{"id":298,"date":"2009-07-07T21:14:50","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T02:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rosskressel.wordpress.com\/?p=298"},"modified":"2009-07-07T21:14:50","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T02:14:50","slug":"a-story-from-my-childhood-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/07\/a-story-from-my-childhood-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"A Story from My Childhood Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was growing up, I had a very close relationship with my maternal grandparents.\u00a0 My fraternal ones were far older, and both were dead before I even celebrated my first birthday.\u00a0 My Maternal grandparents to me because of this were my onely grandparents.\u00a0 My grandma’s name was Shirley and my grandfather’s was Murray.\u00a0 From the 1950’s until my grandmother’s death in early 2002 they lived in the same home located in Livingston, NJ<\/a>.\u00a0 This blog entry is a mixture of memories of my time spent with them, sort of a tribute to my grandparents who meant more than anything to me and still do.<\/p>\n

When I was little, the first thing I would do everyday was pick up the phone and call my grandma and grandpa.\u00a0 We had an AT&T cordless phone back back in our Millington house that had the number on speed dial.\u00a0 All I had to do to call them was click function 1 and the phone in Livingston would ring.\u00a0 My grandpa would answer the phone sometimes and would have to ask a couple times who it was, because his hearing wasn’t so good.\u00a0 I’d tell my grandma and grandpa about how my day was and all the things I did at school.\u00a0 They always had questions about my day.\u00a0 As much as I don’t remember the phone conversations, I miss them and wish I could pick up a phone and call either one of them.<\/p>\n

My love for music stems from my grandparents.\u00a0 Starting when I was only three or four years old, my grandparents started taking me to see the Livingston Symphony Orchestra.\u00a0 I remember lots of summer concerts outside sitting with my grandparents.\u00a0 One time, my grandma introduced me to her friend Lila who was a percussionist in the band.\u00a0 It was one of the most exciting things to me.\u00a0 Meeting one of the people who played the music I enjoyed was sort of surreal to me.\u00a0 The concerts would always begin with a patriotic song.\u00a0 I can still remember the excitement of hearing Beethoven with my grandparents and wanting to play an instrument later in my life.\u00a0 In elementary school during 5th grade I tried to learn how to play the trumpet and later trombone, but had little success and decided that I was better suited for choral arts.\u00a0 This lead me to two years of Middle School Chorus and two in high school.<\/p>\n

My grandparents had a lake house on Upper Greenwood Lake<\/a> on the border between New York and New Jersey.\u00a0 Their lake house was much smaller than my Aunt Martie’s was on Lake Ontario.\u00a0 In the front door was a tiny kitchen.\u00a0 As you continued, there was a bathroom and a bedroom on the right.\u00a0 Still forward was a small living room and eating area.\u00a0 To the left was my grandparent’s bedroom.\u00a0 On the wall were a number of spots for keys, including one for my grandfather’s boat.\u00a0 Below the keys was a small table with a rotary phone.\u00a0 Outside the living room was a deck.\u00a0 Most of the time at the lake was spent either there or in one of the boats.\u00a0 Down the stairs of the deck if you wre to go forward there was a dirty old basement filled with all sorts of fun things, but most of the time we only went there to get lifejackets before going on my grandpa’s boat or my grandma’s row boat.\u00a0 The opposite way down the stairs from the basement were a set of stone steps.\u00a0 If you were to follow these down through the trees, you would find my grandpa’s motor boat, a row boat, and a small dock.\u00a0 The motor boat’s seats were chewed up by squirrels.\u00a0 Instead of spending money on bumpers, my grandfather resorted to empty two liter bottles of soda (not very effective, so don’t bother trying it).\u00a0 The boat had a history of breaking down and running out of gas in the middle of the lake.\u00a0 I have a tape at home of family members getting back to the house after rowing about half way across the lake.\u00a0 Behind my grandmother’s row boat were several small blueberry and raspberry bushes.\u00a0 Sometimes before dinner there I would go with my grandmother and my sister to pick some to go with a fruit salad.\u00a0 Fruit salad was always a must in my grandmother’s meals.<\/p>\n

I have far more to talk about, but I don’t want to drive yall nuts on this entry, so I will write more about my grandparents and my experiences with them tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Ross<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was growing up, I had a very close relationship with my maternal grandparents.\u00a0 My fraternal ones were far older, and both were dead before I even celebrated my first birthday.\u00a0 My Maternal grandparents to me because of this were my onely grandparents.\u00a0 My grandma’s name was Shirley and my grandfather’s was Murray.\u00a0 From […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}