Honk ‘Em Down
This past weekend, my dad reminded me of a funny saying from my Granny. Granny has been gone now for 12 years – actually she has been “gone” for more like 15+ years as she had Alzheimer’s for the last several years of her life.
Pre and post Alzheimer’s, Granny was always saying something funny.
On more than one occasion, she described how she and my grandfather were in a car and needed to get someone’s attention, so they had to “honk ‘em down.” I don’t remember too much more detail about it (I am sure my dad does), but just remember after she told us that, we laughed that if you didn’t behave Granny was going to “honk you down”.
Before she had Alzheimer’s, Granny was funny anyway. Something about her just caused us to laugh. I don’t think that she meant to be that way necessarily. She just was.
Like when she rode all the way from Oklahoma to California with us on vacation one year. My Grandfather had died not too long before, so Mom and Dad took Granny, we 3 kids and drove cross country to see Granny’s sister.
Along the way, Granny wanted to stop at every curio shop along the way. I forget exactly what she was looking for, but she kept thinking that things would get cheaper as we went further West. The opposite was true.
My dad tells the story about how Granny kept complaining that the backseat was really hot while we were driving. For two weeks, she sat in the backseat of the ‘69 Ford Ranch Wagon with us kids driving half way across the Continental United States. She kept complaining about how hot it was.
Dad kept telling her it was all in her mind. Upon return home, some time later Dad found that the tailpipe, running under the seat right where Granny was sitting, had a hole in the top of it.
She didn’t sign up for the part of that episode that makes it now funny, she just wanted to go see her sister.
Somehow along the way, we also picked up a lot of rocks. She thought that they were “beautiful”, so we kept stopping to pick up rocks. I think that to this day, most of those rocks are still in my parent’s garage.
There are a lot of funny Granny stories (at least they are funny today). Perhaps more to come…
