My Granny

Granny and Boat

You know that stereotypical grandmother figure: You arrive at her house to find granny in the kitchen, with a homey little apron tied around her waist. As you come in she wipes the flour from her hands and ushers you to the kitchen table. There on the table is a plate of hot chocolate chip cookies and a tall glass of cold milk. “Have a seat, dear,” she coos, “Granny made a little snack for her precious one.”

Not my Granny. (We called my dad’s mom “Grandma” and my mom’s mom “Granny”) My Granny is a good cook especially famous for her salads and knox blox and her lemon meringue pie. However, I do not think of the picture above when I think of her.

We used to go to my granny’s house in the summer and stay a week. We would often go to the lake and swim but we also engaged in other activities. One of these was picking up cans. Before people got conscious of the environment, we used to litter the sides of our roads with trash. One of these items was aluminum cans. So, we would load up, my granny, my two brothers and I and go traipse up and down the sides of the highway filling black garbage bags with discarded cans. We would then crush the cans and take them to a recycling center and get something like $.25 a pound for them.

Another thing we always did was go “garage saling”. Every Thursday for the last 30 years my granny and her sister, Maxine, would get up and go hit all the garage sales (where people sell off unwanted junk from their house). When we stayed with her in the summers, we would tag along and granny would give us a couple of dollars to buy stuff at the garage sales. I still remember purchasing a cow’s horn (not attached!) and a couple dozen golf balls and a game where you flicked the game pieces, a little like “carom”.

My granny is also the ultimate hippie. She has always shopped at the “Bent Can” or close out stores that sell the cans that are dropped and get bent or the label is torn off etc. She also did the recycling of cans I mentioned earlier, saved rainwater to water her flowers and rarely used the air conditioner even in the 100 degree days of summer.

All this sets the stage for the story I want to tell. My granny makes lye soap. She then sells it or gives it away and there is always a demand for her lye soap. Recently she has had a problem finding the lye that gives lye soap its name, due to the fact it is an ingredient in the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine, a popular drug.

She told her friends of her desire to make lye soap but lacking her ingredients. They offered to give her some ingredients, not lye, but animal fat. So, she came home and my parents helped her unload a box of tallow or animal fat, unprocessed, just cut off the carcass. She then rendered it on the stove, “My house still smells”, she moans, “I had to use two burners and wasted so much gas.”

Then we went to town and looked at three different stores and finally found some lye.

She started to make lye and was going to use a large wooden box to pour the liquid into and then allow them to harden over about a week.

As she poured the concoction into the wooden box, it developed a leak and the liquid poured all over the floor. So she had to spend several hours cleaning the lye mixture off her kitchen floor! No lye soap this time. Did I mention she will be 80 next February?!?