Home Page Surnames Sign Guest Book View Guest Book New's Email Me   Gram Stories "What are "Gram Stories," you may ask? These are stories Gram, my greatgrandmother would tell us in the afternoon when we should be resting. She would sit in the corner and crochete or quilt, and tell us stories about when she was a little girl. Below are a few of the stories that members of the family have come up with to preserve. A thought just came to me….maybe because we would fall asleep, is why we can’t remember more stories. We all loved Gram dearly, but I can’t think of anyone who didn’t love her.   One day Gramma and her brother Johnny, who she seemed to get into trouble with on a regular basis, was all alone at home. Their parents had gone to town to do the monthly buying. They got to talking about how much they hated cornmeal. So they decided to feed it to the pigs. They had thought that no one would ever know where the cornmeal had gone. But.... to their surprise! After they had empted the cornmeal, which was a fifty pounds sack. (In those days they bought everything in large quantities.) It had spread all over the pig pen and the ground had turned yellow. They tried to mix the cornmeal into the mud, but there was just to much. When their parents got home they really got into trouble. I forget what their punishment was, but they never did it again. Bobbi, GGdaughter   This is a story about her gramma, I don't know which one, if it was O'Brian or Callahan. Gram's Grandmother always wore a white starched organdy apron. and she put extra starch in the apron strings. When she would take a nap in the afternoon, she would lay them straight behind her so they wouldn't get wrinkled. One day Gram and Johnny wanted to play a trick on her. They decided to tie rocks on the ends of the apron strings and threw them out the window. The windows didn't have screens then, it was easy for them to just reach in and get her apron strings. When their grandmother woke up she couldn't get out of bed the rocks were to heavy. She yelled for help! They got punished for that too, but don't ask me how. Bobbi, GGdaughter   I remember when I used to sit on grams lap and she would tell me how when she came to San Bernadino she was riding in a stagecoach and the Indians attacked and shot arrows at them. I think she was just pulling my leg but she did tell me that. Doyle, GGson   Gram knew that I loved beads so she would always tell me this one. It was a custom when an Indian died to have a pyre and the Chief would have all the belongings of the person that died brought to the burial grounds and they would build it all up and stack it on top of the Indian and light a fire.That included beads. The next day or at least after the pyre cooled off Gram and Johnnie would go and sift through the ashes and find the beads. Apparently they didn't melt but she said they were beautiful colors, They would take them home and make pretty neclaces and things with them. There will never be another person like Gram and I am happy that we can remember some of the things that made us love her so much. Vivienne, Gdaughter   One of the stories I always enjoyed was the one she told about the brown sugar. It goes like this (to the best of my memory) When I was a little girl I was a sickly child and because of this I didn't get punished as sever as the other kids. So I was often blamed for things I didn't do. One time I was blamed for getting into the brown sugar in the middle of the night. I was upset that they blamed me when I knew it was Josie. So that night I tied a piece of twine around her toe, after she fell asleep. When she got up to sneak in and get some brown sugar she tripped fell, and woke the whole house. They found out she was sneaking the brown sugar but I was the one who got in trouble for tying the string on her toe. Yvonne, GGdaughter   When Gram was a little girl her father owned a ranch and raised pigs. One day a Chinaman came to buy a pig so he and her dad went out to the pigpen to do business. Gram and her brother followed them out to see what they were doing? They were standing by the fence haggling over price. Gram noticed that the Chinaman had a long braid down his back clear to his knees, so she decided to tie it to the fence post. When the Chinaman went to leave it pulled him backwards. Needless to say gram got into trouble! This story was told to me when I was little, it was also told to my mother when she was in about the third grade when she needed a family story for her homework, she used it. Yvonne, GGdaughter   I would ask gram to tell me about when she was a little girl, one of the stories she would tell was about how she lived near where the Indians lived and they would always come around at night and peer in the windows. She also could hear them at night trying to cross back over the bridge on Lytle Creak after being in town getting drunk. They would be so drunk that they would fall into the water, she could hear them splashing and yelling. Yvonne, GGdaughter   When I was a small child Gram use to tell me bedtime stories to put me asleep so that she could get some rest also. One story in particular was my favorite and most asked for, I think. Grams father was fairly well off for he owned a saloon, boarding house and stage line. In the summer, in order to escape the beastly heat of the San Bernardino valley floor, he would have his wife take the children up into the mountains to their mountain home in what today is known as Big Bear Lake. In those day's travel was much slower. A wagon loaded with all the supplies to last the summer was loaded up and pulled by horses. The children would take turns running along beside the team to encourge them to keep moving. Even so, the pace was slow for along with all the provisions they had to take their only means of a milk supply. Yep, the cow.This Gram said was the most difficult,for they couldn't travel faster than the cow could walk. These memories must have been most important to Gram, for she remembered every detail. So do I. I was always Grams Mr. Dooley. Ken, Gson   Another story I enjoyed that Gram told me was about her and her brother Barney hearing a tale about how the indians cooked chicken. The open fire pit method of cooking was all that was available to the tribes that lived in and around the Lytle river. Having little to work with they had to take advantage of every thing possible to make the best of a bad situation. The Indians found that if they packed the fowls in mud and then cooked them, removing the feathers became much less of a problem. when the meat was cooked they would brake off the mud and the feathers would be gone also. So. They decided to give it a try. They took one of the families laying hens, chopped off the head and wrapped her in mud. What they failed to learn was, First the Indians cleaned the chicken. So again, much to their surprise, about half way the the cooking process THE CHICKEN EXPLODED. There went their dinner and than came the spanking Ken, Gson   I was told this story by someone ( I can't remember who). Gram was running a boarding house and she had a mexican boarder who didn't speak engish. She didn't speak spanish and she wanted to tell him something so she asked someone who spoke spanish how to say it. They played a joke on her by telling her to say "Beso Mi Cola" ( which means kiss my ass in spanish) When she saw him she said "Beso Mi Cola". He looked at her funny and she repeated,"Beso Mi Cola". He got mad and muttered a spanish phrase of his own and left. Ha! Lindy, GGdaughter McMahan Home Page Surnames Sign Guest Book View Guest Book New's Email Me This Web Page was created by Bobbi Stockton © Copyright 2002