Grams Freteluco was buried yesterday in the small Northern Arizona town of Flagstaff, home to many a woman with flowing locks of underarm hair and avid John Denver listeners. I left Flagstaff in 1988 so my experiences with my Grandmother after that were lessened but I always had a memorable time whenever I was with her. Years later I would come to realize that limitless youthfulness of hers wasn't fueled by an uncontainable exuberance or lust for life, to quote Iggy Pop, but rather good ol' fashioned brandy in copious amounts. She was a great grandmother. I'm not sure if there's a rating system for grandparents or if the quality of a grandparent is contingent upon how much slack they give up to the grandchild, but Katherine was pretty good. At age five, I took up the hobby of cross dressing and my efforts were met with a wrinkly thumbs up from Grams. I preferred her pearls as they really completed the "granny motif" I was going for, not Ru Paul or Milton Berle drag as I didn't want any of Grams' elderly neighbors getting any ideas in their senility addled minds. When I realized that enormous bras and panty hose weren't for me, I quit. Eventually I would resume dressing in drag, but only for Halloween as when you're a cheap bastard of a teenager as I once was, the prospect of buying a costume seems silly compared to wearing a female friends clothes for a night. Anyways, Grams was the sultan of the soup, the proprietor of the endless old folks home block party and could be counted on to send me five dollars for my birthday. She's buried in the vicinity of my grandfather Nicholas and while they divorced forty something years ago, they now have plenty of time to catch up on missed episodes of the Simpsons together (assuming there's tv, electricity and basic cable where ever they are) and bone up on their abilities to craft a wicked haiku. Or whatever it is you do when you're dead. Hail hail Katherine Freteluco.
1 comment:
Well said, Luke. Grannies are great, but yours sounded like a real winner.
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