TheBanyanTree: Nelda

[Julie Anna Teague]

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.