I have written about my maternal grandmother, but I have not yet written about my paternal grandmother.  I guess I’m gonna fix that right now.

Grandma Winnie was a full-blood Irish woman, and considered it her duty to help the whole world.  She was intensely interested in everyone’s life, asking everyone she met a million questions.  It was easy to mistake her for a gossip, but really she had a genuine concern for everyone she met.

Grandma Winnie was the best baker in the whole world, and I don’t think she ever shut her poor oven off.  In addition to myriad potlucks and parties, there was always someone whose husband had broken his leg during calving season and really needed a pan of cinnamon rolls, or someone who had lost his sister and needed a pie.

That came off a little wrong.  Grandma Winnie understood that she was a talented baker, and she used her talent to comfort people, that’s what I meant to say.

And she made the best coffee in the whole world, although she and I were the only ones who seemed to hold that opinion.  Grandma Winnie made coffee for the people who were building America, and they had to stay awake.  Her percolator coffee pot was always on a full boil, and she only emptied the grounds before she went to bed at night.  I still miss her coffee.

I only heard Grandma Winnie say one cuss word in her whole life.

Toward her later years, her health began to decline, and she moved out of her beloved Sears & Roebuck house into the Silverleaf Apartments in Philip, SD.  Gradually and unfortunately, she began to spend more and more time in the hospital across the street.

One day, the “Upland Trasks” (as I call us in the ESN) went to visit her.  She had just returned to the Silverleaf from the hospital, and she looked terrible.  She put on the faintest of smiles and asked how we were all doing, and how things were going on the place, and then I guess because we were running short of things to talk about, gave us a narrative of the medical procedure she had just undergone.

Of course these things are necessary, but some of them are ghastly.  I don’t remember the details, and wouldn’t repeat them if I did, but it was plain to see that the day had robbed her of her strength and happiness and dignity.

When she finished there was a rather long awkward silence.  Finally Joe had to say something to his Grandma to show that he cared for her.

But he hadn’t had much practice at such things.  So in his most soothing voice and with a look of concern on his face, what he said was, “That must have been neat.”

Grandma Winnie wasn’t facing Joe.  She lifted her head a little, looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and in the most perfect deadpan delivery I have ever seen she said, “Oh yeah- neater’n hell.”