I recall my grandparents casually telling me a story on their Essex Md back porch over a Pabst Blue ribbon beer and Utz potato chips. It was a very troubling story. However my grandmother was making light over it laughing like it was no big deal. My stomach was churning because I knew the consequences of radiation.
YES RADIATION!
My grandmother, God bless her soul, was orphaned at 14 in Baltimore City in an area called Canton on the harbor. She lost her parent’s two huge row homes she inherited where there’s now a nursing home, due to being innocently oblivious to paying taxes. She was homeless after the city took her homes. Grandmom grew up during the Great Depression and only had a third grade education since she had to assist at her father’s business.
I’m telling you this because money was power, security and everything to her.
“They knocked at our door one day she said.”
“Who’s they?”
“The people responsible for the fields going flat.”
As she laughed and popped open another beer crunching on chips, I said, “You better start from the beginning.”
“Well, it was a beautiful day and I was looking out the window and all the corn stalks still standing from the fall harvest and all the shrubs and young trees were all on the ground.”
“FLAT like a rug.”
I’m thinking oh my God. She said it was no big deal.
“I thought it was funny looking. Then people were knocking at our door telling us to keep quiet about all this and gave us a lot of money and of course I’m not stupid I took the money and ran with it.”
I said, “Grandmom that was radiation that caused all the living plants and corn stalks to go flat! What do you think it’s doing to you?”
my grandmother a year after tmi pouring a beer on my grandfathers grave.
“Oh Sandi, you worry about things that don’t need no worryin.” Then she changed the subject saying how Old Lady Shultz was coming over soon for a beer. The sun flashed on her gold tooth in the front of her dentures as she laughed, throwing her head back.
I asked how much they gave her and she didn’t say. My grandfather died of cancer pretty soon after that. I believe it was the next damn year.
Grandmom with her pockets full of cash died a few years later from cancer with tumors all around her neck and through her intestines.
“Money can NOT buy your health back I said.”
“Oh Sandi, you worry about things that don’t need no worryin.”
Nothing was said after their funerals.
Nothing was said at all.
Sandi
Sandi