#MemoryLane

One of my friends from high school posted a meme about missing her grandmothers and great grandmothers. It's sweet. I can only partially relate to it, though. Rather than go into one of my ridiculously verbose stories on her page, though, I figured I'd share it with you guys.

I only knew one of my grandmothers- my father's mother. My mother's died before I was born. And my great-grandparents? They all died long before I was born. As I think I've mentioned before: I was an accident. You could have visited the most heinous of tortures on my parents and absolutely, positively, never in a million years they have actually come out and said that, but- come one- in the 60s, the number of people who actually planned to have children once they were in the 40s had to be a very small percentage of 1%- and to have one 10 years after their closest sibling in age? That percentage had to be miniscule. 

Because of that, by the time I was born, both of dad's parents were well into their 70s, as was my mom's father (her mother died in 1957, and I discovered today while looking up how old they were that yesterday- the 28th- was Robert Hall, Sr.'s birthday, he would be 132 if he was somehow still around). My grandfather, Donald P. Bean, I only met once (that I remember)- in November 1974 at his home in Palo Alto. (My mom's dad, I'm sure I met- but I have no recollection of doing so. He died in 1970, when I was two.) My dad's mom, though? I knew her well, and she was a pistol.

I spent most every summer up until about 1982 with her, living in the town of Stone Mountain from about the week after school ended until about two weeks before it started back up again. Besides teaching me to cuss (the mild ones, anyway), she instilled in me a love of reading- encouraging me to read anything that caught my eye (even stuff like Poe- at seven or so), and an appreciation of peace, quiet, and solitude. Once I hit about seven or eight, she'd send me on a errand once a week or so that would see me plod up Cloud St., cross the railroad tracks, and a block or so down Main Street to the market, where I'd usually pick up some bread, baloney, and beer (yes, the people there would give me beer- they all knew my grandmother, and she'd call and tell them she was sending her grandson to pick up supplies). Once or twice, she sent me to the Long John Silver's on Memorial Drive to pick up dinner for us. This was long before Memorial Drive got to be the busy street it is now. All I remember being on the road when I was a kid (besides the LJS) was a Pizza Hut, a Steak & Ale, and a few scattered car dealerships. Oh, and the Dixie Hotel- which I remember because it was where you got off Memorial Drive to get to the neighborhood where she lived. 

Around 1982, my grandmother sold the house in Stone Mountain (boy, did that ever aggravate my dad because I heard him say he and my mom would've bought it- which means I'd have ended up going to Redan Road High School which, coincidentally, sits on land that once was part of the property grandma owned before buying the house on Gordon St. in Stone Mountain) and moved to Savannah, living with my brother, sis-in-law, and niece and nephew for six or seven years before moving into our house shortly after I graduated high school. I was working at a production assistant in television by that time, and (I guess) trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life (if I ever figure it out, I'll let you guys know). 

Anyway, my neighbor Jeff and I got the genius idea to have a keg party one weekend because his parents were out of town, and so were mine. We decided we've have it in his backyard, and we'd get Craig and Todd's band to play so we'd have some tunes. We did the $3 cover, blah, blah, blah- and actually even planned a bit, going around a telling everyone in our neighborhood and the adjacent neighborhoods about it, asking them not to call the police on us because of the volume- and even inviting them to join us (in an effort to get them on our side). 

Well, we didn't plan all that much, because it started raining. And we figured the party was boned, except the neighbor next to Jeff had a big assed three car garage/workshop in their backyard that was (at the time) sitting empty. She opened it up and told the band to set up and play there- out of the rain. Party saved. 

The next day, there was still some of one of the kegs left, so I invited some of my coworkers from the TV station over to hang out and watch the NFL games that were on (CBS and NBC only at the time- Falcons on CBS, and Dolphins on NBC). No big shindig like the night before, just five or six of us, sitting on the patio in my backyard watching a "massive" 19" color TV that I'd hauled out of my bedroom and run a line of cable to. I'd just lit a smoke and I hear "Robert!" (I started a bit, forgetting that I was never "Robbie" to grandma, always Robert). I look over to the screen porch, where my grandmother has shuffled out. She was holding an empty pitcher, which she shook at me and said "fill this up."

I did, of course, and filled up a glass besides- carrying them in for her and putting them on the table next to where she'd sit in her room. Everyone who'd come over to hang out cracked up when I walked back out, saying grandma was "a trip." That she was.

Later on, when she'd made her way to Florida, my grandmother ended up in an "old folks' home". We'd try to go see her shortly before Christmas every year (her birthday, like my niece's is December 20th) and one of the last times we saw her, she wanted pizza and beer. My Aunt Mary Ellen started giving her grief, saying "mom, you know you're not allowed to have that" to which my brother and I (in a super-rare instance of agreement) both chimed in something to the effect of "Mary Ellen, she's 101 years old (or maybe it was 102)- she can have pizza and a damned beer if she wants it" (and we'd arrived with both of those things). 

We didn't make it to visit the next year. I think we were planning on going on the weekend before Christmas of '93 (but after her birthday), but it was not to be, as Mrs. Ellen Blue Browder Bean died early in the morning of her birthday in 1993. She was 103.

What does this have to do with karaoke or music? Well, nothing, really. I mean- we had a band at the keg party. That counts.