A Tough Old Bird

My grandmother was, as the saying goes, a tough old bird.  She survived things in her life that I couldn't dream of facing and she managed to raise six wonderful kids while doing it.  There was just this one thing.  She says what she thinks and she doesn't sugar coat it.  Such as, "grandma, maybe next year we could do blank" "well we could all be dead by then."  Thanks grandma.  I still ask my relatives, "how old do I have to be before I can just say whatever I want like grandma."  But the fact that she was old was not the reason she got away with her bluntness.  She got away with it because she was extraordinary.

So I understood Mary Alice, in Richard Peck's A Year Down Yonder, and her grandmother perfectly.  During the depression Mary Alice and her brother are sent to live in different places because the family can no longer afford to live together.  Mary Alice is sent to live with her grandmother who is, please excuse the repeating expression, a tough old bird.  Here are a couple of my favorite descriptions/quotes from grandma. "Grandma, the laws afraid of you.  you'd grab up that shotgun from behind the wood box if the sheriff came on your place.  It was true.  The whole town knew grandma was trigger happy."

"Grandma, how old is she?' [asked Mary Alice]. 'Oh, I don't know.' grandma said. 'You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck."  The whole book is filled with grandma's sayings.  But the book is soo much more than that.  Grandma uses her crazy ways to make sure everyone is provided for.  In short, she gets away with it because she is extraordinary.  For example, during the fourth of July celebration grandma changed the prices for food so that everyone paid as much as they could afford.  Seems weird until you realize that all the money from the food sales is going to care for one of the towns own who was wounded during the war.

Seeing  your grandma as extraordinary...that's kids stuff. 


P.S. Happy 4th of July.  I recently learned State College has one of the best fireworks displays in the nation.  I know where i'll be tonight!