Kokomo Kootsie

6/19/2004

Poor Granddaddy! He dreaded and hated with a passion to see grandma pour over the ads every Friday in the Kokomo Tribune. When she got up and tore off a square of white wrapping paper from a store she saved, and sat back down, wet her pencil on her tongue tip and began to write, looking at the ads and back to the paper as she wrote, he knew it meant trouble for him; a trip down town to grocery shop for specials for her!

She gave him very specific directions what she wanted, how much, how much it cost and exactly where to get it! If he came home and failed to follow her directions, woe be unto him!

One direction he could not make himself follow, no matter what the consequences were. He was surely not afraid of her. She was about 5’2" and weighed 105 lbs soaking wet probably, and he was over 6’ tall and about 200 lbs. But her size didn’t effect the cutting power of her tongue, and that was what he was afraid of! He was an easy going peace loving man, and he disliked any friction in his life.

In those good old days everyone used lard, there was no Crisco or other cooking fats available for practical use. The lard did not come in small cans or buckets evidently, but in huge lard cans to the grocer who weighed it out to the customer. He would put a white paper tray on the scales and paddle the amount of lard wanted into it and wrap it up in the white paper like grandma saved for writing on and tie a string around it which she also saved, winding it around a spool until she had a huge ball of it, and kept in a kitchen drawer.

Grandma very much objected to that mode of selling lard. So she had a small lard bucket she always insisted Granddaddy take with him and have the butcher put her lard in the bucket! She didn’t like any of it to be wasted, coming off on the paper or sticking and soaking into the tray!

Granddaddy would take the little bucket, looking like a small boy going off to his sand box to play at building sand castles; except he was more like a giant, who has stolen the little boys sand bucket, lost in his huge hands.

I always went with him shopping and most everywhere he went. He grumbled all the way, about Grandma, her mother, both quarrelsome women according to him, hard to please and so on. I remember once he said, "Your Grandmammy is just like her mammy; quarrel at anything! She used to go out to the hen-house and fuss at the hens for not laying enough!"

When we got to the store he had me take the little tin lard bucket, saying he needed his hands free to read her list, shop! He just was embarrassed to be seen carrying it.

So he’d order the 3 or 4 pounds of lard grandma wanted, making sure it was on sale, which he also hated to ask, and watched while they put the little white tray on the scale and scooped the lard into it, wrap it and string tie it.

When we left the store, on the way home I heard grumbles of what would happen when he returned with the lard wrapped up, wasting a teaspoonful or less, and "Why didn’t you have it put in the bucket, like I said?"

The minute we got in the door and grandma saw no swinging bucket and granddaddy holding the white package, she cut loose at him. They’d argue back and forth, trade insults and wind-up with him telling her to go get it herself next time!

But he always went the next time himself. Her hearing was bad and she avoided contact with anyone because of that.

One time granddaddy decided we’d fool grandma; we stopped in a corner lot and he proceeded to transfer the lard to the bucket! I can see him yet. He knelt down and took the lid off the bucket and carefully untied the lard. He held it over the bucket, and dropped it down in, by a bit of shaking. Some missed and went over the side and hit the grass! Granddaddy let loose with some of his fancy cuss-words, and tried to scoop it up with the tray and did get most of it. It was speckled with grass! He kept up his on brand of language as he picked all the grass out and finally scraped the tray down side of the bucket, getting the rest of the lard in it; then he wiped the paper down it and got a bit of it off too.

Now his hands were all greasy and he had no place to wipe them! So he rubbed them down his pants and got hold of the tail of my dress and finished the job saying, "Your gradmammy will never notice it on you or my pants." Then he laughed his wonderful laugh and I smiled, sharing the joke with him.

Grandma never knew about that; if she had she would have never trusted either of us; anything we said would have been suspect. She did say it was a messy job putting it in the bucket, which made granddaddy’s eyes look pained and bemused and caused me to have a fit of giggles, which I broke off quickly when grandma looked sharply at me, and turned it into a cough.

Even though what he did was a solution to keep grandma quiet and satisfied, it was never tried again. There was no where to clean up his hands and his pants would not absorb so much grease and I was not going to have all my dresses greased-up in the back!

So the bucket of lard controversy went on as long as sweet granddaddy lived and he left us when I was eleven years old. Gone as the Good Old Days are gone forever.

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