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9:05 p.m. - 2004-11-10 My GrandmaI was thinking about my Grandma today. She is 100 years old, and getting close to 101. My Aunt told me that she was taking her to the doctor tomorrow because she has a bad cough. She is amazing for her age but she is getting tinier and tinier and more and more frail as the time goes by. She lives in Wellsburg, West Virginia and I last saw her in April on her birthday. I meant to go visit again in the summer. However, my life has been so hectic with the house still in the middle of a rehab, and Mike being off of work with no apparent intention of going back, has had me preoccupied with what direction I should aim my own life in order to end up in a future of my choice and not some random hell that I allow myself to be drivin in. I keep putting off that visit. The email from my Aunt today shook me enough to know that I had better get out there for a visit, lest I miss the opportunity to be with her one more time. Today, Larry was reading a list he got in an email from a freind comparing 1904 with 2004. The life expectancy in 1904 was 47 years old. One year younger than I am now. In 1904, a 48 year old woman would be the equivilent of an 80 year old woman of today. There were only 8000 automobiles worldwide in 1904 and you could count the miles of highway in America in the hundreds. There were many other mind blowing things on that list and it seems like ancient times, yet this is the year my Grandma was born. There are still people alive that were born into that ancient age. On the last couple of visits, I was content to just sit with her in her kitchen and listen to her tell me about her life and times as a poor cole miner's daughter, growing up in the coal mine camp town of Lansing, Ohio in a 2 room, company owned shack she shared with her parents and 8 brothers and sisters. There was such a mixture of immigrants in those coal towns. Italians, Slovaks, Slovenes, Polish, Irish, all with their own languanges and accents and customs. The customs all blended together to create something completely American. She told me about "Water Day" a middle European custom at Easter time where young men and boys would throw buckets of water on young women and girls. In the old country, it was some sort of purification ritual but in America, it lost its religeous and cultural meaning and became a day where young men were permitted to wet down attractive young girls and revel in sort of an old fashioned "wet tee shirt" contest. I have collected some of these wonderful stories and on her birthday, my Aunt had a personal biographer write her story. One of these days, I am going to organize these stories into a scrap book so they won't be lost. In the meantime, I know there are more fascinating stories locked in that old grey head and I am getting a hankering to get on out to old West Virginny and coax those golden nuggest out. I am also feeling like I need to hug that dear, tiny old body close to me so I can impress her essence into my memory to hold onto forever. P. I. Yarnsmith
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