Grandpa Liddell was actually a step-grandpa. He was born in about 1900 or so and was an old cowboy. He married my grandmother after my real grandfather passed away from Lou Gehrig's disease, leaving her to raise 7 children. We lived close to their farm and we would often spend a Saturday looking at his cows, riding his palomino horse named Blondie and playing with the barnyard cats. He passed away in the mid 1980's.
Grandma Erickson lived in Minnesota and was born about 1914 or so.
We went to visit them every third summer. She loved to go to yard and garage sales. She always sent a box to us at Christmas, these were sometimes interesting gifts that we knew she found at a yard sale. She sent me one of my favorite stuffed animals, a little panda teddy-bear I named Jimmy Bear. I loved to go their home, it was so different. It was a little old house with narrow stairs leading up to the bedroom upstairs where we slept. Built without a bathroom, one was added to a closet I think. To get to the shower you would have to open a trap door to go into the almost dirt floor basement. She passed away in about 1997 or 98. I went up to Minnesota to help mom, dad and Uncle Dean clean out her house. 4 large dumpsters were used to haul away the stuff she bought at garage sales. This was one of our favorite pictures of grandma, mom always joked that she was smuggling grapefruits that day! (you see where I get my weird sense of humor)Brother #2 is just a year and half older than me, so for three months he gets to be two years older than me.
He was born in 1961 and was the typical "middle child" always wanting attention. Mom always said he didn't get to the baby long enough because he was always picking fights with me. I remember once he got mad at me for who knows what, he decided that he would get back at me by opening my drawer of clean clothes and he pee'd all over them. I didn't care, but mom sure did! He says he has memories of being spanked a lot by mom and dad, I told him; "Duh! Do you not remember what you used to do to me?" LOL. We had a lot of the same friends in high school, he sometimes didn't like that very much. He went on his mission to Taiwan and he still speaks and writes Chinese. He went back there to live and work for several years before he got married. He lives in Utah and has 4 kids. We get along very well now. So Brother #2 and my grandpa & grandma... Happy Birthday!
2 comments:
what a birthday bash !
jolly good fun - except the peed clothes.
I have that same thing with my oldest brother, "You had it easy. I had it tough...Dad was brutal when I was young, and by the time you 3 came around, you were spoiled"....common thing, eh?
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