Grandma's Old Datsun
Uploaded by audreyh on Feb 14, 2007
Grandma Beck was a multi-talented, independent, hard working old lady. Even as an old lady, she was very active and passionate about one thing: working. She was by far the strongest person I had ever met. She had to support herself; she lived alone after my grandfather passed away (Which was ironically on my birthday July 15th, 1978). She slept with a loaded handgun in her bedside table and a police club shoved into the side of her waterbed. I was lucky to spend nine years getting to know her as my grandma.
In 1984 we move from Maine into my grandmas house at 319 Filmore Avenue, Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was one block from the Atlantic Ocean; we went to the beach all the time. She let me sleep on her heated waterbed with her; I remember watching “The Golden Girls” late at night with her. I would make waves on the waterbed and she would pretend to be riding them. I loved getting to know her; she was a very special part of my childhood memories and she was nice to let us live with her until we found a place to live.
Grandma Beck worked at the NCO (Officers club) at Patrick Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. She was a waitress and she bussed tables to support herself, she worked everyday until she was eighty years old. I can remember her crisp white dress and her big dangly gold hoop earrings that she wore to work, her ruby red lipstick that she always had placed way beyond her lip line. My grandma was very hip; she wore nice clothes, not the polyester garb that my other grandma wears. She would do her roots every week with Clairol jet-black hair dye to cover her gray hair, which is why her hair had a blue tinge to it. She smelled like Foille, a topical cream that she used for her dry arms, it smell just like bag balm. Only weighing about a hundred pounds she reminded me of Olive Oile, Popeye’s wife. And I’m quite positive that she was the oldest lady I had ever seen wearing a two-piece bikini. She drove an old Datsun car; it was the most hideous car I had ever seen.
I never understood why she drove that old car; she had money for a better car. I think my grandpa...