Spending Time with Mammaw and Pappaw

I was taught to call my grandparents “Mammaw” and “Pappaw”. My Dixon and Thacker cousins didn’t do this, so I wondered if we were a little weird. But we spent a lot of time with them. We went to their house or they came to our house probably at least once per week. When they came to our house, or we met them anywhere, we always scored either a peppermint (Brach’s) or a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. We would see them even more in the summer, when we would drop in for a swim at the end of a hot day.

My grandparents did not seem to be religious folk. They started attending church with us when we were approaching the teenage years. They attended as often as we did, which was most but definitely not all of the time. I don’t know if they were officially members, but they came to our church, Madison Avenue Methodist, which was later renamed St. Mathew United Methodist. I think they just came to be with us.

We gathered as an extended family at their house usually, but sometimes at our house or at Uncle Bob and Aunt Beverly’s house. We got together more often than the Dixon family did, but there were only the two families. We had a lot of cookouts in the summer. My Uncle Bob handled grilling duties most of the time. It was hamburgers and hot dogs back then, not chicken.

We had Saturday night sleepovers at their house every couple of months. Now I realize that my mom and dad were probably going out with friends or to parties on these nights. We would watch TV- The Untouchables and Gunsmoke and then Perry Mason for them. We actually liked all of the shows. She usually pulled a gallon of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and doused it with Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. To this day, it’s my brother Jay’s favorite treat! The three Dixon boys slept in the front bedroom either all in one bed or with Todd or Jay on a packet later on. The next morning was the best. My grandmother made the best buttered toast and she always had Nestle’s Quick (chocolate milk powder). She would make toast in a stack a foot high and we (especially me) would eat away. She made bacon and eggs for my grandfather, but all we wanted was the toast and chocolate milk!

My grandparents hosted family Christmas at their house every year and we would meet after we opened our presents from Santa at home, arriving about 10:00 am or so. We would have lunch and open presents and play for awhile and then leave to go to our other grandparents for the evening meal and presents. A couple of years my grandparents actually stayed overnight at our house so they could see us open presents from Santa in the morning. Having Willa and the boys here the past couple of years makes us appreciate how much fun that could be for grandparents.