Over the River ...

            Well, unlike the rest of you, I didn’t have 4 grandparents to spoil over me as I was growing up.  I had to make do with a little of Grandma Palmer, and a bit more of Grandpa Craner, but both were past playing and having patience with little ones, so I had to keep quiet and stay out of the way.  Obviously, I’m stronger for it, but we won’t go into that.

 For my growing up years, trips to Preston were pretty frequent with Jen & Troy there, and Grandpa Craner, Grandma Palmer (I didn’t really know either of their spouses).  I feel like I have some faint memory of Grandpa Palmer, but I can’t really associate it with anything so I may just have the picture in my mind from a photo.  I remember Birdie, but also very faintly. The drive to Preston was like Mat said, passed with games of Zip.  If you played Sign Alphabet, you had to hurry and finish by Downey cause there weren’t many signs after that. 

One of the earliest memories I have of Grandma is when she made me stay at the dinner table by myself until I ate the vomitus mass of sopping wet, cooked spinach on my plate.  I can actually remember how it made me gag, and I still feel a little queasy.  I am grateful now, because there have been very few other things that I have had trouble getting down.  My friend’s mothers all loved that I would eat anything they put in front of me, but maybe that was just because our saintly mother took all of the good meals she made to “neighbors.”

Grandma’s always had a little bit of mystery to it.  You never knew what you were going to find under the piles of junk in the 15 different sheds.  Mandy and I loved to play with Holly and Niels (still don’t know how to spell his name), in the barn on the big rope swing.  We’d swing from the hay loft on one side, across to the other side where mostly old scrap metal and junk was kept.  Whenever I looked up at the tattered rope we were swinging on, I always had a visual image of the big hay fork dropping down on my head.  There was a cool, old car in the barn, a big hawk’s nest next to a perfect climbing tree.  I remember cousins teaching us to suck the nectar out of  honeysuckle, having my first experience with young green apples, playing kick the can, capture the flag, jumping on the unusually tall bed upstairs, and picking raspberries out of the patch.  She had a few distinct toys, and only two movies that I remember (Where the Red Fern Grows, and An American Tale).  Going back for some of the Palmer reunions in recent years has been fun because everything I look at has a memory attached to it.  The perfectly shaded yard with the clothes lines, the apple trees, etc. etc. etc.

Grandpa Craner’s house on the other hand was pretty predictable.  You would probably get a banana creamy (or strawberry, depending on the era), look at picture albums, and try to talk to Grandpa. His garage, and back porch were always so well organized.  The house was also neat, and orderly.  It only got disgusting when you looked too close.  I loved his old tin Carousel, the bouncing balls, and Hungry Hippos! I remember helping Grandpa cut his prize Gladiolus for Memorial Day, and being amazed at his attention to detail in even just the arranging of the flowers.  He was always very particular about how things were done, especially in the garden.  One of my favorite memories of Grandpa that I will always remember is when he actually came to visit my school for Grandparent’s Day at Inkom Elementary.  I don’t remember what we did together the rest of the day, but my 90 year old grandpa came out and played whiffle ball with my friends and me during recess.  Justin Wright got him out at one of the bases, and Grandpa just shoved him off the base.  My buddies all thought I had a pretty awesome Grandpa, and I did too.  I thought he was just as cool when I came into the dugout during a baseball game in Preston my sophomore year, and my coach had a wry smile on his face, because there was my 96 year old Grandpa huddled up there at the end of our bench.  It was a chilly, windy day, and in classic
Grandpa Craner style he just walked in and sat down, and told coach he was my grandpa.

On one visit, I talked to Grandpa about his autobiography, (probably while Mom was trying to hurry and clean some of the house) and brought up his story of driving a girl home in a buggy, and that it was a good thing that the horse knew the way home, because he was busy smooching the girl under a blanket.   He got a big grin, and said something about the advantages of horses.  As I got older I loved to wander around his garage and look at the old tools and things he had in there.  It was cool for me to learn that he was such a well-respected man in the community.  From Craner Fields, and being Grand Marshall, to having the new Ag. Building named after him, helped me to respect and appreciate him. 

Silver dollar hamburgers on Memorial Day, Banana Creamies, Nutty Buddies, and mushy bananas are just a few of the things that always remind me of Grandpas house.  Maybe he did those things so consistently so that we would remember him more often.