Nanny

I'm not sure that I have the time to write all the memories I have of Nanny so I'm sure there will be multiple posts and more photos.

Nanny was like my second mom. She lived with us quite a bit after my Papaw passed away. I would spend a lot of time in her room just talking with her. Today, I'm not sure how I handled doing that since she smoked most of her life and she would always smoke in her room which, of course, gave the room a really strong smell of smoke. If I were to do that today, my eyes would be stinging and I'd be coughing. Of course, the smoking gave her a bit of a raspy voice. Since my mother worked as a nurse, Nanny would be there for me to talk to. She also did quite a bit of the cooking in the house. Everything, and I mean everything, was cooked in bacon grease. It's just what they do in the south. Even though we lived in California, we ate like Louisianians. We'd go out into the fields and pick mustard greens all the time. We'd bring them home and she would cook them up in the big old pot that we still have and use today. You couldn't do that today since most of the Palos Verdes Hill has now been developed but sometimes I have to wonder if people wondered what we were doing out there in the fields. She would make grits, corn bread, okra, and a tomato sauce that you would put over rice. Speaking of rice, of course she would make red beans and rice. Now, those are memories!

One of the funny things we talked about, once in a while, was about this stack of checks she had in her drawers. She had some sort of investment and every quarter, they would send her a check which she never cashed. All of the checks were like for two or three cents each. It cost more to mail them to her than they were worth! She and I always got a laugh out of that. She never did cash them. It just wasn't worth the time or the funny looks she would have to endure at the bank.

For a while, I worked with Nanny at the San Pedro and Peninsula Hospital. She worked as a messenger and got me in there too. What was funny was that there was Nanny and two other widows that worked in there. I was the "young 'un" and I could do the work they did in half the time it took them to do it. Nanny would always tell me to slow down so I didn't make them look bad. So, when I went on my rounds, I'd usually stop at different places and talk to the nurses. One of my favorite stops was in the Coronary Care Unit. The nurses, there, along with my mother, taught me how to read the electrocardiograms. This actually was very helpful for me later on when I went to Paramedic school. Everyone else was pretty clueless in the class but I knew exactly what I was looking at. Sure, I learned a few more things but I already had the basics. Anyway, it was fun working with Nanny. Again, we always had time to talk which I appreciated.