#10 "Grandma" -- Don

Grandma Dudding

As with most people, I suppose, I had two grandmothers, and when I was a child, my brothers and I referred to my mother’s mother as “Little Grandma” and my father’s mother as “Big Grandma.”  Both grandmas lived within a half hour of each other; “Little Grandma,” Evelyn Stowe, lived in Syracuse, Ohio, and “Big Grandma,” Marie Dudding, lived in Middleport.  Thus, while my parents moved every few years around different parts of Ohio (my dad was a high school football coach and throughout my childhood where we lived was a bit dependent on whether his teams had winning seasons or not), my grandmas always stayed in the same place, and Meigs County felt like home long before my parents ever got around to moving us there.

This morning as I write this piece, I am conscious of how my memories of my grandmas are filtered through how I experienced life as a child and how I now see these memories as an adult.  I have a few vivid memories of things my grandmas said and did that at the time had little significance for me as a boy but, now, completely define the relationships we had to one another.

Although I don’t think I was overly aware of it as a child, as I look back on it now, I’m pretty sure Grandma Stowe didn’t care for my brothers and me.  I remember my mother taking us to visit her mother and Mom told us to play outside while she went in first.  I remember hearing through the screen door Grandma Stowe saying to my mother, “I suppose you had to bring those boys with you” as if my brothers and I were pets that my mother ought to have boarded somewhere whenever she came for a visit. 

About a quarter mile from Grandma Stowe’s house was a small dairy bar, and I remember how during the summer Grandma used to give us a dime, each, to go get an ice cream cone and then afterward we would go play on the playground equipment at a nearby elementary school.  Of course, when you’re seven years old, nothing is more exciting than the prospect of a sweet vanilla cone followed by the exuberant freedom of the slides, swings, teeter totters, merry-go-round, and monkey bars that were the staple of all playgrounds of my youth.  It never really dawned on me back then that 30 cents was the price Grandma Stowe was willing to pay to get us out of her hair for a few hours.  Today, we live in a completely different world, and it’s hard to imagine that parents used to send seven year old children off on their own to play unsupervised for four or five hours at a time.

And, naturally, being unsupervised, we did get hurt from time to time.  Once as toddler at Grandma Stowe’s house, I got into my uncle’s tackle box and put a fishhook through my lip (I still have the scar inside my mouth today).  Another time, my brothers shoved me into the enormous muddy hole of a basement that had been dug for a house that was under construction, and not only did I hurt my leg, but I took a beating for it when we got to Grandma’s for getting so dirty (in my brothers’ defense, I did provoke them into it by daring them to shove me into the gigantic muddy hole).  The worst injury I ever got a Grandma Stowe’s place was when I was five and my cousin locked me into the upstairs of Grandma’s garage.  My cousins and brothers were content to leave me locked in the second story of what had been my late grandpa’s workshop, but when they told me they were going for ice cream, I couldn’t take it so I tied a thick hemp rope to a rafter and tried sliding out the window.  By the time I reached the ground, I didn’t have any skin left on the inside of my hands, and I spent the rest of the day crying with my hands held up to an electric fan to help relieve the torment of the burning.  I don’t remember exactly what Grandma said about my injuries, but it was something to the effect that that’s what happens to little boys who play where they don’t belong.

Later, perhaps by the time my brothers and I were in our late teens, Grandma Stowe had learned to say an occasional nice thing to us, and while I would never describe our relationship as “warm and fuzzy” she did seem to have true affection for my own children when we went to visit her in the last years of her life.  It’s possible since I had two daughters that Grandma Stowe had a soft spot in her heart for little girls that she didn’t have for little boys.

“Big Grandma,” on the other hand, always seemed glad to see us even if she had a difficult time keeping our names straight. Since my dad had seven siblings, Grandma Dudding had a slew of grandchildren to keep track of, and since we didn’t visit that often, Grandma Dudding would just simplify the process of trying to identify me by calling me “Twin.”  This used to bother me a lot as a kid because my twin brother, Dan, and I looked so little alike that I could not see how anyone could get us mixed up, but at least, when Grandma Dudding called me “Twin” there was nothing intentionally mean about it.

Grandma Dudding was a hugger and being a rather larger woman (although late in life she lost a lot of weight, during my early childhood there was good reason to refer to her as “Big Grandma”), I remember when she hugged us we seemed to practically disappear inside her massive arms.

Grandma Dudding had a tremendous sense of humor and even though I didn’t always understand the funny things she said, I adored her laugh.  My memories of Grandma Dudding include how she always seemed to be involved in some strange arts and craft project such as knitting covers for pop bottles that she would attach a doll’s head to.  Even as a very young child I would wonder who would want a doll with thinly disguised pop bottle for a body.  Around Christmas time, Grandma would attach wings to her pop bottle babies and transform them into angels.  At Easter, Grandma Dudding made “bunny cakes” by baking two round cake layers and cutting one of them into ears and a bowtie.

The funniest thing I can remember Grandma Dudding saying (and it’s pretty typical of the things that used to fall out of her mouth) was “I’m looking to get married again.  You wouldn’t know any rich old men who happen to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, would you?”

Throughout my teenage years, I remember Grandma Duding (who never had much, she was always as poor as a church mouse) would give all of her grandchildren underarm deodorant for Christmas presents.  It was both a practical “one-size-fits-all” type of gift and oddly comical at the same time.  After all these years, I can still hear Grandma saying, “Well, if you all end up stinking, then at least no one can blame me; it’s the best I can do for you folks.”  And you know, as we all blunder through life sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing miserably, I think that’s all we really want from our family: “the best I can do for you folks.”

Olivia says:


I do have fond memories of Great-grandma Stowe.  I remember her living room was completely open to her bedroom and that she had some pretty cool old toys.  I'm fairly certain those where days when Ellie and I wore many a matching outfit.  


I do wish I could've met Great-grandma Dudding though.  I think someone once told me that I did when I was very small?  I don't know.  I certainly don't remember.  But I think I would've liked her a lot.