"We were just dirt pur,'" Granny said. That's my granny's explanation for the reason she and her family never traveled anywhere when she was growing up. They were just dirt poor.
There is nothing better than sitting in the car for five hours listening to my granny tell stories of her past and how it was "back in the day," just as she is doing today as we travel to the mountains. Her stories uncover some of my memories of growing up with her and, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my granny for being such an inspiration to me.
Her name is Vileta Foust. I used to think it was Velveeta, and then a few years ago found out that her real first name is actually Lola.
Lola Vileta Shoemaker Foust.
She is a petite lady, a couple inches shy of five feet. Because of her height, my best friend Sara has been known to call her "Small Fry." Granny gets so worked up over that and sometimes chases Sara through the sanctuary of our church, swearing she is going to put a brick on her head.
I used to play tricks on Granny all the time. She used to have to take naps during the summer, but I never took naps. So while Granny slept, I would get her apron and fill the pockets full of clothespins and see how many clothespins I could attach to Granny's clothes, feathery white hair and fingers until she woke up. If she didn't get up by the time I ran out of clothespins I would just start playing the organ. She couldn't possibly sleep through that.
Granny taught me how to sew and use a hot glue gun; we did crafts in our free time. I remember the first time I burned my finger with her hot glue gun. After that first burn, I got used to it. To this day, I credit that hot glue gun for my ability to withstand high heat on my hands.
Granny was the librarian at my school for 28 years. It was her dream to become a librarian, so after raising three children she went to college to get a teaching degree and a master's in library science. She began working her dream job at age 41.
I would ride home with her from school everyday and we always had to stop at the Chevron to get an afternoon snack. Granny loved Klondike bars, but told me not to tell Pawpaw because she wasn't supposed to have too much sugar.
When we got home, Granny would have to help Pawpaw on the farm. She hated those cows. She didn't even want to have cows, but one day when Granny asked Pawpaw to go buy a new couch to replace the one with a broken leg, he bought a cow instead of a couch. That was the beginning of the Foust Charolais farm.
I tagged along on the farm helping Granny and Pawpaw. We would feed the cows and check the fences. Pawpaw taught me how to call the cows in to come get their feed. He would always whistle and yell, "Hey, babiiiies." And sometimes he'd holler, "New grass, come on babiiiies."
One afternoon the three of us were feeding the cows. Pawpaw was on his tractor and Granny and I were waiting to close the fence behind him. There was a cow in the pasture, No. 20, with a newborn calf. She didn't like it when people came close to her baby, so she came running after Granny and me. We ran as fast as we could, all while Pawpaw just sat on his tractor, watching Granny drag me behind her.
I always thought the bad cows were descendents of No. 20, or that they were No. 20 coming back to haunt me. I'm thankful for that cow though; she influenced my love of writing, being the focus of the first book I wrote in first grade. Granny laminated and bound that book for me in the library and I entered it into the Young Authors' Conference.
Thursdays, or Town Days as Granny calls them, were always fun. Granny and I would get up early and go to town to buy groceries and, Granny's favorite thing to do, go to yard sales. This is the only day Granny would go to town. She found so many things at those yard sales. She always bought me clip-on earrings that I would wear when I played dress up, and because I was too chicken to get my ears pierced. We would go to some yard sales that Granny had seen advertised in the newspaper that turned out to be duds. I remember her always saying, "well, fiddle!" when the sale was a flop.
The things she bought at the yard sales ended up in her "junk room," a whole room filled with all things imaginable. She's accumulated so much stuff that the room is filled from floor to ceiling. I sometimes go in there with a stepping stool and rummage through her junk room, but she doesn't like for anyone else to go in unless they've been around for a while. The things that fill the room may appear to be junk to some people, but Granny won't get rid of anything in there. The other day, a man asked if she had an old wooden card catalog from the library. Of course she did. He asked if he could buy it and was willing to pay $400. She wouldn't sell it. That junk is Granny's treasure.
I probably learned how to be a pack rat from Granny too. She taught me to use everything and to cherish the small things.
One other thing I learned from Granny was the Star Spangled Banner. On our rides home from school Granny would teach me the words and I would sing them, learning one line at a time. Granny just knew that I would sing it at school one day because I always admired the older girls who sang it at football games. I did sing it, and it was at the Homecoming game of my senior year of high school. Granny listened as I sang over the loud speaker of the stadium.
She also made me brave enough to pull my own teeth. I would let my loose teeth dangle until they basically fell out, but Granny taught me to take a paper towel, fold it up, put it around my tooth, twist it slightly and pull. Her method never failed. The paper towel was thick enough that I couldn't even feel the tooth and it came right out. From then on, I pulled my teeth as soon as they felt loose, and sometimes I would wiggle teeth to make them loose just so I could pull them.
So many of my memories are from spending time with my dear granny. I am thankful for her and have learned so much from just listening to her talk about the past. I encourage everyone to just sit down with his or her grandparents this Thanksgiving and ask questions. It is the most rewarding experience and best way to form new memories to tell in years to come.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
