TheBanyanTree: Nelda

[Sachet]

Now we know why you are so idiosyncratically inclined in such delightful 
ways. This post makes me wish I could have known her, Julie. And it also 
provides an amusing template for when I have grandkids. :-)

Julie Anna Teague wrote:
> Even though I look mostly like my mom, there is a picture of my grandma 
> Teague, Nelda, that I bear a very strong resemblance to. It might be 
> that we have the same build--low to the ground and built more for 
> endurance than speed. Grandma and Grandpa Teague were the "fun" 
> grandparents. I loved my other grandparents to pieces, but they were 
> older and didn't do things like camping, fishing, filling my brother and 
> me full of junk food and candy, letting us run like wild Indians, drive 
> go carts, and all manner of dangerous thrilling things. Any given Friday 
> night we might pile into their big tank of a car, my grandma smelling 
> like talcum powder, in cat-eye glasses and a nice dress, her lips 
> painted red-red and her hair dyed jet black, and go to a bar called Spec 
> & Jane's where they served really good southern fried chicken. My 
> brother and I were like flies on the wall in an adult world where 
> everyone smoked and drank beer and laughed and teased each other and 
> told jokes. It was a blast. Or my brother and I might pile into the back 
> bed of the pickup truck (My God, would you ever throw your kids in the 
> back of an open pickup truck and go screaming down a highway? It's as if 
> kids were either considered tougher or more expendable back then!) and 
> we'd "go to town", which meant the next town over, and go to a store 
> called 3-D wherein my grandparents would buy econo-sized cartons of 
> malted milk balls and orange circus peanuts. When we got back to their 
> house, we could consume these candies in as much quantity as we wanted, 
> topped off with some pop and a big pan of popcorn cooked in bacon 
> grease. Other nights, they'd have big Euchre parties, or sometimes ten 
> or fifteen people, kids included, would get to play a card game called 
> Shanghai Rummy. My grandma, once, heard of a drink called the Harvey 
> Wallbanger. It was all the rage, and she was going to make them. Instead 
> of orange juice, she used what was at hand--vodka and Tang--and served 
> them in glasses collected from the Marathon company (grandpa drove the 
> Marathon gas delivery truck) with depictions of each of the Apollo lunar 
> missions. Best thing was she let my brother and I try the Harvey 
> Wallbangers. Because my grandma was a blast. In the early 70's she hung 
> strands of colored beads in a doorway. Everyone thought they were the 
> ultimate in tacky. I loved them. Grandma was just completely quirky like 
> that. (Thus, maybe, my strong genetic predisposition to quirky 
> behavior.) Mom always complained that we came home from their house all 
> cranky and with stomache aches. Well, no kidding, we probably did, but 
> boy did we have fun. My grandmother died much too young, at 56, of a 
> brain tumor, and my grandpa followed a year and a half later, at 58, 
> supposedly of a heart attack from smoking and all that bacon fat, but I 
> think broken heart, more likely. There was simply no replacing my 
> grandma. She was a force of nature. I remember all of this and much more 
> like it was yesterday.
> 
>