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Grandma Verna's Kitchen Verna Ruth Obermeyer  ~  September 12, 1914 – November 19, 1998

Today she would have been 85. Hello and welcome. I'm Jolene Sisk, and Verna Obermeyer was my grandma. She lived her whole life in the Flint Hills of Kansas, fifty-four years of it on the same cattle ranch south of Council Grove, and she fed everybody who ever came up her lane: her husband, her five kids, fourteen grandkids, harvest crews, branding crews, the vet, the propane man, lost hunters, and the Methodist church's entire funeral committee for about forty years. When she passed away last November, the family started arguing (nicely) about who got which recipe cards. So I borrowed the whole tin, typed them up, and put them on the Internet where nobody can lose them and everybody can have them. Grandma would have thought this was the silliest thing she'd ever heard of. Then she would have asked me to print it out for her.

Her life, the short version 1914. Born on a wheat farm in Marion County, the fourth of seven, in a house her father built. 1930s. Taught at a one-room country school for two years, until she married Grandpa Harlan Obermeyer in June of 1934. They started out with forty cows and a rented house with no electricity. She said the Dust Bowl years taught her to never, ever waste a thing. 1936 to 1951. Five children: my dad Wayne, then Arlene, Carol Jean, Dwight and Loretta. 1944. They bought the ranch. She lived there until the day she died. Forty-one years teaching the junior girls' Sunday school class. 1979. Grandpa died. Everybody thought she would move to town. She did not move to town. 1998. Still driving her '66 Ford pickup to church at 84. Went into the hospital in Emporia in November with pneumonia, and was gone in a week, with her daughters holding her hands.

What I remember Her kitchen smelled like coffee and yeast from five in the morning on. There was always a pot on the stove and a pan of something under a dish towel, and if you came in the back door she handed you a plate before she said hello. She measured with her coffee cup and her hands. "A cup" meant the chipped green cup by the stove. "Enough flour" meant until it felt right. My aunt Carol Jean had to stand next to her with a real measuring cup for a whole summer in 1971 to get the recipes written down, and thank goodness she did. She canned everything. Green beans, tomatoes, beets, peaches, and sand plum jelly from the plums along the creek. Every grandkid went home from Thanksgiving with a box of jars and was expected to bring the empty jars back at Easter. She played pinochle every Tuesday night with the same three ladies for thirty years and took it very seriously. Do not talk to Grandma during the bidding. She never once said a bad word about anybody that I heard. When she didn't like somebody she just said, "Well, bless their heart, they're doing the best they can," and passed the rolls.

Grandma-isms (things she said so many times that we all say them now) "Clean as you go and you'll never have a big mess." "There's always room for one more at the table. Get another chair." "Rain or no rain, the cows still need fed." "Eat your supper. You can be picky when you're paying for it." "Don't tell me it's hot. I know it's hot. Go get the tea."

For Grandma I read this at the lunch after the funeral. I'm no poet, but she would have said it was fine. The lane still bends the way it did, the cottonwoods still lean, and somewhere in that kitchen light the coffee's on, I mean to stop and stay a little while the way she always said. She'd hand me something warm and say, "Sit down, you look underfed."

Go to Grandma's Recipes » Bierocks, chicken and homemade noodles, molasses cookies and rhubarb custard pie Hungry folks who have stopped by Grandma's kitchen: Did you grow up with a grandma like mine? Did you make the bierocks? I'd love to hear. [email protected] Last updated: Sunday, September 12, 1999 (her birthday) Page by Jolene (Obermeyer) Sisk, Wichita, Kansas © 1999 Please share the recipes! That's what she'd want. Just don't sell them.