What stories do you know about your grandparents?

I knew one grandmother, I remember her brownies and muffins more than her.

 

My only living grandparent is my Italian grandmother. Her father's name was Antonio Giantomasi, and he was a shoemaker from Naples, Italy. He came to America when he was around 16 or so (you can find him on ellisisland.com) and met another Italian immigrant named Dominica D'amica (haven't been able to find her, yet). They married and had my grandmother and a few other children who are either gone or senile, now. They spoke Italian at home, but all the children were brought up to speak English as their first language, and Italian second.
My grandmother married once, but he was an avbusive man and it ended in divorce. She was raised Catholic, and to them, divorce was an abomination, so from then on, she would always say "I used to be Catholic, but I'm not anymore."
Later, she met and married an Irish/German man and had four boys, one of which was my father. They were married for the better part of a century until he died of metastisized lung cancer when I was in high school. Up until this year, she visited his grave every year on his birthday.
I say up until this year, because she is currently in a rehabilitation home recovering from a hairpin fracture in her leg. While there, they have discovered that she has bad kidneys and a bad valve in her heart, which are currently racing to see which one will take her out first. She's happily signed her DNR and refused surgery. She is totally at peace, saying to my father the last time we visited: "if I go, I go, and I'll be with your dad."
I hope when my time comes I will be so comfortable with the idea.

 

I know my grandfather built the house I remember before 1900 - the stumps were still under the house where he cleared the land - he died in 1932 but I remember my g-mother. Short lady - under 5'. Kept a switch over the mantel in case the kids acted up. She had a wood stove in the kitchen, a smoke house in the back along with chicken pens and chickens. I remember her catching one and wringing it's neck and we had chicken for lunch.
She slept in a big feather bed - when I laid in it all I could see was the ceiling. The ceiling was about 12' high with high windows in each room. She had a parlor that must have been 20 feet long where the girls could entertain their boyfriends and have dances.
here front yard was only about 10' wide and never had any grass on it.
She was the head honcho - when she said jump - you said how high. I loved her very much. She was a neat old lady.
Died when I was 13 in 1960.

 

I remember hearing alot of stories about the great depression, what life was like before it and after it. Also alot of stories about WW2.

I always had a great amount of respect for them, of course because they were my grandparents, but also because of the times they lived through

 

My Grandmother remembered the last wagon train leaving Illinois sometime around the turn of the century (1900's). She was told about some guys flying machine (Wright Brothers 1907?) and thought it was funny. When my Grandma/Grandpa got married they lived in an old abandoned 2 room country school house. They lived on one side and kept the family mules in the other. That was where my Mom was born. Grandpa farmed and with his brother started one of the first Chevrolet Dealerships in southern Illinois. It ran from 1916 till 1968.

Dads side I only knew my Grandfather... he had been a railroad bull and later a Conducter for the B&O railroad. He was rough and rowdy, worked the East St Louis yards and was in a lot of scraps...got his ass beat a few times too.

All of them were shaped by the depression which in turn shaped me.

 

I have a horrible relationship with both sides of my family, so I don't have many stories...

Although I remember hearing that one of my relatives converted to Rastafarianism in the 60's and climbed to the top of a mountain to burn all of the family's photo albums! That's interesting, right? This was in Trinidad, by the way.

 

My grandpa had his left arm ripped off at work when my mother was 3 years old. This was back in 1962, long before safety became a priority in the workplace and he worked for the carbon black plant out here. The shower room was precariously close to a bunch of large machinery and someone didn't towel off good enough after coming out, and my grandpa slipped in the puddle and fell right into a big machine that tore his arm right off. He had been a medic in WW2, so he knew how to control the bleeding so he held his own artery together until the ambulance got there. And then he got patched up, finished his initial recovery, and went back to work at the very same place. Stayed for 25 more years I think. That company paid for my mom and uncle to go to college and is still paying my grandma's pension after my grandpa died. So good things can come from having your arm ripped off.

 

My grandmother raised me in a 2 story brick house built by my great grand parents in 1916,the bricks being hauled down from the 1906 SF earthquake.

 

my Grandpa was fuckin awesome. he was obsessed with puzzles and games. every other week, he'd send his grandkids a folded piece of construction paper with a 2 dollar bill folded as a bowtie inside. because of him, our family has so many inside jokes and traditions. he had brain cancer when my mom was young and my mom told me of one time when he came back from treatment (he had already lost his memory of everything pretty much) and he couldnt remember any of his kids names but he guessed only my moms middle name correctly. he was sharp as a tack. but its a mystery to our family why sadly enough he committed suicide by hanging himself in the garage for my great step-mom to come home and be devastated.

 

my other grandpa was Adolf Hitler.

 

My grandma was a go-go dancer for a little while. She always had weed in her purse and roaches in the ashtray, which my dad and my brothers would steal. Every time one of them would steal a bud and share it, they'd all be clued in because it "tasted like mom's purse". To this day she'll deny every part of this story except the go-go dancer part. She was a wild card, and still is.

 

My mother's parents were around until I was in my 30's...so I fully remember them and they were like second parents to me.

My father's dad died when I was 9 and I miss him every day. He loved his gardens, and I was usually outside with him. Grandma died when I was 25. They babysat my sister and me, so I was close to them as well. Grandpa is harder to remember because I was so young, but I still dream about him sometimes, and wake up crying.

 

When my grandmother was going from Minnesota to Oregon when she was 10, they had a family dog and eventually her father got tired of the dog and just threw it out the window of the car and kept on going. And she and all her brothers were crying and screaming.... and this happened only about 100 miles from where they eventually stopped to settle.

 

My grandma was the youngest of 14 children. Her mother and father were Polish immigrants that ran a grocery in the Polish Hill section of the city.
Her mother died of pneumonia when the oldest child was 17, and her father died exactly a year later.
So, the eldest being 18 was able to just barely save them from being sent into foster care and they all quit school to work.

 

Never had much of a relationship with any of my grandparents, and most of them are dead now. I share a couple stories that my mom told me about her father;


My grandfather went to jail for about a year. He was a taxi driver and told his kids he was jailed for not paying his insurance on the car. My mom recently finally found out that he was there because him, one of his brothers and a friend were caught stealing a safe from a night club. My grandpa was the get away driver.

My grandfather and his brother were always competing. One of their competitions were who could donate the most blood. His brother was kind of crazy and would walk 7 hours to the city just to donate as often as he could. The brother won that one, and was also recognized for it, and won some kind of blood donating record that year.

 

My grandmother lived through great depression and up until the day she died she never wasted any food at all. She would even sneak old pancakes into our sandwiches at lunch if there were any left over from breakfast.

My grandfather was a miner up in Alaska and built ships for the Navy during WW2. He had some awesome stories to tell. I wish we would have recorded them.

 

I was blessed to know both sets of my grandparents and two great-grandmothers.

They came to Canada from the Ukraine. One set of grandparents was born in Manitoba. The other set immigrated in the early 1900s.

One grandfather was a dairy farmer. The other was a cobbler who raised bees. He fixed shoes and sold honey. He had one cow but one day it blundered into a bee hive and got stung to death.

I didn't know my paternal grandparents very well, the cobbler and his wife. They never learned much English and I forgot most of my Ukrainian by the time I was four or five. Both died within months of each other when I was 16. It was my first two times (of 20-some) that I was called upon to be a pall bearer at the funeral. They'd been married for 55 years.

My other set of grandparents lived to see my own first son born. They also died within months of each other and were married for 58 years.

One of my great-grandmothers was a gypsy. She was actually born in what today is part of Austria, but then was part of Ukraine. She told fortunes with cards and tea leaves and made the best homemade donuts you ever dreamed of.

 

I got a GOOD ONE.

My great grandfather hired a private detective because he suspected his first wife of cheating on him. His wife ran off and wrote him a letter saying that she wasn't unfaithful until she met the dick.

(No pun intended, but laugh away, you immature dolts)




Also, my great grandmother on the same side was killed by her neighbor when my grandmother was little, after she had gone over because she was fighting with my great grandfather and wanted to use their phone. He mistook her for an intruder.

 

My grandpa killed mother fuckers in WW2

 

My grandfather (who is deceased) fought in WWII in the Navy. He was fluent in 7 languages because he was a spy for many years. His submarine would leave him on Japanese territory and he knew if they came close to getting caught, he was a goner...

I'm actually writing his biography from journals he kept in the submarine.