Grandma's Stories

Since I've been spending the first few weeks of summer with my grandma, I thought it would be neat to learn about her as a child, a youth, and a young adult. I have already heard many stories and I have terrible memory of detail, but I'm going to give it a shot.

The Asparagus
When my grandma was little, she lived in Ogden.  As a child, her mother would take her and her siblings to a river or creek in a giant empty field during the springtime and would pick asparagus. It grows like grass and apparently grew in the wild near banks of rivers.  They would find skimpy skinny asparagus, and wouldn't find very much, but would go every year and pick some for freshness.  Now, my grandma still loves asparagus, but really loves the thickest asparagus she can find. I'm more a fan of the skinnier kind, but oh well.

The Cafe
The summer after my grandma graduated, her mom's sister, Daisy Pearl, or maybe it was my grandma's sister. Anyway, she was super pregnant down in St. Louis, Missouri, and she owned a cafe, which she ran by herself.  Being pregnant, this was becoming a challenging task, and my grandma was offered the chance to work at the cafe til after the baby was born.  Of course my adventurous grandma said yes, and they came to Utah and drove back to St. Louis with her. There, my grandma played with their four year old kid, who was apparently a very fun kid to play with.  My grandma also waited on tables, took orders, cleaned, and help to bake the pies.  By the time the baby was born, she was super homesick and only stuck around for a week after that, and rode on a train back to Utah.  It was the first time for her to ride on a train, and she didn't pay for the rooms with the bed in it, and had to sit the entire way, and didn't sleep much. When she was sharing the story, she realized that it wasn't very nice of her to leave so soon after the baby was born, and should have stuck around longer, but she was just too terribly homesick.

How They Met
My grandma was a secretary for Hill Air Force Base, and she really enjoyed that job.  She was very efficient and very talented for a secretary of that time.  She would type up all the work of nine or ten guys, and one of those included my grandpa.  They started dating, and got married. My grandma was 19.  She thought she was going to be an old maid.  Once married, they weren't allowed to work together, so my grandma moved departments and got a higher ranking, which led to a higher pay.  They figured it was much easier to find a job as a secretary than as whatever my grandpa did with planes.  However, they still rode to work together every day, and my grandma really enjoyed that part of the day.  She said it was her favorite part.

Well that is all I can remember, I will have to work on typing those stories as soon as she tells me for more details and to remember them all.  It's been really neat to see how things used to be for sure!