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My grandparents were/are cool

 
 
Dark side of the Moonfrog1
12:47 / 11.10.07
I was going to post this in the ‘What cities are you Barbelonians from?’ thread, but decided I’d start a new one instead, and see if anyone else has any similar tales of octogenarian pride.

This is the place for those stories you hear as you’re growing up that make you realise your grandparents weren’t always old fuddy-duddies and actually did some pretty cool/brave/funny/shocking things when they were younger. I’ll kick off with a tale I heard recently about my maternal grandparents…


It’s 1946 and like a lot of working class families at the time, my grandparents and their two children lived in a terrace house with my great grandparents, my granddad’s sister and some random great aunt. Lots of different generations all squeezed in under one small roof due to a lack of affordable housing.

In the town were they lived there were a number of prefabricated huts that had been put up during the war as billets. They now stood empty and (even though they were perfectly safe and secure houses) the council wanted to pull them down.

My grandparents, along with other couples with small children who were in the same situation housing wise, realised that obviously these small domiciles would make very good homes for small families. Before the council could bring in the bulldozers, these families (including my grandparents) barricaded themselves inside the prefabs in protest.

A tense stand off existed for a few days between the protesters and the council, but eventually the council gave in and allowed the families to stay. Which they did happily for many years, until the council got round to building more council houses.

So, yeah, my grandparents were cool. They were (kind of) squatters.
 
 
Olulabelle
21:09 / 15.10.07
My Grandad was amazing. He had to go and clear out Belsen when the war ended and the things he saw were so awful that when he came back he became an alcoholic, and rolled the army Mercedes he had. They discharged him from the army and after that he never drunk a drop of alcohol again. But he always had it in his house and served it to my Muma and dad at Christmas. I thought that was pretty ace.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
01:05 / 16.10.07
My grandparents are all pretty cool! but the best stories are probably about my mom's mom.

she grew up in small town michigan. got a degree in Math back when it wasn't fashionable for lady people to do it and she did it at the age of, like, 19. first woman in Boyne County to earn a Pilot's License. took over the family business and ran it better than the snotty rich ancestors, but then annoyed them by acts like giving away merchandise to poor families at Christmas time, and marrying a farmer guy.

she's also cool for adopting, which is why my mom had a home.

I only met her once and I was 10 so I don't remember a bit of it, but I try to give her respect where I can.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
02:10 / 16.10.07
I am now fairly convinced that the British have better and more forthright grandparents than I do. All my paternal ones ever did was completely sway my then newlywed mother that whatever child she would have WOULD NOT NEED to learn Spanish (my mum is Hispanic) and my maternal grandparents were pretty much ace enough to accept an Anglo as their son-in-law.

Christ. I envy you guys.
 
 
Mono
10:23 / 16.10.07
My maternal grandfather is the youngest of seven children in a first generation Syrian-American family. He is an ordained minister (went to divnity school at a Baptist Seminary in Texas) and retired schoolteacher. He and my grandmother are just about the most loving and accepting people I've ever come across.

A few years ago, I found out that he used to have crazy long hair and wear love beads in the 60s when my mother was young. She told me that he was friends with a load of proper hippies because he believed that they were living the true christian ideals. apparently it alienated him from a lot of the uptight local christian community. but he didn't care, which is pretty cool.
 
 
Happy Dave Has Left
11:54 / 16.10.07
My grandmother on my Mum's side is pretty amazing. She went to Canada aged 20 and worked with POWs, speaks (I think) six languages, was among one of the first women to get a degree from St Andrew's university in Scotland, travelled round the world by steamship just after the war and makes the best lemonade on Earth.

My grandad was a battlefield medic and won medals for pulling wounded men out of burning tanks at El Alamein. My other Grandad was a sailor on relief ships sailing to bring supplies to Russia, and was torpedoed and dunked in Arctic waters twice. So, yeah, pretty amazing people.
 
 
Papess
12:36 / 16.10.07
I agree with Kali.

The coolest thing my paternal Grandmother, or Granny as she is known, did, (or should I say, was allowed to ), learn to read, write and drive a car at age sixty.

The rest I posted to my livejournal. I can't bring my self to post it here. Fuck, my family is awful.

I am going to have a good cry now.
 
 
GogMickGog
13:30 / 16.10.07
My grandfolks on my father's side were imprisoned by the Japanese during WW2. As a matter of fact, they were kept in the same camp as J.G.Ballard. My Grandmother has a burning grudge against his portrayal of the period in Empire of the Sun - she remembers a much calmer time in which the prisoners cared for each other and shared as much of their lives as they could. She even showed me flyers for Gilbert and Sullivan productions they staged, costumes improvised from camp supplies - apparently my grandpa performed a stirring Pirate King.

Those on my mother's side were colonials in Malaysia. My Grandpa fought the communist uprising behind enemy lines in hand-to-hand jungle combat and was recently awarded a posthumous medal by the Malayan government. he was a sometime contributor to Punch magazine and once smuggled a panther skin out of the country in a barrel of saltwater.

My grandmother was a typist at Bletchley and bound, until very, recently from disclosing several wartime experiences by the official secrets act.

It all sounds terribly Boy's Own to me but I am, nonetheless, rather proud of them all.
 
 
grant
17:23 / 16.10.07
My father's father was a jazz musician, a famous sportscaster and something of a raconteur. One of his first jobs was playing piano in the silent movie houses. He married often, and apparently tempestuously, and one of the few things he didn't know much about was raising children.

My father's mother was dotty as hell, always alive, radiant and completely uncensored. I don't know of anything particularly notable she accomplished other than teaching ballroom dancing and writing a language column in which she bemoaned the pronunciation of the word "kilometer" with emphasis on the "LOM" rather than the "KIL." Oh, and after my uncle's wedding, she published an announcement in the local newspaper thanking imaginary notable guests for imaginary gifts (I believe it was emeralds from Lord and Lady Moncrieff).

My mother's father was described in a cousin's memoir as "a genius with criminal tendencies." He was a German aristocrat who, as younger brother, went off to South Africa to seek mineral wealth. And then, when his older brother lit off with a Hollywood actress, got called back home to pretend to be a responsible and dignified person and to set the family affairs in order. What the rest of the family didn't realize at the time was that he'd gotten married while gadding about in the bush. To a commoner. Who wasn't even German. A farmer's daughter.

My mother's mother was a Boer. In her 70s, living alone in a cottage owned by the local church, she was once surprised by a 16-foot-long mamba. She grabbed a machete and lopped off its head. She wasn't impressed, though her sons were a bit taken aback. She'd had a far more adventurous life than that. She'd met this dashing European as a young girl, fell in love and married him. Had a couple kids. Then, when required, followed him to Germany - in 1933. She was a British subject, married to a German citizen, stuck a country whose language she barely understood, surrounded by possibly the greatest snobs the planet has ever produced and her grubby, half-breed, social-climbing spawn. Her first landlady, in Hamburg, was Goering's wife. They didn't get along.

And then her in-laws had her husband admitted to a sanitarium, because obviously, with a marriage like that, he had to be unstable. Unfortunately, this was during a time and in a place when eugenics was not just accepted, but celebrated.

Husband died, mysteriously. She was taken in by an uncle and aunt in Czechoslovakia (along with her four kids). And then Hitler invaded Poland. And suddenly, the rather effete nobles found that, once evicted from their estates and deprived of their numerous retainers, having a farm girl around who knew things about raising chickens and harvesting wild berries was really a bit of an advantage.

There are too many stories to tell - my grandmother kept a diary, and told wonderful tales to her grandchildren. She faced down Russian infantrymen, wrestled bread out of people's hands to give to concentration camp survivors (she herself had been in one as a child, during the Boer War), and with little more than her four kids and an antenuptial contract emblazoned with a British seal, managed to hike across Europe, past the Allied lines, onto an English chrysanthemum farm and eventually boarded a ship back home to the Transvaal, where she had to teach her comparatively posh little upstart children how to eat fried termites and make biltong.

She rocked. I wish I could've spent more time with her.
 
 
astrojax69
05:53 / 17.10.07
my maternal grandmother, when a youngster, went to her debutant's ball in sydney australia - where she's from - with the then edward, prince of wales, who later presented her with his lapel flower!

i've danced with a man,....
 
  
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