Grandma was a picture of Pennsylvania Dutch-ness. She had two sisters who looked so much like her that I couldn't tell them apart unless they were right next to each other. They were round and jolly and full of mischief, gray hair rolled up in a bun and clacked their false teeth at each other as they sat around the dining room table playing Canasta or Dominoes. Their humor and bawdiness was infectious. All my memories of her and her brothers and sisters are treasures to me. Even at our last meeting, when the anesthetics from hip surgery left her drifty between memory and reality, she had that twinkle in her eye. She looked at the Hypoborean Wanderer, a smallish 14 years old and very self conscious about it, and said, "He ain't very big, is he?" She saw right away where the sore spot was and didn't hesitate to poke it, with a smile.
I think Sam was the oldest, but I am not really sure. He had a wry wit. I saw him a lot in my high school years...but I lost track of the others and couldn't really say when they passed away. The Chief (my dad) kept us trotting around the world until he retired. Sam managed some property for my Uncle Dude right in El Cajon.
Hap was somewhere between Sam and Dutch. He was a city bus driver for San Diego and more than once thought it was a fun thing for me to ride along with him all day. Those were the most boring days of my life. But he did know what a kid liked to eat and lunches and snacks were always good.
Dutch was the one that stuck in my mind the most. He was the fatest one of the bunch and the loudest. Mandy would give him a hard time about his big belly and Dutch told her, "If you are so worried about it, its got a handle on it, you could help carry it around !" Dutch drove a cab.
Mandy was a little smaller than Grandma, but not by much. One time Mandy was telling a story about how she had laughed so hard one time that her teeth flew out into the stew...she debated fishing them out or leaving them in so someone could find them and claim a prize. Grandma laughed so hard at that story that her teeth flew into the pot of tea she was boiling up.
Liz lived in Florida and finally talked Grandma into flying out for a visit. It was Grandma's first trip in an airplane...she was nearly 80 years old...and was old enough to rememer the Wright Brothers flight. She loved flying so much she did it several more times. On one of the trips to Florida, she and Liz were out in Liz's pickup and rolled it over into a ditch. They were both laughing when they crawled up out of the ditch.
They all spoke to each other in "Dutch". I was in high school German class when I realized that Pennsylvania Dutch is really Pennsylvania "Deutsch". The Dutch lines both came out of German speaking parts of Switzerland...Troyers and Bontragers. Grandma was a little miffed when I started speaking German with her cause it meant she had to watch her language...in two languages.
They started out as Mennonites and Amish, but somewhere in the move west they got involved with some of the more vocal brands of Pentecostals. One of Grandma's favorite church stories had to do with Brother Gray, a very "Dutch" preacher whose belly rivalled Uncle Dutch's. Speaking about the move from Mennonite to Pentecostal among the displaced PDs, he hooked his thumbs in his belt and patted his huge belly as he spoke about "...watching this thing grow from coast to coast..." at which point the Troyer girls all giggled and yelled, "Amen, Brother Gray, Amen !"
When Grandma married Archie, she moved out to the ranch...out on Jamacha Road. The owner died just a little while after that and Grandpa Archie was kept on in a care taker status until he retired and they moved back into town. I was in high school when that happened and was blessed to be able to spent a lot of time with them. She would call me up and tell me to come over for breakfast cause she was making something she knew I couldn't resist. We had many a great conversation...and it never occured to me until many years later that she was guaging my attitudes about things and quietly guiding my thinking. She was good.
When I was a little guy I used to stand behind her on the couch and brush her hair...it was full and gray and had a texture different from dark haired heads. The other day I was brushing my own hair and noticed that it doesn't feel like it used to...it feels like grandma's hair. So for no other reason than just a tribute to a great lady, I started thinking about putting this down for you all...so there ya go.