Yesterday was one of the most bitter-sweet days I'll ever have. My dearest grandmother, my father's mother passed away. Eleanor was born September 28th 1913 and lived 98 years passing away on June 20th 2011. I now have no grandparents left in my life but I have a life of the most wonderful memories a girl could ask for. My grandmother was the most incredible, headstrong and lovely woman to ever walk this earth. She raised five children and when they were on their own she went into the restaurant business opening her large farm house and called it the Country Side in Glen Aubrey NY. So many memories were made for me here! The lady who played the organ on the field stone porch. The jar of sugary red hot candies. The kitchen! Oh my god I loved her kitchen! One of the first dishwashers and industrial sized mixers I ever put my little inquisitive hands on. As a young child, I spent many Friday nights there at the Country Side. Grandma would make me go upstairs when the dinner crowd started coming through the front door. My grandfather always laughing, would warmly welcome them, never once forgetting their names and hang their coats. I would be upstairs with my face pressed to the heating grate to catch glimpses of my grandmother seating her guests. Having built an outside entrance to the upstairs, the old wooden stairway that led to the upstairs inside the house grandma decorated with field stones and dried flowers. In the middle was an old, cast iron, hand pump that was hooked up with a hidden pump where water peacefully flowed. A small service bar was installed and Gramps would morph from greeter/coat hanger to bar tender. It's amazing as this is exactly what I'm doing today to supplement the shitty music business, I wait table and tend bar and love every minute of it.
The great room had wagon wheel lighting hanging from the wood paneled ceilings. In this room was a wall with everyone of her grandchildren's (too many to count right now) pictures hanging from birth 'till high school, enclosed behind glass.
My mother gifted me with the first table my grandparents ever bought and four chairs from the Country Side, which I sit at every day. Each time I go to a Cracker Barrel, I feel like I'm in my grandparents Country Side. Except my grandmother's food was a thousand time better than the crud at Cracker Barrel.
The memories, also too many to count! Grandpa would dress up as Santa every year and come walking down the old Glen Aubrey road with a bag of toys. We all knew it was Grandpa of course, with his paper white hair and unforgettable laugh. Everyone of us loved him so much at this most incredibly happy moment.
One Halloween Grandma and Grandpa dressed up in black witch costumes and boiled up a cast iron pot of chicken noodle soup to hand out to all the trick or treaters. Amazing!
The memories. Hunting season and all the deer the uncles(?) shot, hanging in the front tree. Sitting on the back hill watching the car races. The firehouse pancake breakfasts. Grandma in her garden. Grandpa eating butter brickle ice cream, his very favorite from the Schwan ice cream truck. So many beautiful memories. Christmas tho was the best. Hundreds of presents and all the aunts and uncles and cousins! I don't know how my grandmother did it but she did it every year and outdid her self year after year.
In her later years she became an historian and researched her husbands family tree as well and her own family.
There is a rock monument as you come into Whitney Point dedicated to my grandmother.
Sadly, after about ten years of the restaurant business, they closed the Country Side renovating the kitchen wing and upstairs into two separate apartments, living themselves in the main area of the house. One windy day, my grandfather was having trouble getting a fire started and took out a smoldering log that just would not burn an put it back on the wood pile stacked on the back porch. The mean fall wind then ignited the log and in turn burned the whole house down. Grandma and Grandpa got out with the clothes on their backs and a box of Kodak slides. A collection my grandfather had taken over years. Everything burned.
I shiver to think what was in that huge attic. Antiques, all my aunts and uncles favorite things from their childhood. Everything. Gone.
May you rest in peace Grandma! The nursing home just wasn't your cup of tea and I'm so happy you are carrying on to the next level! I can't say as I'll miss you as you are inside me where ever I go, as is Dad and Grandpa. Thank you for being the wonderful, strong woman that you were and I'll do my best to carry on with everything your life showed me. I've got some plans myself for the next 50 years here in Sunny South Hamilton. Another dear friend of mine asked me once why I didn't have a name for my home...After thinking only for a few seconds about this, the answer swiftly came to my mind. And of course I'm naming my home The Country Side as I'm working on turning it into a bed and breakfast. OH! And tell Gramps out there wherever dead people end up, that each time I greet diners at Michaels and hang their jackets and coats, the memory of him doing the same years ago, fills me with great pride. Like...this is what I should be doing and exactly where I have to be at the moment.
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