Paper Musings

grandpa's birthday balloons

I am very close with my grandparents. When I was little I spent many afternoons at their house playing dominoes with my grandma, coloring in coloring books and hunting for slugs in the rose garden.  On weekends we would go on surprise adventures which always included a long drive and many, many treats.
Sometimes we would run errands on which I always demanded stories from my grandma to pass the time as we sat in the car waiting for my grandpa...
Tonight my grandpa turned 89 and my grandparents celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary. This past May they moved from the house where so many of my childhood memories live, to a tiny apartment in an assisted living facility. My grandma still tells stories, although she tends to forget the details, mixes up anecdotes and loses her train of thought. After a few minutes, she starts over, retelling a story she just recalled only moments ago.  Tonight though, she told me a story I hadn't heard before...

 They drove his new car to LA. It was sometime during the war...

"Charlotte said she knew how to drive, so I scooted over from the drivers seat and I told her to get up here. Charlotte climbed behind the wheel and sat staring out the window. 'Ok, she said, now what do I do?' She didn't know how to drive." My grandma, a fiery redhead, her friend, Charlotte, and a regular at the bar Otto's, where my grandparents spent most evenings dancing and drinking, left Emeryville one night and drove to LA. The man was drunk and getting drunker and meaner as they sped down the highway in the black night, the miles ticking away on the virgin odometer. By the time the trio reached Newport, the man, who's name my grandma can't recall, was unbearable and hollering about going to the to the racetrack.  My grandma drove the car to the track and the man demanded that he be let out. "Go ahead, Charlotte. Let him out!" my grandma said. Charlotte did. And they left him there, on the side of the road, alone.


The two young women spent three glorious days driving around LA in a brand new car that didn't belong to them. "We had ourselves a new car," my grandma said with that childlike excitement, a kid not wanting to share a precious new toy. When their trip had ended, the two women headed back to Oakland.  Just around the corner from where they lived, they pulled the new car in front of the man's house, left the keys in the ignition, and walked away. They never saw the car or the man again...