Well, that’s an incredibly small and incredibly large subject, isn’t it?
I’m a quasi-genealogy contact for my family of origin. That said, tonight I sifted through obituaries, funeral programs, printed material from ancestry.com, and database information that my second cousin on my paternal grandfather’s side had created. Yes, Bruce Schaepe, I will call you out because whenever we have been together, unfortunately it’s always at family funerals, we have created a pod of just the two of us talking about family history and genealogy. Bruce’s mother married a brother of my Grandpa Porath. So, his mother was my great-great aunt. Establishing family relationships at times makes my head spin. Tonight, I tried to organize some family documents into folders. So far, I have a folder titled “Krause” (my maternal grandfather), “Wilber/Ziemer” (my maternal grandmother), “Porath” (my paternal grandfather), and “Kuether” (my paternal grandmother). Yeah, I know, my head is spinning right along with yours.
Now, getting back to the original purpose of this blog: I hope everyone reading this can say, “My grandma was the best grandma EVER!” I can certainly say that without doubt. In my maternal family we have this tradition I have posted about before called “Gravehopping.” Quick hits info: either the weekend before or Memorial Day Weekend we go to the graves of our maternal grandparents’ family, which now consists of three separate cemeteries, and remove the fake flowers we placed last year and replace them with “fresh” fake flowers.
When my Grandma Krause (my mom’s mom) was able to go with us, when we got to the grave of her grandma, she always said, “She was the best grandma ever.” Every year I would tell her, “No, you’re the best grandma ever.” She would look up at me and say, “Oh, I can only hope so, Dolly.” She ALWAYS called her five granddaughters “Dolly” when ending a phone call or a letter.
Back on the river and off of the tributaries: As I alluded to earlier, I have my Grandma Krause’s Jumbo Word Find Pad. I don’t know the date of my grandma’s last attempted word find, but the title is “80 Reunion Time.” The clues include “guest”, “memories”, and “mementos”. Of the 28 words, she found 15. Today I completed 10 of the remaining words.
I left one incomplete on purpose. The word is “Farewell.” It’s in here somewhere, but I haven’t looked for it. Despite the number of years that have passed since Grandma Krause passed and where she lived at the time she passed, I like to think about one year when we were in Shawano, on the small front porch of the house on Smalley Street and Grandma said, “They must not have the stock car races at the Fair anymore.” My cousins and I shared a knowing look with each other and one of us said, “Grandma, they’re racing the cars right now. Can’t you hear them?” She answered, “Oh, no, but I’m glad that you can hear them.”
The BEST things about Gravehopping was that on Sunday of Gravehopping weekend, Grandma Krause would fry eggs over-hard for me in the bacon grease in her cast iron skillet. To this day, all of these years later, I have not eaten anything that comes close to how absolutely perfect these simple fried eggs tasted.
I have no idea who got Grandma Krause’s iron skillet, but I have my Grandma Porath’s iron skillet and I have yet to attempt the “eggs fried over hard in bacon grease.” I hope that I have the courage to fry eggs over hard soon. In a way, it will complete the “farewell” Reunion Time.
