I spent less time with my Grandpa than with my other grandparents because he was always out doing stuff. When my grandparents moved to California they bought some land and built nine houses on it. One they took for themselves, one they sold to my parents, and the rest they rented out. Grandpa was kept busy doing the upkeep and repairs on the rental units.

Here’s an plot of the street I grew up on:

When Grandpa wasn’t fixing things, he was growing things. On his little plot he grew corn, squashes, cucumbers, various fruit trees, and boysenberries. At first, he also raised chickens, but they were gone by the time I was born.

I’ve been back to my old street and his houses have stood up remarkably well. He obviously knew what he was doing as both a farmer and a contractor.

Before moving out to California and becoming a “gentleman farmer”, Grandpa was a chemistry professor at a college in the Washington, DC area. I always had a hard time picturing my overall-clad grandfather in a suit teaching a bunch of premed students, but that is how he supported his family.

During the time I knew him, my Grandpa seemed nearly ageless.

If you want to know more about my Grandpa’s early life and haven’t seen his stories in my previous posts, his adventures are detailed under “Grandpa’s Memoirs” in the menu at the top of the page.

When I took the dog out for her walk the other day, the quail were just exploding out of the underbrush. I found this odd, as they usually don’t pay that much attention to us. A moment later there was a thump as though someone had moved something in a nearby garage. Brindy and I continued our walk and on the way back I noticed something in front of the lobby door of one of our buildings. “How odd”, I thought, “that package is shaped like a hawk”. Of course, as I got closer I found that it really was a hawk that had stunned itself by flying into the window, hence the loud thump.

The hawk was obviously disoriented, but otherwise appeared unharmed. I texted my neighbors to warn them to be careful opening the lobby door. They went out about 20 minutes later and did not see any bird, so it seems to have recovered.

Nice to see one up close, but I didn’t want to upset it too much, so just snapped two pictures:

Here’s a closer look at the mark it left on the window; you can see the bird hit the window with wings spread:

On my dad’s side of the family I had three “grandparents”; two official ones and one unofficial. My dad’s mother was my “Nana”, while his father was “Grandfather”. I’ll get to the third grandparent in a minute.

Like my mom, my dad was also the youngest child in his family; his mother was 33 or so when he was born. He had two older sisters. His father was the Chancellor at the Greek embassy in Washington, DC. I believe Nana worked at the embassy and that’s how his parents met. They divorced when he was 8; apparently Nana couldn’t bring herself to accept the European “custom” that her husband having a mistress on the side was no big deal as long as he was discreet about it.

Nana met Daisy Roth when Nana was in the hospital giving birth to my dad and Daisy was her nurse. Daisy was hired to move in to help Nana take care of the kids; and after Nana’s divorce, they continued living together. As far as I was concerned, then, Daisy was another grandparent. She came to family dinners, went everywhere that Nana did, and often took care of my brother and I when my folks were away.

So for me, my grandparents were “Grandma and Grandpa”, “Nana and Daisy”, and as a distant third, “Grandfather”.

One thing I very much regret is that I never got to relate to any of my grandparents as an adult. They had all died before I was 25 and out of college. When I was five years old, my mom’s parents were already 68 and 70; my dad’s were 65 and 69. This means that almost all my memories of them are from when I was a child and to a child, of course, even 65 seems ancient.

My mom’s mother, henceforth referred to as “Grandma” had five children. She did not have her first child until she was 28 or so in 1916. My mom was born in 1924. My mom waited until she was 27 to have her first child, me, so my Grandma was already 63 or so when I was born.

Here they are when I was probably about a year old:

Here they are when I was about three:

They had just come back from a vacation to Hawaii, the only vacation I ever remember them taking on their own.

And this next picture is around the time of my sixth birthday (my mom is on the right):

My Grandma made almost all here own clothes; she was a terrific seamstress. Here’s a typical outfit:

And here’s a shot of the outfit my Grandpa was most often found in:

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Although my garage has never been particularly messy and certainly not dirty, I did have a lot of things lined up along the walls as there were no storage cabinets. Finally got tired of looking at all that stuff and had some cabinets built in. Wish I had thought to take a “before” picture, but you can see the results in the “after” picture. Now I just need to rearrange and rehang the pictures and paintings I had up. I love having everything tucked away.

I used Halloween-themed paper to make simple flowers for this bouquet. The “vase” is actually an electric candle filled with clear glass pebbles so that it still flickers when turned on.

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We were having lunch at the clubhouse when this beauty showed up. He is on the putting green right next to the golf cart garage. If you look at the far left you can just see two kids on the green; the ram is very unconcerned.

And here’s a closer look: