Grandma Edna and Meister Brau

I started out as a child on the north side of Chicago in the shadows of Wrigley Field in 1958. It was the early 60's when we moved into a new house and the neighborhood wasn't all that bad then. It would be far worse in the latter half of that decade.

Air conditioning was not something that we knew of personally although we had heard rumors that such a thing existed. My two brothers and I were always outside digging in the dirt, playing with the water hose, annoying the neighbors dog and in general, being what some little boys always seemed to be-pigs. And we enjoyed it too. We never really thought about air conditioning let alone soap and water. Shampoo? Forget it!

Mom was bound and determined to make us clean so on Saturday night, we would line up and take a bath. Mom always swore that she needed Linco Bleach just to have an even chance of seeing clean kids. Then we would go off to church with my mother's younger sister to a fire and brimstone Pentecostal church. It didn't take.

My mother was a "boy" mom. She knew how to handle us pigs and we accepted that if she was mad, that we may have had something to do with it. She was a shorter woman but she had the strength of voice that could have a car park itself out of fear for her. Her step-mother raised her from the age of 11 so her Aunt Edna became our Grandma Edna. Grandma Edna was strict with my mother and her twin brother when they were growing up but the grand kids could do no wrong to my mothers dismay.

One fine, sunny and very hot day, Grandma Edna and Grandpa Joe came by for a visit. Mom and Grandma got into the car and we three pigs got into the back seat and went along to do some errands. Now, Grandma Edna loved her Meister Brau beer. These were the days when you needed a church key to open a can. So we're driving north on Sheffield Ave. and Grandma pulls a cold beer from her purse and pops it open. Now that was funny to us boys because we knew that mom ordinarily would have passed scratching and clawing kittens but this was her mother so she just asked that no one would get arrested that day.

Grandma was chugging the beer and laughing at mom, mom was driving a little fast to get home before Grandma pulled another beer out or the police pulled us over and we were about to pee ourselves from laughing from Grandma's entertainment.

Grandma finished her beer and told mom to pull over so she could dump the can. Before mom could make a decision, Grandma told her to "hit the damn gas now JoAnn! What the hell is wrong with you?" Without thinking, mom did and Grandma leaned way outside of the passenger door window to the point of almost falling out and made a perfect underhand throw-into the back of a newspaper truck as we sped by! The back doors were open and the drivers were not around or so we thought. As we sped by, the can bounced off of the inside of the trucks windshield and landed in the startled drivers lap. It was a perfect throw and we saw the whole thing.

Grandma is laughing, we're in the back seat laughing, stinking and peeing and mom is just beside herself with disgust for all of us. There was nothing else to do so mom turned down our block hoping that the nightmare was over at last. Grandma noted that we had forgotten to make one special errand so we went right back onto Sheffield Ave. towards the newspaper truck. Yes it was a rouse because Grandma thought that is so much fun.

Quick as a wink, Grandma opened another can of Meister Brau, chugged it dry and attempted to repeat the same feat. The driver saw it coming and closed his doors so the can bounced off to who knows where. There was a lot of cussing as we sped away and some of it came from my mother.