Episode#50: My Strickland Grandparents - Granny and Pawpaw

 My Granny and Pawpaw Strickland lived much closer than my other grandparents did, so I saw them much more often than I saw my mom's parents. They lived in the Denton Texas area their entire life and since we lived either about 30 minutes south of Denton or about 45 minutes north of Denton most of my childhood so we had the opportunity to visit with them more frequently. The picture below was taken in July 1960 when Pawpaw  who was then 52 years old in the picture below and Granny was 50 years old.

Granny had only one job for as long as I can remember which was at the Denton State School (which is a facility managed my the state of Texas that provides care for the intellectually disabled that housed about 1700 residents when it opened in 1960) where she worked in the the laundry department. Pawpaw had two jobs as I remember, one was at Acme Brick in Denton and the other was as a janitor at college known at that time as North Texas State University. 

The photo below was taken in about 1965 at their house on Bernard Street in Denton during a family get together. I remember they had an old black pit mix dog named Rastis who was a mean dog. If you walked toward him he would wag his tail like he was a good boy, but if you reached out to pet him, he would bite. I learned quickly to stay away from Rastis. 

Sitting on the tailgate from left to right is my dad, his sister my Aunt Billie, his sister in law my Aunt Mary, Pawpaw. Next row standing from left to right is me, my cousin Bruce behind me, Danny, Bruce's sister Scarlett, cousin Cynthia, and cousin Valari. Top of picture is cousin Mary Virginia and her dad Hubert who was my dad's older brother. 

A couple of years after we moved to the country in Callisburg in 1969 as told in Episode #27, they both  retired and moved from the old frame house on Bernard St into a new mobile home that was located on the same property that my folks owned, so for the last 4-5 years of Pawpaw's life they lived about 400 yards north of our house. I remember we used my dad's old 8N Ford tractor and tilted the bare blade on the the 3 point hook up on the back and dug a trench to lay about a quarter of a mile of pvc water line from our well house to their trailer so they would not have to pay to have a water well dug. During the time they lived there we got to see them a lot more often. I remember often times walking to their house and watching reruns of westerns like Gunsmoke and Death Valley Days.

When they lived down the road from us, Granny, who loved to fish would take Danny and me fishing with her on banks of Moss Lake just north and west of Gainesville. I remember she would make her own dough bait the night before so it would be fresh and store in the freezer overnight so it would clump and stay on the fish hook. They would come pick me and Danny up early the next morning and Pawpaw would drive us to the lake in his old brown single cab (as they all were back in those days) 1964 Ford pickup, with several cane poles in the hanging out the back of the bed of the truck. She would make several sandwiches, bring a thermos jug of ice water and we would spend the day at the lake and we would almost always catch some sun perch and a few catfish. It was more about spending the day with them than the resulting catch. Pawpaw never really cared for the fishing aspect of these trips to the lake, so he would often find a nearby shade tree to sit under and nurse on a couple of his 40 oz  bottles of Old Milwaukee beer.

A vivid memory for me of one those many fishing trips is when we were driving home after spending a long  day of fishing at the lake; Granny would be tired and she would cross her arms across her chest, rest her chin on her arms and fall asleep. The last 3 miles or so of the trip home was on a rough gravel county road and Pawpaw seemed to hit every rock and pothole in the road. This would bounce Granny as she was snoozing. Feeling a bit frisky from the beer he had consumed during the day, he would elbow me and say 'watch this son' and nod over at Granny. He would whip the steering wheel and whip it back causing Granny to bump her head on the door window which would rouse her and Pawpaw would look straight ahead like nothing ever happened. In a minute or so she would nod back off to sleep and a minute later Pawpaw would elbow me again and say 'here we go again son' and he would repeat the steering wheel action. This time when she whacked her head, which again woke her up, she snapped her head around and looked at him and said 'you old son of a bitch!' Pawpaw just looked straight ahead and drove on like nothing ever happened. I was too scared to laugh out loud so I just bit my tongue and was dying laughing on the inside.

Granny moved to a retirement community but lived independently after Pawpaw died in June of 1976 at the age of 68. Here is a picture of Granny at my mom and dad's house at Christmas in 1976 or 1977. Granny died in 1988 at the age of 78. They are both buried at Rose Lawn Cemetery in Denton, Texas.

Granny and Pawpaw were simple people and never had a lot of stuff and I never knew Granny to drive so they had only the one vehicle for as long as I can remember. I have many memories of meals at their house and family gatherings with cousins there as a kid. One of her cooking specialties that I remember even now was how good her chocolate meringue and her banana cream pies were.

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