Grandma Knowlton: A Short Story

I always remember Grandma Knowlton as Knowlton instead of Siegenthaler as Grandpa Siegenthaler was gone before I was born and Grandma had remarried. Grandpa Knowlton or “Pappy” as everyone called him, was the only Grandpa I ever knew. The Grandpa I knew was always quiet and soft spoken, never angry or sharp. His hearing was so bad, he missed a lot of the conversations going around him. To counter that image, he had been a very successful business man running Knowlton Construction which built many public buildings in the Bellefontaine area. He had also been on Bellefontaine City Council.

Grandma was more of a force to be reckoned with. I remember that Mom and Dad only mentioned that one of the reasons they got married on Christmas Eve was …show more content…
I thought that Grandma’s house was amazing. There was a built-in pedestal table in a bay window on one corner of the kitchen. The floor swept up to the pedestal base, leaving no corner to clean. In fact, the entire kitchen had the same swept up floor around the walls. What a marvelous idea to eliminate dusting problems. They obviously had adequate funds to live comfortably, but Grandma was frugal. When I was little and we went to Grandma’s house for Sunday dinner, Mom would tell me, “Don’t use the paper napkins unless you really needed to wipe up a spill”. Apparently Grandma would take any paper napkin that was not used and put it back in the pile, even ironing them if necessary. Habits from the depression don’t die …show more content…
One time while visiting her, I noticed a tiny brass safety-pin hanging down from her forehead. Finally, she happened to feel the pin and realized that she had her wig on backwards. Grabbing it by the edges, she spun it around 180°. Since her vision was so poor caused by glaucoma, she kept a pin in the back of her wig to tell how to put it on in the