Hi! My name is Karen and I am 12. This page is about my Nana Georgia. She was my mom's mom. She had a stroke on a Thursday night
in January and she died in the hospital on Saturday, January 16, 1999. She was 73 years old.
In computer class we had to make a web page about someone important to us, and I knew right away it would be Nana, because she was
the most important person to me after my mom and dad. (Sorry, Dad. You are tied for second. Actually you are tied for first with Mom
and Nana is second. OK.) I finished the page for class but I kept adding to it at home because there is too much to put in just
one page about Nana. Please read the whole thing!!
Who Nana Was ♥ Her Favorite Things ♥ Things She Taught Me
♥ Nana Sayings ♥ Butterscotch ♥ The Funeral
♥ What I Learned
Who Nana Was
Nana was born in 1925 and she grew up on a farm with four brothers, so she says she had to learn to be tough. (I mean she said. I
still do that.) She married my Grandpa Monroe in 1946. He died when I was three so I don't remember him very much except his
whistling. Nana worked in the cafeteria at a school for 26 years and she said she fed about a million kids, and some of them still
came up to her at the grocery store when they were grown up and said "you're the macaroni lady!"
She lived ten minutes from us in a little yellow house with a porch swing. I went there every day after school since I was in
kindergarten, until I was in sixth grade and Mom said I could stay home by myself. But I still went to Nana's most days anyway,
because her house smelled like biscuits and our house smells like Dad's work boots.
Nana's Favorite Things
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♥ Wheel of Fortune!!! She watched it every single night and nobody was allowed to talk except to guess. She was
REALLY good. She could solve the puzzle with only like three letters showing and she would yell it at the TV. She said Pat Sajak was
a gentleman and she always told me what Vanna White was wearing like it was the news. If Nana was on the show she would have won a
car for sure.
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♥ Butterscotch candies. The hard ones in the yellow see-through wrappers. She always had some in her purse and in a glass
dish on the coffee table and in her coat pocket. If you were sad you got one. If you were good you got one. If you were bad you
still got one, but later.
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♥ Her African violets. She had fourteen of them on the kitchen windowsill, purple and pink and white and one that was
purple with white edges which was her favorite. She talked to them. She said you have to water them from the bottom, in a saucer, and
never get the leaves wet or they get spots. Now I have three of them in my room. I water them from the bottom. Mom checks.
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♥ Gospel music on Sunday mornings, and the radio station that plays old songs on Saturday nights. And Patsy Cline.
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♥ Me. She said so. (Also my cousins John, Samantha and Cristal. But she said I was the best gin rummy player.)
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Things Nana Taught Me
1. Gin Rummy
Nana taught me gin rummy when I was seven and she never ever let me win on purpose, so when I finally beat her when I was nine it was
REAL. Here is how you play, in case you don't know:
- Each person gets 10 cards. The rest go face down in a pile and you turn one over to start the discard pile.
- On your turn you take a card, either from the pile or the top of the discards, and then you throw one away.
- You are trying to put your cards into sets (three or four of the same number, like three 7s) or runs (three or
more in a row in the same suit, like the 4, 5 and 6 of hearts).
- When all your cards are in sets and runs you say GIN! and you win the hand. You can also "knock" if the cards you have
left over add up to 10 or less, but that is riskier.
- Face cards count 10. Aces count 1. (Nana said aces are low and so are people who cheat.)
Our record was Nana 1,412 games and Karen 1,388 games. I know because she kept score in a spiral notebook since 1994. I have the
notebook now. I am not going to play anybody else until I'm ready. Maybe my cousin John.
2. Buttermilk Biscuits
Nana made biscuits almost every Sunday and she let me help since I was little, and now I can make them by myself (with Mom there for
the oven). Here is what Nana said is the secret:
- The butter has to be COLD. Like right out of the refrigerator cold. You cut it into the flour with a pastry blender until
it looks like little peas.
- Use real buttermilk, not regular milk.
- Don't mess with the dough too much!!! Just stir until it comes together and pat it out with your hands. If you knead it a bunch,
the biscuits get tough. Nana said "handle it like a baby bird."
- When you cut them out, push the cutter straight down and pull it straight up. Don't twist it. Twisting squishes the edges
and they won't rise as tall.
- Put them in the pan so they are touching each other. Then they rise up instead of out.
- Hot oven. Nana's was 450 degrees.
Mine are almost as good as hers. Dad says they are exactly as good but he has to say that.
3. How to Crochet a Granny Square
Nana crocheted afghans for everybody she knew. Every baby in our church got one. She taught me the summer I was ten. A granny square
is the easiest thing to make and you sew a lot of them together to make a blanket. This is how:
- Chain 4 and join it in a circle with a slip stitch.
- Chain 3. That counts as your first double crochet. Then make 2 more double crochets into the circle. That's your first group of 3.
- Chain 2 (that makes a corner), then 3 double crochets into the circle. Do that two more times so you have 4 groups.
- Chain 2 and slip stitch into the top of the first chain 3. Now you have a little square!
- For the next round you go around again, and in each corner space you put 3 double crochets, chain 2, and 3 more double crochets.
Along the sides you put 3 double crochets in each space. Keep going around and it gets bigger.
Nana could make one in about five minutes while she watched Wheel of Fortune and solved the puzzle at the same time. It takes me
about half an hour and sometimes it comes out kind of a trapezoid. Nana said that's how you know a person made it.
I have made 31 granny squares so far. When I have enough I'm going to make an afghan and put it on Nana's rocking chair which is in our
living room now.
Nana Sayings
Nana had a saying for EVERYTHING. Here are some of them. Mom and Aunt Doreen helped me remember.
- "Pretty is as pretty does." (When me and Samantha were fighting.)
- "Don't borrow trouble." (When I was worried about a test.)
- "Butter makes it better." (About everything, not just food.)
- "If you're bored, you're not looking hard enough." (She would hand you a dust rag.)
- "Well, that's a horse of a different color." (I still don't know what this means.)
- "Sit up straight, you're not a question mark."
- "Bless your heart." (This can be nice or it can be NOT nice. You have to listen to how she says it.)
- "I'm not old, I'm vintage."
- "Go wash your hands, you've been touching the cat."
Butterscotch
Butterscotch was Nana's cat and now he is MY cat. He is orange and white and fat and he is eleven years old. Nana named him
Butterscotch because he is the same color as her candies.
After the funeral there was a family meeting about who would take him, and Uncle David is allergic and Aunt Doreen has a dog, so I
said I would, and Mom looked at Dad and Dad looked at the ceiling for a long time and then he said "OK." I promised to clean the
litter box every day forever and I have so far, except twice.
For the first two weeks Butterscotch hid under my bed and cried at night and I think he was looking for Nana. So I put the afghan from
her couch in my room and he started sleeping on it and then he was OK. He still sleeps on it every night. Sometimes I sleep on it with
him. It still smells a little bit like her house.
The Funeral
Nana's funeral was on Wednesday, January 20, at her church. It snowed a little. A lot of people came, more than I thought, and some
of them were grown-ups who used to eat Nana's macaroni at school.
There were pink roses on the casket because pink was her favorite color. I wore my navy blue dress. The pastor talked about Nana and
he said she was "a woman who fed people," and that was true in every way. The choir sang "In the Garden," which was her favorite hymn.
I cried, and so did my dad, which I never saw before.
Before they closed it, Mom let me put two things in with Nana. I put in a butterscotch candy and the first granny square I ever made,
the one that came out kind of a trapezoid. I think she would like to have it.
Afterward everybody went down to the church basement and the church ladies had ham and potato salad and about ten different cakes.
My cousin John and I sat in the corner and played gin rummy with a deck from the Sunday school closet. Some grown-ups thought that was
weird, but Mom said Nana would think it was perfect, and Mom is right.
What I Learned Making This Page
(This part is for my teacher.)
I learned how to make a web page with HTML. I learned how to make a background, and how to make tables with colors, and how to make
links that jump down the page, and how to make a marquee go across. I learned that if you forget to close a font tag, the whole
rest of your page turns purple. (Some of it is supposed to be purple.)
But mostly I learned that when you write down everything about a person, you remember more things than you thought you would. When
I started I thought I would only have one paragraph. Now I have this whole page and I still keep remembering more stuff. I also learned
it is OK to laugh about somebody you miss. I was afraid that was bad, but I laughed a lot writing the part about Wheel of Fortune and
I think that's the way she would want it. Thank you for this assignment.
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I am still working on this page!!! Coming soon: pictures of Nana and Butterscotch when Uncle David brings his scanner
at Thanksgiving, and Nana's real biscuit recipe if Mom says it's OK to put it on the Internet.
You are visitor number
   
since March 1999!! Thank you for visiting my Nana's page.
E-mail me: [email protected]
Last updated September 5, 1999
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