As I'm writing this, since the weather has turned cold, I have a batch of my famous homemade chili simmering on the back burner. My chili is not for the faint of heart and I would only recommend it to anyone who has no respect for their stomach or the fillings in their teeth. To say I like it hot would be an understatement! As I tell people, if I wanted my chili mild, I might as well eat tomato soup! Chili is meant to be HOT and mine sure is. It sure doesn't do my chronic diverticulosis any good, but I might as well go out in a blaze of glory. Well, now that I have yet another one of my infamous sidetracks out of the way at the onset, I'll now proceed to the subject at hand…

 

This brief account is about my grandmother Olive Fennel Tillinghast, aka "Ollie". Although, I have pointed out some anecdotes about her in several past stories, this is the first account given exclusively to her. Some people used to call her "The Grand Old Lady". She was very intelligent, had a great sense of humor, witty, creative, and  very eccentric. Eccentricity seems to always be associated with high intelligence for some reason. She was Irish and had a very acute sense of humor and was a great writer. People say I inherited my quick wit, creativity, and writing ability from her. Fortunately I didn't inherit any eccentricities. Errr, well, to be perfectly honest, Hmmm, on second thought, "some things are better left unsaid"…

 

In going through my deceased mother's things, I continually find examples of "Ollie's" witty writing on scraps of paper. The best source are her "Day Books" or daily diaries she kept from around 1940 to 1963. They really give an insight about her views on everyday life and other witty and insightful comments. When my mother was still living, she gave them to me to read. I was so captivated with them that I took a few rare days off of work to read through all of them at once. Tim has them now and I'll have to get them from him since I would like to read through all of them again since it's been several years since I have done so. There are, of course, many interesting metaphors she used to write in her "Day Book". For example, when she was describing our corn fields she wrote, "The corn is as high as an elephant's ear". When I was a kid, she always told me, "Your hair is as black as a raven's wing". To coin one of my original phrases, "Now it's as white as a bleached new born albino lamb." I sure wished it still was as black and thick as it used to be, as a matter of fact, I wish I still had all that hair! Alas, the raven's wings have been clipped. She also often quoted Shakespeare. By the time I was in college, I knew more about what he said than my English Classics professor!

 

She had a fixation for the color red. (Fortunately I didn't inherit this fixation from her. Among mine are boots, jeeps, horses, cats, The Three Stooges, etc. etc. etc.) Practically all of her clothes were red and she always wore fire engine red nail polish and lipstick. For some reason when I was very young, she painted all my toenails with that fire engine red nail polish! I probably ask her to do it for some inexplicable reason. I remember making sure I always wore at least socks in the presence of others since I was so embarrassed at having red toenails! When I went swimming one time, I forgot about my red toenails and had a lot of explaining to do to all those present! It took a long time for all of it to wear off. I guess in those days I was unaware of finger nail polish remover. I used to love the smell of finger nail polish and sometimes would sneak into her room and unscrew the cap from the red nail polish bottle and sniff the wonderful aroma! Between that and the earlier stories about "huffing" mimeograph fluid, and gasoline, I was no doubt perpetually "high" throughout my whole childhood!

 

As a result for living through "The Great Depression", she was adamant about not wasting anything. This was especially true of food, paper, and soap. Whenever we kids would waste anything, as kids are apt to do, she would always say to us, "Waste no want not". When she would beckon us for meals, she would yell, "Soups on"! If we didn't eat all that was on our plates she would say, "Eat every smidgen of it"! Sometimes she would also add, "If you don't eat it, I'm going to send it to the  hungry kids in Europe"! On other occasions along with "Ollie's" threats, our mother would also threaten us and say, "Eat it or I'll jam it down your throat!" Fortunately none of these threats was ever carried out. If she was still around, the landfills would have a lot more room.

 

As our experiences and her "Day Books" reveal, she was a great worrier and had a number of phobias. One of which I alluded to in an earlier account germane to storms. At the top of the list was her fear of tornados. I think she mentioned that as a kid, she once went though a tornado while she was living in Cleveland where she was raised. Every time there was a summer storm, we would tease her and yell, "Here comes a tornado"! She would then yell, "Head for the basement"!!!! You would have thought after us "crying wolf" so many times that she would have not reacted that way, but she always did. Of course, I can readily understand her repeated reaction, since I would too would repeatedly panic and head for the basement if someone yelled to me, "Here comes a liberal and/or a commie"!

 

She may have been phobic about driving too since she never drove as long as we knew her. I'm not sure if this was a life long thing, but I suspect it was. When she did ride with someone, she was a nervous wreck. Fortunately for her she never rode with Tim or I when we were teenage drivers!

 

She was also VERY superstitious and there were a number of taboos. In addition to the standard things such as throwing salt over her left shoulder and "knocking of wood", she had some additional quirks that were uniquely hers. For example, she always had at least 3 penny's in each shoe, and no one could ever bring a hoe into the house. The reason this was bad luck was known only to her. Of course the old standby of an open umbrella in the house was included in the long list of taboos. Upon entering the house, she would never walk between the porch roof support posts. She would always enter the porch from the side. The reason for this one really eludes me! I'll have to do some "post" event research on this. She played solitaire all the time with real cards since computer solitaire wasn't invented yet. Whenever she would turn up the Ace of Spades, she would look frightened and immediately put it face down alone off to the side out of her sight. She also had many others, but the aforementioned ones are just the ones I can recall at the moment. I'm sure if I could recall all of the eccentricities she had that they would fill a book! Say, now that I think about it, so would mine! I can blame it all on the Gene Pool…