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Monday, January 15, 2024

The Grandest of Grandparents, part 1

    Lately, I've been getting quite introspective.Well, I've ALWAYS been pretty inner as a person, but a few life circumstances and such have gotten me trying to comprehend the why of it all. Hey, I recently turned 51 and had a pretty shitty year being 50. Given that, I have been thinking about relationships in my life. I realized that some of the best ones I had growing up were with my grandparents!

   I was pretty lucky to have 2 sets of grandparents who lived an easy 5 minute walk from each other in residential Royal Oak, Michigan. Ah, Royal Oak! After we moved to Pennsylvania from Michigan in 1976, we took fairly frequent trips, especially during the holidays, to see both grandparent sets. And those trips were LONG! Why were they so long? If some of you 20th century folk may remember, there was a roughly 14 year period when the top speed limit on divided AND single lane highways was 55! I can Sammy Hagar now! 

   And when the drive from Berks County to Royal Oak was just over 550 miles and with food and gas stops, it was about a 12 hour trip. I will always remember knowing we were almost there when we passed the Shrine of the Little Flower at 12 Mile and Woodward, then crossed under the Grand Trunk railroad bridge, I didin't care which house we were going to, we were seeing my favorite people in the world then!

   There were, as I said, 2 sets: one on Alicia Court and the other on Vinsetta Boulevard. Let me begin with the Alicia Court set, my mom's parents.

   When I was a little kid, they were referred to as Monny and Bompa (my sister called them that when she was little), but I dropped that when I was 13 and called them Grandma and Grandpa. Their house had a reddish exterior and was a single level with a basement. A decent size living room was where we opened Christmas presents and watched TV. Down in the basement was my grandfather's workbench and tools, a ping pong table, and a little "cocktail lounge" complete with bar and cash register. Oh, the fun my sister and I had there!

   My Grandma Jo was a good person, but definitely had no patience for kid nonsense. I remember her smacking me once or twice for something, but that was as negatrive as it got. I remember liking anything she cooked and eating in the dining area set off from the living room. On that same table we would play card games after dinner. We would often go to the store together for something or another. When I was with both her and Grandpa when I was little, I was allowed to sit on the fron armrest between them.

   Grandpa Fitz (full name Leighton Deck Fitzmorris) was probably my favorite of all. We just had good talks about pretty much everything. Like my grandma, he also had a short patience for nonsense but generally smiled at my silliness. 


I remember this brand of peanut butter being in their pantry. I think it was a Michigan brand like Saunder's chocolate because I have not seen it in decades. By the way, Grandpa Fitz had a regular diet of bread and peanut butter, often eating it in place of what was being served. Oh, and Grandma Jo's potato chip cookies and her French toast! I can almost taste it all again!

   The Fitzmorris's were often our caregivers when there was serious business at the Moore household...which to this day seemed more often than not. When I went with my dad to check on how Bompa Moore was doing in the hospital in 1978, Grandma Jo and Grandpa Fitz watched over me most of one day. When Nana Moore passed in 1981, they took care of us. At that point it was easier as Grandpa had retired the previous year. They took us to the Ren Center in downtown Detroit, Belle Isle, and a short turn into Windsor, Ontario. 

    Many a visit with them also included their good friend Gerry Matter (whom I called Aunt Gerry), who lived about ten minutes away in a condo complex that had a swimming pool. Gerry accompanied them on trips often, especially to our house in Wernersville. Later on in life I came to wonder why she was with them and got more than the hint of a love triangle, but I'm not the National Enquirer and only deal in facts...as far as you know.

   If we were visiting in the summer, Grandpa would fire up the grill and put on chicken, and we'd eat at a picnic table in an enclosed porch. 

   Frequent visitors to their house were Gerry, her daughter Pat, and sons Mike and Richard. Friends Becky and Clayton Hardenburgh also came along with Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Bob, Tim and Mike Fitzmorris, and various members of my grandma's fellow soap opera watchers in the afternoons.

   But that is just the Michigan end of things...

   Grandma and Grandpa often came to Pennsylvania as well. When we lived in Wernersville, they slept on the fold-out sofa bed in the family room and if Gerry was accompanying, she slept with Kristin. Sometimes if my mom and dad were away together, the grandparents would come and watch us. 

   When I was 4 and 5, when they were visiting, Grandpa and I would go the airport and watch planes land and take off for a bit, then sit in the airport bar where I would have a soda and he would enjoy a whiskey sour. A few of them, actually. Then he and I would drive more. I can see the shock and horror in your faces but he was a functional alcoholic. He stopped drinking in 1978. The bar visits were replaced with McDonald's sundaes.

   After Nana Moore died, we stopped our Michigan Christmases, ad the Fitzmorrises came to us in 1981, 1982, 1984, and 1986. We began a new Christmas Eve tradition where we invited our friends the Kirkners over and had snacks that included peel and eat shrimp from the local Adelphia seafood market. I was glad my grandparents got to share in that for a few years.

   Just like in Wernersville, they would watch us in our Whitfield house whne my parents were away, sometimes the both of them, other times just Grandma Jo. On one of those visits, I came down with pink eye and she got me to the doctor and got some meds and took care of me for the week. She really was a good nurse when the opportunity came. 

   In late 1986, my grandparents decided they didn't want to upkeep a house anymore so they sold it and moved into an apartment in Troy, just 4 miles up Crooks Road ("Where all the crooks live", Grandpa often joked). I saw the place for the first time just after they moved there when Bompa Moore died. That was a tough time for me at 14, but my grandparents really took care of me on that one.

   In mid 1988, Grandpa Fitz was diagnosed with cancer. It took him within 6 months, and I got the opportunity to see him one last time before he passed in October.

   In years since, I've come to understand there was a darkness to their marriage as years passed, but 46 years isn't all roses for many others, either. What we see in others and experience within ourselves is often quite polar...and at the same time connective if we think it right. 

   A year or so after Grandpa Fitz died, Grandma Jo was reunited with a high school beau named Bob Shade and got married to him in June of 1990. Bob was ok, and after I began teaching, we began to have some commonalities to talk about as he'd been an instructor in the Navy.

   Grandma and I continued to be close right up to her death in early 2011. She paid for my return to school in 2000 to train to be a teacher. After I graduated and went through a depressed period of not looking for teaching jobs and going back to substituting instead, she sent me a SCATHING email that snapped me right out of it and got me actively looking. I think that email, along with the French toast and nursing me back to health, are what I smile about when I think of her.

   When Vickie met her at Mom and Don's wedding, Vickie told her that she was adopting her as her grandma as Vickie's had long passed. You could not have seen a happier smile from Grandma Jo! 

   She got to see Natalie a few times when Natalie was an infant, but passed away when Natalie was 18 months, so my daughter has no recollection of her great grandma.

   I miss those two people a lot. Grandpa Fitz will definitely be a role model (of many) when and if I become a grandfather.



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