Childhood Memories

I was putting the box fan away for the year in the room that holds all our crap, (Yes, we have a ROOM for all that.  When you live with a pack rat you need a room...er, several rooms.) when I spotted this picture.

My Grandpa having a good time behind the bar.  Makes you wonder what the conversation was about. 

I'm mean, I knew them as Grandma and Grandpa, but they lived a life before I came along.  Just like you and me, they hung out with friends, told goofy jokes, bitched about their jobs and put one foot in front of the other.  Check out the cigar in his hand.  I remember he always had a stump of a cigar in his mouth and then he switched to chew.  That tobacco smelled SO good when it was in it's package.  "Redman" I think it was.  It had a package of an Indian on it.  I would grab it and and sniff it like it was rubber cement.  (Do they even make rubber cement anymore?)

Ooo, lookie!  Here's another!  Sounds like a fish story to me.  Grandpa used to own a marina on Lake Ontario.  I searched the Internet and found a picture of Henchens Marina.  (Did Grandpa used to own this Mom?  It looks like what I remember.  Or maybe we just hung out there alot after he sold his.)


Regardless, I would love to go in and stick my hand in the minnow tank there and feel the minnows swimming buy.  I'd always get yelled at to leave them alone too.  Tons of blue gills off the pier edge for the intrepid kid and her fishing pole with a bobber attached.

Grandma and Grandpa had a small 2 bedroom, 1 bath house that faced the lake.  I sometimes would get to spend all summer up there with them.  I loved those summers.  I'd work in the garden and take long hikes up the hill.  Grandma would let me tag along with her when she and her lady friends went golfing.  We'd go grocery shopping and she'd stop by a local chicken farm and pick up eggs.  It was a commercial place, stinky.  Every day we'd go pick up the mail in this tiny little post office with the old fashioned post office boxes.  Every Tuesday Grandma would get her hair "done" at the salon.  I never went with her for those visits.

Back at the house, Grandma and Grandpa would have "Happy Hour" every day at 4 o'clock.  They'd have a cocktail and we would sit at the kitchen table in front of the big plate glass window that looked out on the lake.  Grandpa would snack on some celery and radishes that he would dip in a bit of salt.  Grandma never sat down in the kitchen, she was always cooking.  She made her own bread which I never liked being raised on Wonder bread. 

Yep, those were good times.  I liked it best if I was up there by myself but sometimes I had to share Grandma and Grandpa with my baby brother and my sisters.

Can you imagine?  Yeah that's me...the tall one on the right.  Whats with those stripes?