Have you ever thought how cool your grand parents were.

evad

evad

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In their teens/twenties, especially after seeing photos of them dressed in the time and posing.
 

My grandmother who I called Baba was a cool lady who taught me a lot in her almost 95 years of life. She built an addition on her house at the age of 76, she learned to decorate Easter eggs around age 80 because she said she never had time for any of that egg nonsense before that.

And yes, that lady did know how to pose for a picture, always the hand on hip and a million dollar smile.
 
My Uncle and Auntie Mum and Dad were walking on the sea front in their cool clothes, looking great.
 

Well, one grandfather was military, and the other was a cop. They were the opposite of cool. Grandmothers weren't so strict, but they were still a long way from cool.
 
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Never saw any photos of my grandparents when they were young... all of them were already well in their 50's when I was born.. and none of them had photos of when they were young, in fact they barely had photos of anything, never could afford a camera or film to put in one... , so any photos were taken on high days ..only..by which time they were old...
 
So, here is a picture of my Grandparents in Greece. I placed a sticky note at the bottom to cover the names. This is really an old photo. Grandfather is on right. The man sitting is my Grandfather's brother. The other four are cousins. The photo of my Grandfather was taken after he retired from the ring. He may be taller than me.

GParents II.jpg
 
Both sets of my grandparents were great but my paternal grandmother was a lulu. She was up for anything, always on the go. She rode a roller coaster with me when she was 60.

She dressed beautifully and sold jewelry at "home parties" so she was always sparkling with gold and silver and rhinestones.
 
My maternal grandfather. In WWI, he captured a bunch (8 or 9) of Germans, all by himself. He was gased, which affected his health. He always had something going on the side.. Now, we are not talking super legit. Seems he had a still, or two. My grandmother sold his wares. They hid the stuff under the window sill. Customers came by, outside, tapped on the window. My grandmother would raise the window, lift the sill, and grab a bottle from between the wall. Like I said, he always had something going on the side. If there was a way to finagle a dollar, he found it. He was an unbelievable character.
 
I mentioned earlier how cool my grandmother was. Now, I'll tell you about my cool grandfather.

For a few years when my father was a toddler, they traveled with the circus. Grandpa was "Electro, the Amazing Electric Man" in the sideshow. He'd stand on an electrified platform and light up lightbulbs with his hands. His finale was to stick his tongue out and my grandmother would hold a kerosene-soaked torch close to the tip of his tongue. A spark would jump out and ignite the torch.

Later, they returned to the city and he owned and ran movie theaters. His theaters were noted for the fact that Blacks were always welcome in his theaters. In fact one of his hand-outs, which I still have, said "Colored People Always Welcome". This was in the 1920's and the northern Klan was based in our city. They were not pleased about this and on more than one occasion threatened him. Grandpa dug his feet in and refused to budge.

Then he owned some carnival rides and moved around the fair circuit.

Later, he became the lighting manager at the big live burlesque house in town.

Finally, when my dad got older, Grandma made Grandpa take a more "respectable" job and he returned to his original vocation of painting and paperhanging.

And that's the Grandpa I knew and loved......mild and hard-working and loving, but with some great stories about his "checkered" past. He'd always admonish me "don't tell your Grandma I was talkin' to you about this."
 
I never knew my mom's parents & it's a good thing....she came from a family of psychos.
I have vague memories of my dad's mother; she committed suicide when I was around 4.
I liked my dad's father more than I liked my parents. He was a nice person. In fact, when I was a bad kid, they'd send me to live with him as punishment. Not very smart on their part; I preferred his company to my parent's, so I made sure to be bad often.
He died when I was 16.
 
I consider myself extremely lucky.... Grew up with 2 full sets of Great Grandparents, many lessons learned from them...
Mothers dad died of cancer at 76... the rest.... 86-103
 
One of my aunts and one of my uncles lived with my grandmother in Texas. We visited every now and then. My grandmother wore her hair in braids which circled around the top of her head. One night my mother, myself, my aunt and grandmother were sitting on the front porch.

Grandmother decided to take her hair down. She unwound the braids and her hair fell to the floor. My aunt undid the braids and began to brush her hair which was incredibly long. She had never had her cut hair cut, never. WOW. It looked really cool, but was, I am sure, really hot. šŸ˜‚
 
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I've never seen any of my grandparents. They were all dead way before I was born. I would have so loved to know them. I've seen only a couple of pictures of my grandparents. One on my mother's side and one on my father's side.

Not knowing my grandparents and the fact that my only child has no children leaves me feeling like I have no sense of continuity. All I have is the now.
 
My grandparents were wonderful, all four of them. I learned so much from them and they just loved me to bits. My maternal grandmother called me her "little angel doll" from the moment I was born until the day she died. It doesn't get much better than that. I was very fortunate.
 
Both of my grandfathers fought in France in WW1. Came home, married, made babies (17 total!) and made the world a better place. They both died while I was a teenager, but both grandmothers lived >90.

One of my favorite pictures is my maternal grandfather holding my 1 year old mother as they stood in front of his model T with American flags attached to the radiator cap.
 
Both of my sets of Grandparents were amazing! My Father was born in a covered wagon somewhere in the North Dakota territory before it became a state. Both of my Grandmothers migrated from thousands of miles away. Here's my maternal Grandmother, "Mattie" who homesteaded her land at age 18 and dug her own 50 foot well for water. She built this cabin with her own hands alone. Then her sister moved in with her and my Grandma nursed her back to health from some plague during that era.
She had a doubled-barreled shotgun and, believe me, she knew how to use it! She married and her husband died at age 34 ,leaving her with a ranch and 5 children in the middle of a Montana winter. Winters were extremely harsh back then!
I'm immensely proud of both of them. My Mother always told me "Stand up and face it! You come from good stock! Don't let them down!"251.JPG
 

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I don't think it ever occured to me to think of my grandparens as cool or any one elses grandparents
that I knew or have known. All I knew about both paternal and maternal grandparents was they
struggled to to make a living, to raise a family, to exist. They lived in desperate times. I didn't know them
well enough to see or recognize anything cool.
 
Wait! i want to add a pic of my Grandfather. This ranchhouse he built is still used today. It now has an 253.JPGindoor bathroom though. He played about every instrument there was! He used to serenade all the animals from miles around! College graduate,photographer,builder, That's all! Through bragging!
 
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I never knew any of my grandparents.

I've mentioned before that my mother was British (WW2 bride). Her mother died when she was young and her father passed before I was born. 'My father's parents were German immigrants. One of them passed before I was born and I have vague memories of my dad going to the funeral of the remaining one when I was 4 or 5 years old.

I do get some generational connection by proxy here in my new country life. I was going to a church that was founded in the 1700s. On Homecoming Day, the founder's descendants show up. They can trace their roots back into the 1600s. I'm now attending a sister church. There are 5 generations of one family who all attend church together on Sundays (they each got married when they were 15 years old.) So the youngest one routinely sees her grandmother, her great grandmother, and her great great grandmother (who is our treasurer.)
 
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Three of my grandparents passed before I was born,so I only knew my maternal grandmother. I wasa named for her-only because she told my mom that if she didn`t name me for her,she wouldn`t love me as much as the other kids:rolleyes:. I guess it worked-I spent more time with her than any of my siblings did.

She was really pretty cra.....um,eccentric, though. On the one hand,she knew nutrition like no other-a woman very ahead of her time. Always tried to "convert" the rest of us to her diet though-it got a little (a lot) annoying. At age 60,she married a man 30 years her junior-shoot,he was younger than my mom. They did stay married for 18 or so years though. After their divorce,they lived next door to one another:oops:

She used to take us horseback riding when we went to stay at her house-she never owned a horse-or at least not as an adult,very much a city girl-but she rode very well. I think she did have horses as a child.

In the 70s,she became very involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement. My mom wasn`t thrilled the night she got a call to come bail her out of jail after a war protest. She also learned somewhere that a portion of the taxes paid on her phone bill went to support the war (she could have invented that in her head though). Anyway,she would pay her phone bill every month,but withhold a portion of the tax on said bill,to the point where the phone company finally sent a rep to her house to collect. I feel sorry for that guy to this day-he probably wished he had just paid the taxes out of his own pocket lol.

She was also very into Yoga. I can`t remember a time when she didn`t practice it.
 

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