Peanut Butter Cookies, Practical Jokes, Farm Cats, Etc.

Since Grandma didn’t write a diary entry again today I’m going to share some memories of my cousin (and Grandma’s grandson) Stu:

My recollection of Grandma was mostly as an elderly woman. I remember her peanut butter cookies with fondness.  I remember Thanksgivings at her house, with her getting up in the small hours to start the turkey, and the kids (at least, the younger ones) at the round table in Grandpa’s study. It’s sobering to think that at those Thanksgivings in the early 60’s, she was only about 10 years older than we are now.  The conveyor of life moves on, and us with it.

I remember her wicked delight in practical jokes. The bucket of water carefully balanced on the door was a favorite. Or her ongoing wars with farm cats.  Or that she had a more-or-less full set of 14 cloth calendars, which she’d recycle depending on the year.

Stu Kurtz

One of the things that I’ve most enjoyed as I’ve worked on this blog is the opportunity to reconnect with relatives.  And, as the years pass and the “conveyor of life moves on” I’ve discovered that it feels good to remember (or in some cases discover) some of those who were earlier on that conveyor.

One of my biggest surprises has been how many people remember some of the same smallest details about Grandma’s life.

In addition to the memory that is in the box above, Stu had another sentence in his email. It was about the cloth calendars and said, “This came up recently, and I can’t remember if it was your blog, or just Mom and I reminiscing.”  The cloth calendars were in this blog—there was a posting on them on January 29.

I remember thinking when I wrote that post that cloth calendars were a silly thing to write about—yet I strongly connected them with Grandma. It’s fun to hear that others also remembered them—and that the calendar entry generated conversations totally outside of this blog. Stu reminisced about them with his mother; my children and I discussed them.

Stu’s mention of Thanksgiving at the round table in Grandpa’s study also brought back memories. Tomorrow, I’ll describe those Thanksgivings a bit more.