What did your grandmother like?

Fast cars, unfiltered cigarettes, hard liquor, and well-endowed 17-year-old men...

Butter, heavy cream, candy, swearing, Lark cigarettes, Maxwell House coffee and Lawrence Welk.

“Swap meets”

Corpse-like. Which was fitting, as both were corpses by the time I arrived.

Surprise Anal

Vicks, going to Tandy's for needlepoint kits, and Lawrence Welk.

Sugared almonds, a large glass of cream sherry, and making rhubarb and apple pies.

Perry Mason, the Alfred Hitchcock Show, the Twilight Zone, and Lawrence Welk.

Ivory Soap in the bathroom. Palmolive dish soap in the kitchen.

Pepsi and milk, mixed together.

Maker's Mark whiskey and unfiltered Pall Malls.

Soap operas and tabloids.

Barbiturates

Dick.

Taking dips in the Lady Pond.

Paternal G’ma: Bridge parties, tomato aspic, driving 20 MPH on the highway. Heavy polyester dusters, composting, wire haired terriers.

Maternal G’ma: Jim Beam on the rocks, pall malls, pink camay soap, complaining about dead relatives.

The Bold and the Beautiful

Crocheting

Talking on the phone

Collecting dolls. And playing cards.

French fashion and negro cock.

Fresca and vodka.

Rose milk lotion, smokes in a cloth cigarette case that snapped at the top, fuzzy slippers, family.

Coconut cream pie, skirt steak, and Freddie Fender.

As The World Turns, Concentration, Jack Benny, Hollywood Diet Bread, cottage cheese

Scotch and wigs

Pond's and Nivea face cream.

Telenovelas and variety shows.

Playing bridge.

Family get-togethers and going out dancing.

Gossip. Always with the gossip.

Gregory Peck, coffee, the CBS soaps

Lawrence Welk, Orbach's department store, Market Basket supermarket, the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane", making melted cheese sandwiches, moth balls, Judith Krantz novels

The Young and the Restless, playing cards, horse races, bingo, Michael Landon, the National Enquirer.

Noxzema, smoking in private, leaving her light and radio on all night while she slept.

Pegging grandfather.

A real bitch like me

Arguing with my parents, liquor, and dragging me to museums.

Ridley’s Believe it Or Not books, Aesop’s Fables, paint by numbers, the card game Rook, white people.

Sucrets, cream sherry, bridge, the National Enquirer, Sara Lee pound cake, bourbon, Lawrence Welk, coffee at every meal

Merv Griffin, egg salad sandwiches and Jean Nate. In that order.

Virginia Graham.

Having kids

Baking, especially pies. As the World Turns (she was watching when Kronkite interrupted with news of the assassination). Going into the city to shop at Lord & Taylor. Cape May for a week in summer. Crackle glass. Nice paste jewelry. Buying me books. Making panna cotta for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Lawrence Welk.

Hmm ... I'd say my grandmother was anhedonic and didn't enjoy much.

However: Pond's cold cream, waffles, ... that's all I can remember, for now.

Cigarettes. She died when I was 3.

Five Day Deoderant pads, Jean Nate, Benson and Hedges...

I never had a Grandma. My mom (she was a Grandma)..

Vanderpump Rules, The Kelly Clarkson Show, White Diamonds, Cheesecake, Barbra, A Star is Born (w/Barbra or Gaga), classy black men

Honky-tonks, Motown, dancing (obviously), throwing big parties in her small house, men, loved everyone except phonies, Big Bang Theory but HATED Young Sheldon, Lawrence Welk and her shih-tzu, who I inherited.

Her dog and I were by her side, in her home, when she died this summer, and I am so, so grateful.

I miss the hell out of her.

I’m sure she loved you too, r40.

She liked Elvis!

My eyes

I’m not sure. Maternal was dead when over a decade before I was born. Paternal died when I was about 6. I only have vague memories of her before her stroke. She liked or pretended to like my silly dances. She liked budgie parakeets. She always named them Timmy. Even when there were two of them.

The cheapest possible boxes of chocolate covered cherries, particularly those suspended in the cream (not clear) liquid.

The chocolate itself was like eating a brown candle.

I was closer to my grandma than I was to my Mom. I miss her every day.

Roasted chicken, sugared rice with milk for breakfast, Rouladen, pigtails and sauerkraut (She was German.), Rose Milk, the smell of men's cigars being smoked, bridge mix, going to Catholic Masses and attending Mother of Perpetual Help Devotions on Tuesday nights.

Days of our lives, her children and church.

Feeding her family (Thanksgiving and Easter she had a turkey, a ham, roast beef and more side dishes one could count), staying in the Ozarks (She was from Appalachia.), having relatives come stay with her for long periods of time, strawberries with angel cake.

Prell Shampoo.

Ivory Soap, the Love Boat, church, and making ranch dip using cream cheese instead of sour cream.

True crime books, unsolved mysteries, cigarettes, porcelain figurines, Christmas and music from the 40s

Me, tea, English muffins, mending, going out to lunch, Brandy Alexanders, Lawrence Welk, soap operas, the Lennon sisters, being Catholic, the Enquirer, Soap Opera Digest, Tang, baked chicken, French silk pie, fudge.

She made the best baked chicken. I have tried to replicate it for years and recently gave up.

Cotton house dresses, ribbon candy, canned peaches in a side dish every Thanksgiving dinner, pro-German sympathies during WWII and washing the mail the colored mailman delivered.

Clipping her toenails while she watched Jeopardy (she always knew every answer), Salem cigarettes, Opium perfume, Wesson cooking oil, Edith Piaf, black and white cookies, barking orders at cabbies and butchers, taking over other people's kitchens, pulling off her "brar" from underneath her shirt when she'd had enough of it (waiting on line at the post office, on a subway...she didn't give a fuck).

My maternal great grandmother was absolutely amazing. She looked just like Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock in Clue.

She told me:

Always do a crossword everyday. Good for the brain. (Do one almost every day.)

Buy a globe. Spin it around and around. Let it stop on your finger. Then find a way to travel to where ever it landed. (She got me a globe for my 13th bday and I still have it.)

Don't buy into god nonsense. (I don't.)

If you can live by water, do it. (I do.)

Her Bible (she didn’t like televangelists though), Michael Landon, Lucille Ball, her soaps (stories), Readers Digest. She loved it when I spent a night in her small apartment.

Keeping an IMMACULATELY clean house, playing cards, Scotch whisky

Peanut M and Ms

Word Search Books

Cooking

Homemade flower tortillas, Albondigas soup, bread made in an outdoor adobe oven, beef jerky, and lots of New Mexico chilies.

French poodles, fur coats, luxury cars (German or American), dandelion wine, avocados, daiquiris, frightening antiques, playing the pipe organ at church (she was not religious, but volunteered to play).

A real staunch bitch. Died with millions of dollars in the bank and didn't leave me a nickel. She was tighter than a clam's asshole.

She probably liked dicks.

Winstons and The Lawrence Welk Show.

Body surfing and catching the perfect wave., her kids and grandkids, nice hats, cups of tea, the crosswords, the peaceful times when grandad was neither depressed or manic.

My Grandma used Fels Naptha as a shampoo, loved cling peaches in heavy syrup, but she also loved Del Monte's fruit cocktail. She put milk in her tea, and she wasn't even British, and she loved to watch soap operas on TV then cry about the characters when she talked to her oldest daughter on the telephone after each episode. She made us "pennycakes" for breakfast and "sangwiches" for lunch. She wore fantastic hats for church with feathers and tulle and birds in them.

The Kraft Music Hall, Stella D'Oro cookies, Sunday gravy

Kool menthols in a snap case…cracking crabs on the front porch with cheap beer…orange juice and cheese balls to snack on during her “stories”…loved basketball and baseball…best cook in the family…long trips to the grocery store because she knew everyone…

She and I were the most alike. Then her Alzheimer’s reared its ugly head. She went to live at the nursing home. I knew she was sick with pneumonia and dying before they even called. I just knew.

Old school Harlequin romances.

Sitting in the kitchen on a stool near the heater vent, where she would chain smoke Marlboro Red 100s and read dime store romance novels.

Family, animals and Days of Our Lives.

She liked her soap operas, especially Guiding Light, I think; Freddie Fender, movies, a good Italian sub from Buscemi’s and she loved, loved, loved her family.

Italian sub from Buscemi's? I wonder if that's actor Steve Buscemi's family.

Frank Sinatra, Brach's Royals, Colorful blouses, Good Housekeeping, Frederick's of Hollywood, Publisher's Clearinghouse, Jeopardy, Oprah

this is very similar to my Grandma's Sunday Church and funeral hat.

R67, what a damn fabulous hat! Your grandmother had superb taste. I miss hats! Why did they go out of style?

Bridge, books and a gin & tonic promptly at five o’clock.

She’s nearly 100 and still alive - survived the Holocaust.

Was a very big movie fan and loved the Hollywood stars. Her favorites were Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Elizabeth Taylor for the women. For the men she was madly in love with Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable. And of course, loved her some Babs later in life.

Otherwise she loved cigarettes - still smokes too - kitschy patterned carpets, blood red steak (stopped eating after she had a stroke), and the Midwestern gay couple she was a live in maid for when she first moved to the States.

I love your grandma, r80 r79. Where did she move from and when?

I hated the Camay soap that I had to use when I visited my grandmother, since it was the only kind she bought. An awful memory of her is that she used to make me huge bowls of oatmeal and expect me to eat it all. It was like a serving bowl suitable for four or more portions. It hurt my stomach to eat so much of it. On the other hand, she is the one who taught me euchre.

Anyone else's Granny love Pond's cold cream?

Jesus, fishin', watchin' wraslin', going to church, blackberry cobbler, and grandchildren

Couple of Freddy Fender fan grandmas! Love it! I wish my grandma was into Freddy Fender.

Lipton instant iced tea. Cookies. Russel Stover candies, bridge club garden club. Cadillacs, although after grandpa died she kept the “little car” Romance novels.

Champagne, chopped liver, and “I Love Lucy.” Lawrence Welk was for the goyim.

PG Tips tea, Entenmann’s cakes and donuts, the ocean, Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show, Cashmere Bouquet soap and powder, gardening, church, family, crocheting.

Missing her!

Polyester pantsuits, dyeing her wiry gray hair a flat brown, Conway Twitty and Charlie Rich. She probably had a Freddy Fender LP in there somewhere.

My maternal Grandmom when I was 7 yrs old, told me I had my fathers' eyes, just not the 1 who is in the next room. She told me there is a whole lotta trouble coming your way, told me "you will survive it Michael" but don't give in to self-pity". Use your intelligence to survive, get them all back. Granny had a will of iron, smelled like rose water& perfect grey hair

Maternal grandmother (whom we addressed AS Grandmother, which honestly was better than grandma or granny) liked: to travel w/BoomPa (yes, maternal GF). Books, movies, read Cosmopolitan up to the end at 91, loved Paul Newman. She was pretty cool, tho also a bit aloof and withholding so she may have had other interests that she kept to herself.

My dad's mother liked "The Lawrence Welk Show" immensely.

She looked very much like Mrs. Khrushchev.

R5 = Lauren Boebert's fetus grandson

My Nanny called petrol Benzine. She took me to cool movies like Close Encounters. She gave me very sweet orange juice, froma packet to drink. She had strange orange bits in the corner of her eyes. She smelt like a Grandmother, and I loved her alot.

Whitman's Samplers, Harlequin Romance books

Glenlivet

I had three grandmothers. Two natural grandmas and a step-grandma who was my grandfather’s second wife. I didn’t know she wasn’t actually my biological grandmother or that having three grandmothers was unusual until I was about 5, but I loved all three of them equally and they all loved me equally. Having a bonus grandmother was great. Losing three grandmothers probably hurt a little more than if I’d just lost two.

My grandma believed in free love!

We fought like animals when I was a teenager because my parents had her babysit me one summer. I was becoming rebellious in their eyes and they used my grandmother to keep me in line only it didn’t work. I got mad and called her a hairy bitch and told her to buy some fuckin Nair one time, I was hard to manage that summer.

This is a loaded question.

Giving and receiving thoughtful gifts, festivity and celebration, dancing, blues music, TCM, going to the movies, trips to the city, an excuse to dress up, manicures and pedicures, board games, Scrabble, shopping for clothes or decor for her apartment, museums, walks in nature, Seagram's ginger ale, Barnes & Noble, writing poetry, spending time with her family or her large group of friends. She was the most amazing person I ever knew. I measure myself and everyone I meet against her example, and we all fall short.

R101 how generic can you get???

Guiding Light, tabloids (especially Hollywood ones), the Dallas Cowboys, Icy Hot, rocky mountain oysters (I can still see them in her frying pan, gross), anything with sugar in it.

She was born in 1880. She liked not getting killed in pogroms, working the Times crossword puzzle in ink and every suitor my mother had except my father.

She liked to turn tricks and bitch at us.

Paternal: Tiffany lamps, Georgia O'Keeffe pottery, antimacassars; Brach's Neapolitan Coconut, Royals, Chocolate Stars and Chocolate Cremes; Ivory soap, Pond's cold cream, early morning walks to Mass with prayers to St. Peter that we wouldn't get run over on our way, her rosary, large helpings of guilt, correct spelling and grammar, enunciation, sensible shoes, soft boiled eggs sopped up with dry toast.

Maternal (step since my real one died right after my mother was born): gossip with her hair salon customers, Life and Look magazines, Dreiser and Olive Higgins Prouty novels, Days of Our Lives, Impossible Pie, campfires in the woods, Studebakers, tea sandwiches and homemade potato salad heavy on the chives and olives, jigsaw puzzles, endless cups of black coffee.

Why? Do you want to fuck her?

[quote]She was the most amazing person I ever knew. I measure myself and everyone I meet against her example, and we all fall short.

That's very sweet, R101. My favorite thing about my grandma was that every single one of her grandkids, great grandkids and great great grandkids would say that they were her favorite. Her love was boundless.

Half and half in her Sanka, Another World, imagining catastrophes around every corner.

She liked Liberace, Judy Garland, cooking for the holidays and Oxydol for the laundry.

Oil of Olay, Nair for her upper lip and nonstop judgment.

Cooking delicious food, reading TV Guide and playing the slots.

My grandmother only knew three words of English, but still managed to employ them to dramatic effect when play-acting true-crime scenarios with us kids.

Every pretend phone call to the police (she’d pretend she couldn’t find us during Hide and Seek) involved some permutation of “Help!” “Licorice!” and “Bye-Bye!”

10”

Peach cobbler, The Young and the Restless, and reciting the scripture of Jesus Christ in a King James Version dialect.

She was like a big fart

My nonna liked tending to her tomato plants, John Beradino who played Dr. Hardy on General Hosptial, cleaning with Spic and Span cleanser and shopping at the A&P.

Wednesday night prayer meeting.

Cinnamon toast.

Taking down her bun and brushing her shoulder length silver hair 100 times before goind to bed.

R114 Like grammy, like grandson.

Paternal Grandmother: homeopathic medicine, Richard Nixon, Ernest Angley, and plastic/vinyl covers on all of the 'good' furniture and lampshades.

Maternal grandmother: Stella d'Oro cookies, Postum, and Readers Digest Condensed Literature.

Lipton tea with a wee bit of milk sipped from a saucer. Cotton house dresses with big pockets. Hairnets. The A&P grocery store. Arthur Godfrey. Every old lady in Brooklyn had a crush on him. Making me a big bowl of pastina with butter or sugar and milk for breakfast before school. New York winters were colder than a witch’s tit but so much fun when there was a big snowfall.

Winstons, Chivas Regal, movie magazines, weekends at the track, younger men (Don’t tell PopPop!)

The Greek Orthodox bible, old and new testaments. She knew most of the passages by heart. Also she was very well versed in all the various church prayers and hymns and had a impressive library of religion related books. She would tell me parable and various sermons each time I saw her. She said she knew I didn't appreciate them as much as she did, but she hoped I would grow to like them more as I got older. And she was quite poor, but whenever she had any extra money she would donate to charities, churches and monasteries. She truly practiced what she believed and preached. And she told me I would miss her when she's gone. She was at least right about that, she was very decent person and sweet, and I do miss her. Her morality rubbed off on me but the the religion part. I am somewhere between an agnostic and an atheist.

Pre-accusing her grandkids of crimes she only imagined we'd done or were about to do. My aunt and uncle came out for a visit from another state with our cousins to stay with her for a couple of weeks. We were in our early teens. There was a small mom-and-pop store around the corner that we decided to go to so we told grandma. She says, "Try not to steal anything!" as if she'd heard us plotting and planning to commit our crime. Another time we took her on a road trip with us and as we pulled up to the motel she turns around and out of nowhere tells us kids to try and act like humans. My dad snapped at her and told her we knew how to behave. She did that all the goddamn time.

Dead birds on hats, miles of amber beads, worn-out cardigans, carpet slippers, a long red father boa for formal occasions, cigarette holders (she collected them), gibsons, sloe gin fizzes and triple imperial mint julips, canasta and euchre, carmine lipstick and nail polish, black driving gloves, her hideous Victorian mansion (which looked like Charles Addams designed a set for Busby Berkeley), her dog Malvolio, her cat Malifica (both were horrid), feeding the vast storm of crows that lived in the decaying barn, her 1956 Jag, which was mostly rust, ding marks and broken door handles, pointedly not-gardening, not-cooking, not-cleaning and not getting along with the neighbors (who were a fleet of upper-class nasties with Transatlantic accents an ocean wide).

She also enjoyed telling us about the headless demon that lived in the closet of whatever bedroom we were installed in that night. And how if we misbehaved, would eat us by jamming us down the hole in his neck.

We didn't visit very frequently.

I just remembered another story, this time with a different cousin, her name's Denise and this is around the same time as my other story (late 70s). Denise's family lived in a condo complex that had a pool so we were over there all the time. We were done swimming and just hanging around the living room watching TV. Denise was probably 12 and chubby. She was sitting on the couch in her bathing suit and the same grandma was sitting next to her. Out of nowhere grandma points to Denise's crotch and says "I'll be you just TEMPT the boys with that!"

Rijunite Lambrusco over ice, Salem cigarettes, Katharine Hepburn, and cooking/baking.

That was my mother. Apologies.

Paternal-she loved cattle farming, had cow decor everywhere, had a western saddle purse, and encouraged all of her grandchildren to learn to ride horses, made grandmas bread, such good tasting bread it was addictive, and make chocolate cream and banana cream pies, amazing thanksgiving cooking, giving each grandchild a thoughtful gift Maternal-also loved country living, was a sceptic about many things, very chilled out personality, could make amazing buttermilk biscuits, was clinically blind

BBC

Coke

Pussy

Lace dollies and tablecloths

Wheel of Fortune

My maternal grandma was far different she never had a bad word to say about anyone except this one time. I was seven or so and she was watching the news and as she looked at the Latina newscaster she sighed and said, "Eeee. Her hair doesn't even shine."

LOVED to garden.

Her daughters complained later in life that she never was much of a house keeper, and from what I could tell she was cook of the fifties “jello mound and canned veggies” variety.

She also loved her family gathering around. It broke her heart when two of her daughters died

R56, did she have wessonality?

They were both dead before I arrived but I know my mom's mother liked Marlene Dietrich and Ronald Colman.

Garage sales, going to the horse races, overfeeding her little dogs, game shows, Seinfeld, Golden Girls, Yahtzee, the TV Guide crossword puzzle, LaVyrle Spencer books

Bridge, madras, Oldsmobiles and segregated country clubs.

Charles is that you at R136?

Good Nana (maternal) Shortbread cookies (hers were famous), 4711 cologne, mink, anything new she could buy us when they first came out: color TV’s, disposal, dishwasher, air-conditioners; her summer place at the beach (open house all summer long), groceries delivered from S.S. Pierce, and Caribbean cruises before people went on cruises. She bought her last Packard at 71, drove it until she was 85, and lived to be 95.

Bad Nana (paternal) was a bitch on wheels. Nothing my father and uncle (her sons) could do for her was enough. Like Good Nana, she was widowed fairly young, survived the Depression, and made sure everyone knew what a martyr she was: bitter and miserable and always complaining about something. She died, unhappy, at 66.

My maternal grandmother was an absolute Banana Republic boss lady, she ruled with an iron fist, striking fear into everyone. Yet, hidden beneath that tough exterior, she had a soft spot for dancing the samba. In the 1950's come carnival time, she'd excitedly tell her eight kids, "I'm off to dance with my fabulous gay boys, see you during Lent, and you better be ready for church when I get back."

[quote]French poodles, fur coats, luxury cars (German or American), dandelion wine, avocados, daiquiris, frightening antiques, playing the pipe organ at church (she was not religious, but volunteered to play).

R62, can you find any pics online to give us an idea of her taste in antiques?

Earrings

Caftans

4711 Cologne

Crocheting

Hummels

A full candy dish on the coffee table.

Bobby pins

An endless supply of Chiclets in her pocketbook.

mary engelbreit shitty arts and crafts projects

she hated pretty much everything, the meanest person i've ever known.

My grandma loved loved Ric Flair

Cream puffs. For some reason she thought cream puffs were the pinnacle of the baking arts, and would always order some from a local bakery(Termini's) whenever company was expected. If UNexpected company arrived she'd send me out tout suite to pick some up and smuggle them in through a side door.

Powdered perfume. She never could stand the liquid stuff, I believe her favorite was Lady Shulton.

Visits from family. She was the last but one of her 14 siblings, so seeing descendants of her relatives gave her much joy.

Clothes that fit properly. Every time she bought a dress or suit or blouse she'd take it apart and put it back together to her exacting specifications. Needless to say she was an excellent seamstress, and was a card-carrying ILGWU member from having worked many years in a local dress factory in CC Philadelphia.

Ivory™ Soap. In the kitchen, bathroom, seemingly everywhere. There's still a bar of it in the kitchen junk drawer, 40 yo at least.

Squirrels.

Death.

Looking after other people, baking and growing raspberry bushes! She cared for my dying uncle at home for as long as she could when she was in her 80s.

[quote]There's still a bar of it in the kitchen junk drawer, 40 yo at least.

Time to throw out the Ivory soap, Bronze Age Gay.

My grandmother loved the theatre and I was lucky enough to get dragged along.

She took me to see what was probably a really bad production of Mame at the CC Melody Tent starring Edie Adams. I was 8.

I remember my Dads' worried look when I would sing the score badly with made up lyrics.

I miss her, especially around this time of year.

Bitching at others

Making service people’s lives miserable

Hoarding money

R151 Malcolm is that you?

A little Manshevitz wine before bed, despite being anti-Semite, hated Catholics but wound up with 2 Catholic daughters in law, Mario Lanza (long after his demise), Lawrence Welk, Frank Fontaine on The Jackie Gleason Show, ox tail soup.

My mothers older sister never had kids (thankfully) but sounds like she would have been like the most awful grandmas here. Antimaswacrs, putting orange peel in everything, driving 40 on the freeway, having an affair with a married man for 20 years and then marrying him, coats with fox chasing it’s tail around the collar, running down anyone not present; thankfully her next door neighbor used to terrorize her with paranoid rants.

Room after room of stuff like this, R141

White carpeting, butter and whole milk, stouffer‘s turkey tetrazzini, Durkee Sauce, her flower garden, bridge, Seinfeld (I introduced her to it and she eventually came around to really liking the show), Himalayan cats, gin, and painkillers.

R73 the Buscemi’s on Greater Mack?

Wow, R154. That is stunningly ugly.

That looks like it belongs in a haunted house, R154. I like Victorian furniture but less ornate and a much more cheerful colour.