When I was young, the things I remember most about my Great Grandma's house were:
1. She had a horse skin blanket on the back of a couch in her basement.
2. She had sparkly sequined wall calendars that my aunts embroidered when they were young, which were WAY out of date from when I remember them.[like by 10 years]
3. She had a small cuckoo clock in her kitchen.
4. She had a bowl of fake grapes on the dining room table in her basement that looked SO real I would always go up and try to twist one off to eat it.
The grape thing really upset her. My grandma [her daughter] would come running over and try to re-attach the grapes to the plastic stems, but it never really worked, so she would just lay the loose grape in the bottom of the bowl.
Over time, the grapes looked really worse for wear.
Looking back on this, I feel really bad. But I was like 4 at the time, and I don't really know what else there was to entertain me there. My grandma watched me when I was little, and when she had errands to run, she'd drop me off at my Great Grandma's [her mom's] for a little while. My poor Great Grandma. I don't know if I could handle pre-schoolers running around my house when I'm pushing 80.
Anyways, here's a pic of my great grandparents on their wedding day in 1925.
I showed this pic to a friend once, and he said "God, who are these people? They look so grouchy!"
That kinda hurt my feelings, since I'm related to these people....but I guess I'm biased.
I've put so much time in to asking relatives what ever happened to Great Grandma's wedding dress. No one knows. I'd even take Great-Great Aunt Lorena's bridesmaid dress.
Supposedly my Great Grandma took a street car into Omaha to taking sewing lessons, and made her dress.
The whole point of this post is that yesterday I went to an estate sale, and I bought a bowl that was filled with plastic grapes and other random wax fruit. I just wanted the bowl, but the grapes came with it.
When I got home, I was getting ready to wash the bowl, and throw the plastic grapes/fruit into the trash, but then I remembered Great Grandma and her grapes that I tormented years ago. I washed them in the sink and put them in a crystal bowl on my dining room table.
I've not seen any plastic grapes gracing tables in any homes lately, but when I come home and see these, I think of her, and smile.