If you look at the top of this page-you’ll see a link to my Grannyisms-page. I’ve been collecting memories-precious, funny, and inspiring about people’s grandmothers on the page ever since I started the Blind Pig.
Below you can read a few of my favorite Grannyisms left by folks in the last several months-then you can jump over and leave your own Grannyism!
Tipper said:
Granny is always worrying about Chitter and Chatter eating enough-they are skinny girls. Last week Chitter went down to visit Pap and Granny-as soon as she stepped in the door Granny started trying to feed her some of their leftover supper. Chitter said she wasn’t hungry-but Granny just kept on telling her she should eat. Finally Chitter said “No Granny I’m not hungry I just ate some goldfish.” Granny said “Lord child don’t tell me you’ve been eating goldfish! Is that all they have to eat at your house?” Of course Chitter was talking about the crackers-not the fish.
Robert said:
My “Mama” had two sayings that I’ll always remember but have never heard elsewhere. If we were hanging around in the house on a nice day: “Mess and gom, mess and Gom — all you children do is mess and gom and I don’t have time to clean up after you.”
And the other, to let us know she meant business after asking us to do something and we tarried: “You don’t believe cow horns will hook, do you?” A threat that there would be consequences if we didn’t do it NOW. 🙂
Jennifer in OR said:
My Gramma T., I just loved her and was so lucky to have spent a lot of time with her, and we even lived with her for a while. When I didn’t feel well, she would send me to bed with a glass of warm milk. She always said “The world is going to hell in a handbasket,” and when she got old she called all her grandkids “Annabelle” for lack of remembering names!
I learned hospitality from my Gramma. I heard many stories of her writing to soldiers during WWII, and after the war, so many came to see this woman who so graciously sent them comforting letters. She took several soldiers in to her home for a season as they needed, and some became lifelong friends. This is how I have some “adopted” cousins.
Patricia said:
My Mother was borned in 1917, in a small community of Fairview in Scott County,VA. She was raised by relatives, because her own mother passed away giving birth to her 13th child. Mom gave birth to me, her only child, in July of 1957. I lived her life in the stories that she told me about life in the 20’s 30’s 40’s. How sad that I didn’t write down all the things that she told me about canning. I was looking for a good time to make Kraut, by using the Zodiac signs. I have found sites that tell me the best time is in the third quarter of the moon, when signs are in the head, neck, breast or heart. My cabbage is ready,so I am going to try to process it while the signs are in the head. I will let you know how it turns out.
Cyndia said:
Lord help (one of my grandmother’s sayings) I could write a book about my Grandma Cecil. She was in the middle of five boys, so grew up thinking she could do anything they could do. She loved to tell stories. She told of picking cotton to support the family, leaving the baby at the end of the row, and pick down one row and on the next row would pick her way back. She told of making dolls for her girls out of scraps and that her only cash purchase one year was a 9-cent crochet needle. Many a warm summer evening was spent rocking on her porch as we shelled peas and told stories. She put a hammer in my hand and taught me to fix things. Nobody could fry chicken livers the way she could. She could laugh in a big bellied whoop and yell “shit-fire” when she got mad. She was the strongest woman I ever knew, and she taught me so much. I sure do miss my grandma, only she never liked to be called that. She always insisted on “Cecil”.
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I hope you enjoyed all the Grannyisms! There are many more on the Grannyisms page-so jump over there and read them. And please leave one about your grandmother.
For those of you who have already left one-there is no limit-just keep posting your memories as they come to you-the more the merrier!!
Tipper
My Granny told of how she saved spare change in a jar hidden in a cupboard and when her husband needed money for something but didn’t have it, she surprised him with the money jar. She continued talking to us about saving money and the value of girls getting an education. She would say, “Being poor is no disgrace, but it’s very unhandy.”
My word, my mother was full of sayings! I never knew my grandmothers well enough to gather any of theirs, but my mom sure passed on the ones of her mother. Like saying someone was “no better than they should be” or “least said soonest mended” or “you’re old enough for your wants not to hurt you,” or “if wishes were horses we’d all be riding.” I wonder if hers were English since that’s where she was from, or if these are also common in the US?
You all have such wonderful memeories. I have no memeories of my Cherokee Indian Grandmother because she died when my Momma was about nine years old. My Grannie,on my Dad
side was the only granny I knew. I don’t have to much to say about her and we only lived across the creek and big corn field from her.I use to go there sometimes and nothing causes me to remember anything she did for us.
There was one thing that has stuck in my brain all these years. My aunt and her family lived in the eastern part of the states and came home for Christmas one year when I was about 10 years. I went to see the cousin that was my age and Granny gave her a little china tea set, but Granny didn’t give me or the rest of our family anything.This really made me feel bad.
To this day I give all my grands and great grands the same for Christmas, birthdays, graduation and anything else that comes along. Be it money or what ever.
Peggy L.
I was a skinny, skinny child (this has long since been corrected!). One of my grandmothers was a city girl, the other was country thru and thru. Guess which one thought I looked just like a model & which one thought I could use some fattin’ up? Not only was I skinny, I was just plain confused!
Grandma’s favorite saying-in referring to my procrasting cousin was “He doesn’t ride the horse the day he puts the saddle on”.
No one else in the family puts stuff off, nor do we understand why he does this. Years ago I jokingly asked my Aunty-“are you sure you gave birth to him”? She laughed and shook her head and said, “well, sometime I wonder!”
Wonderful post! Didn’t get to know my grandmothers very much…..no sayings, but do have memories of the one in Arkansas being quite the quilter (had a quilt frame she could lower from the ceiling with pulleys) and the one in eastern Oklahoma having really long hair that she wore in a ‘Swedish crown’. She’d braid her hair and then coil it on her head into the ‘crown.’
I was blessed to know both of my grandmothers and their mothers (my great grandmothers) as well. I could write a book on grannyisms and the innumerable ways they enriched my life. I remember the sunny Spring day, in the porch swing under the blooming wisteria, that my great-granny taught me to tie my shoes, like it was yesterday. When sharing something, maybe grapefruit that I had bought,(my granny loved grapefruit) she would always say “now don’t disfurnish yourself”. If she were asking a favor of you she would say “I’ll dance at your wedding and sing at your grave if you will——“. What wouldn’t I give to spend just one more afternoon talking to them.
Chitter’s granny trying to feed her reminded me of both of my grannies. One raised 14 children and was always cooking and feeding someone. After they all left home she devoted her life to feeding grandchildren. The other one wanted to feed everyone that entered her home. She would list all the things she had that was still warm. If we showed no interest or said we weren’t hungry, she listed what she had that she could warm or cook. I used to tell my wife that she even listed all the things at the store that she could send Grampa after.
With my Granny, setting pots and pans on the table is a NO NO. Your suppost to “take it up” and put it in a bowl. Not long after my Great Granny Patterson (Granny’s momma) died, we were fixing breakfast and she said “I’m a good mind just to set that pan of gravy on the table but Momma would come up out of the grave and skin me alive so I’d better take it up and put it in a bowl.” I always think about that when I fix supper of an evening and I always feel a little guilty if I just set the pot or pan on the table.
I loved the story where Chitter told her granny that she had eaten some goldfish, and the granny thought she had been eating live fish. My momma was born in 1912 and told us many interesting stories of when she was young, One was a story of visiting a fine hotel in Florida where there was a finger bowl and she picked it up and drank it.
Tipper, the Deer Hunters Grandmother Lura used the word ‘gom’ a lot. She would say something like “you’ve just made a big gom” meaning a big mess.
The handbasket one had been used in my household, but many of the ones here are not ones I quite remember. I really didn’t have a Grandmother as both of them were deceased before I was born. Too bad I didn’t know if they had any or not. I’m sure they did
I believe “the mess and gom” referred to earlier is actually gaum which is old English for smear or daub. My Granny always said “stop gauming around” or” you have gaumed it up now”.
My grandmama raised four children on a little hardscrabble farm during the Depression. She wasn’t one to talk much. I most recall when I would say that I could not do something, she would reply “Can’t never did nothing.”
I don’t know the origin of one of my Grandmother’s exclamations but when she became aggravated about something she would exclaim “Bless Paddy” and if she thought something was a waste of time or would be of short duration she would state “That won’t last as long as Paddy stayed in the war”. I know she wasn’t prejudiced at the Irish as her husband was of Irish descent on his mother’s side of the family.
Ron-Granny says Ah flitter! too : )
Blind Pig The Acorn
Celebrating and Preserving the
Culture of Appalachia
http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com
The only granny I knew was my Granny McArthur or Granny Mac to all the younguns! She died from pancreatic cancer when I was twelve. I remember her biscuits were wonderful and I remember she loved to quilt and had a quilting frame she would suspend from the ceiling when she quilted. She was raised in the hollows of Fannin county,GA and had an identical twin but Granny Mac was the sassier of the two I’m told. One of her sayings was “Ah flitter”! She wouldn’t say “Ah sh–“! Like Robert mentioned above,she said mess and gom too.
Such wonderful memeories. My grandma tried to keep me fed all the time too.