Grandma’s House

Brooklyn was a spider web. Grandma’s house pulled in all my uncles, aunts, and cousins.  At the center, was a two-story house, where my grandmother lived with her mother, and husband. They came to America in the early 1900’s from Crimea, escaping from Russian antisemitism. My Grandma had nineteen children, although only thirteen survived early childhood. They and thirteen children escaped by walking for many hundreds of miles. My grandma and a daughter wrote two books on their adventures, which included sleeping in coal cellars. Eventually everyone was united and lived in Brooklyn, where they all raised their families. We lived in a modest two bedroom attached house, a few miles from Grandma. My father loved to plant his garden in back of the house. His decision to plant cherry trees was questionable, but he loved to watch those birds screaming and fighting over more cherries that any of them could eat. They did manage to ensure that there were none left for us.

My father was way ahead of his time. My dad brought home a gadget to give us color TV, way before it was invented. It was clear cellophane for covering the TV screen. It was blue at the top, reddish in the middle, and greenish on the bottom.  It worked perfectly for westerns where the sky was blue. If the mid-part of the screen had people in the movie, we could see faces with a reddish color. The bottom looked like grass, which often worked well. A close-up the move’s hero destroyed the illusion and we teased my father about his discovery.

Sunday was the day to visit our family and Grandma’s house. You could smell the food before you even opened the door! It would not pass today’s health test but everything seemed to be made in lamb fat with onions and vegetables. Beef was use for her meat pies. When I was older the family called a doctor because they became worried about my great-grandma’s fatty diet. The doctor concluded that maybe, we should adapt that diet, too since my great-grandmother was over 100 years old. She was a sweet, little, healthy woman, who never needed medicine (except occasional Ex-lax), collected pretty stones, and never seemed to worry about anything. My mother was with her, one day, and she said, quietly, to my mother: “I have to go now”. She then passed away holding my mother’s hand. She died at nearly 114 years of age.

We were kids and didn’t hang around the kitchen except to eat. It was always in use, with new foods coming all the time. All my cousins loved to run up and down the steps, screaming. Between the staircases, there was a small table holding a bronze colored statue of three monkeys in positions that said: “Hear no evil, say no evil, and do no evil.” It didn’t say anything about not running and making noise!

Of all our relatives, Uncle Herman always got in trouble. Once, I saw him put a rectal thermometer in grandma’s glass of tea. It exploded, filling the tea with broken glass, My uncle said he just wanted to make sure the tea was not too hot. My grandma said he was an idiot! Another time, he was showing home movies of his kids at the beach. Grandma jumped for a second and then sat down, several times. She then accused Herman of splicing porno films into his Kid’s beach films. Then, I saw it and laughed, while Uncle Herman was getting a lecture for showing such filth to the children. It was a crazy house but always a lot of fun. I was with him at Ebbet’s Field Stadium for a Brooklyn Dodger’s game. Herman got up for the Giants, at the seventh Inning Stretch, and was booed by the fans. He got up and, opened his shirt, showing his muscular, hairy chest. He waved and screamed like a gorilla.Everyone became quiet, in fear. With pride, I told the others near me that he was my uncle!

c Norman F. Estrin Grandma’s House, Jan. 27 2019