tried but couldn't blow out the fire, so they just walked away and forgot about the flames. 

We were washing clothes in the kitchen, when I looked up and the ceiling was on fire. We all ran out of the house screaming. Then we took a head count and we were missing Deb. We stood there crying like gut shot panthers when Deb walked out the kitchen door with her panties around her ankles.  She had been in the bathroom on the first floor. She said, "I can't pull my panties up." That is one thing I wish I had saved when our house burned up with everything in it. I wished I had saved some clean panties. It seemed like weeks before we got new ones.

Who would win a battle between a polecat and a Beetlebomb?

"Beetlebomb" was really Bea Wilson. She was our neighbor and always came to our house to get water for her horses.  We had irrigation water and she filled up her big milk cans full of water every few days. We called her Beetlebomb because she had a big black car that smoked like a bomb. 

Bea had a battle between her and a skunk, not a polecat, and she won. When she caught it, she de-skunked it.  After that it ran around her place like a cat, except that it always had its tail in the air as if it was going to spray you at any given moment.  So our dogs were afraid of it. In reality, Bea was the polecat! She could ride a horse with the best of them.  She was short but stout. She had boobs that hung below her belt.  I never saw her in anything but jeans and a man's shirt.  She must have gotten sore from riding those horses of hers, because when I went with my sister to her shack, she always wanted me to put liniment on her back. She tried to bribe me with cookies. I wouldn't do it for any amount of cookies.  My little 7 year old sister always ended up rubbing her back for the cookies.  When we got outside I would try to get a cookie from her and she was worse than a  polecat. Nothing I could do or say would get one of those Beetlebomb cookies from her hand.

What was the best thing before sliced bread?

Torn off chunks of a homemade loaf with sugar on it. We couldn't afford the butter, so the sugar would fall off as we ate, giving us ants all over the kitchen. (Oh, so that's why we always had ants!)

  

Why did you marry your spouse?

He told me that if I didn't, he was leaving for Texas and I'd never see him again.
 

How many hats are in your house?

Don't know, but don't put one on the bed, or you'll have bad luck! My Dad always said, don't put a hat on the bed, don't rock an empty rocking chair, and  try not to dream about money or 7 white horses. Problem is, when he told you about the dreams, that's all you could think about and you ended up dreaming about them, anyway. My Dad was the one that wore the hats in our family, so I took after him. (Don't tell my hubby!)

  

What is your favorite breakfast food?

It sure as heck ain't whole wheat with the hulls still on it!  I'm not a fan of scoots!

  

What is your worst quality?

Being Grandma Gertie!

  

Do you like cats or dogs?

Neither one.  Growing up the cats would get in the house and poop up in the rafters of the ceiling above the dining room. You see, our upstairs floor had never been finished.  We used old doors with the handles still on them for floors, so the cats had access. One day when we were sitting around the dining room table and my Dad looked up, he saw the ceiling sagging.  He said, "If I find what I think I'm gonna find when I poke this ceiling after we eat, I'm gonna to kill a cat."  He took a broom and gave the ceiling a poke, and then another, and all at once the whole ceiling came down and poop went everywhere.  Dad had dried pooh in his hair, on his shoulders, and even in the pocket on his shirt. He grabbed one of Mom's laundry baskets and filled it to the top with the stuff.  He was getting madder and madder with each scoop full of poo!  After he cleaned the floor, he grabbed his shot gun and ran out the back door.  The cat was sitting on the ground under the back of the old black Hudson.  With one shot of the gun the cat used up all of its 9 lives!  It was a good thing that he hit the cat and not the gas tank, which was right above where the cat was sitting.

  

If I went to your home and looked in refrigerator, what would I find?

When I was young, you would find goat's milk!  The goats would be milked by my brothers every morning before school. So they smelled of wet goat when they got on the bus.  That smell lingers with me today. When I open up our fridge today, what do I find?  Yup, goat's milk!  My husband drinks it.  I won't touch it with a 10-ft. pole.   

  

How do you get along with others?

I grew up with 7 sisters and 4 brothers. There were fights galore. I could pull hair with the best of 'em.  When a neighbor kid that was bigger and mouthier than me, made fun of my little sister, I waited till he got off the bus. Then I pummeled him.  He went home crying with a bloody nose and a black eye.   We could fight with each other, but nobody else better ever say a word about one of us because we all stuck together like glue.

If you were a tree, what would you be?

A 50-ft cottonwood tree, like the ones that surrounded our house growing up.  If those trees could have talked! They were next to a ditch way in front and to the side of our house.  The ditch that watered those tall cottonwoods also kept our secret. Such as when my Mom cooked and burned food in the pans, we would take them to the ditch and put them in the water. My Mom burned a lot of food, so the ditch got pretty full of pans, because we'd just leave them there. The water would ice over them in the winter. My sister, Max, would come home every spring to visit. The first thing she would do was to go to the ditch to find pans to cook with.  She would go along the ditch and pull up pan after pan that had rusted over the winter from being in the bottom of the water.  Max would toss them up on the bank of the ditch and she would have a row of pans by the time she got done. Those tall cottonwoods stood there for many many years watching the next generation of kids bringing pans to their watering hole.

Has there ever been an incident when you laughed at yourself?

No, but I can laugh at my sister.  My sister, Susan, had a doctor's appt one morning, and so she got dressed 

to the 9's.  She put on makeup, a dress, and heels.  She got home from her appt early and decided to go to the school where my brother-in-law worked as a repairman.  When she got to the school she asked where he was.  Somebody pointed to a room down the hall.  When she got to a room where she thought he was working, she saw him up on a ladder with his head and shoulders in the ceiling. She went to the ladder and pulled up his pants and started stroking his leg.  She said "Henry," as she is stroking his leg, "How'd you like to take me to lunch?"  He came down out of the ceiling and she exclaimed, "You're not Henry!"  He said, "No but I wish I was."  She went running out of the school like somebody had shot her out of a cannon.  When Henry came home that night, he said, "Hey, Sue, I hear you tried to put the make on the electrician today!"

If you could be any animal, what would you be?

Animals can't use TP, so I wouldn't want to be one.

  

How can you lift a polar bear with one hand?

I wouldn't even want to lift a piece of a Polar bear with one hand.  When my Dad killed a bear, and skinned it and hung it in one of our buildings, it scared the %#*"!& out of me, thinking it was a 10-foot man coming after me. It's not just bear meat that I hate, it's also raccoon, porcupine, rabbit, and skunk.  Where we lived we did have bears come down from Yellowstone Park every once in a blue moon. That's why I was always afraid to go to the outhouse by myself. (Yup, we didn't have indoor plumbing when I grew up. Now you know why Grandma Gertie is the way she is!)

  

Do you know how to drop an egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?

You can't crack concrete with an egg.

  

If you were a character on 'Two and a Half Men,’ which one would you be?

Berta, of course! I bet she grew up without indoor plumbing, too.

  

What are you wearing?

My husband wants me to say "nothing," but he's not that lucky.

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

Kissed my butt goodbye!