Memory Album

My parents are in Ohio today. I guess that's got me thinking about Ohio memories. This picture is of me, my brother, Jonathan, and my sister, Elizabeth. It was taken somewhere between 1974 & 1976. The lady is my great-grandmother. We called her Grandma Stuckenburg. She is my grandmother's mother. I remember going to her apartment. My uncle, Matthew, who is 9 months older than me would always take some sort of toys with him. Once he took some View Masters (back then, they came only in black). Now, I had View Masters too, and had maybe 4 or 5 of those picture reels....but I remember that Matthew had about 50!!!!!!! I had NEVER seen so many View Master reels....not even in the store! Can you tell I'm still blown away by all those reels??

Anyways, one time when we were visiting Grandma Stuckenburg, she took all of us to lunch at Ponderosa. After eating, my mother, wanting us to be good, thankful little girls, sent us to thank Grandma Stuckenburg for lunch. Now, you have to understand that for some reason, Elizabeth and I were extremely shy. So to have to go over, get Grandma Stuckenburg's attention, and then actually speak to her was almost more than we could handle. We DID NOT want to do it!!!! We made our way over. Then, because she was talking, we had to wait. In these circumstances, you don't want to speak too early because if she didn't hear us, we'd have to do it all over again. So we waited and when we had her attention, we both politely said, "Thank you, Grandma Stuckenburg." Evidentally, this made an impression on her because later, I overheard her telling someone how we had thanked her.

The last time I saw Grandma Stuckenburg was in 1998. My daughter Amy was about 6 months old. By this time, Grandma was in a nursing home and wasn't aware of who we were. I have a picture of the 5 generations that were there that day.

These are good memories!!