Shocking Stories About Your Golden Era Relatives

[Fading Fast]

If 5' 11"/ 135 counts as a house these days, at 5'6"/170 I must be a whole subdivision.

I was just showing that my girlfriend - a smart, well-adjusted, attractive woman who, on must days, knows that Hollywood standards and The Boys in Marketing are ridiculous - has insecure, silly moments (God knows I do). But she knows that she - and not some "culture at large -" is responsible for her own sense of worth and value.

One of the most attractive things about her is that she cares about her appearance but doesn't obsess about it. Having dated a lot before I met her, I can say that neither a woman who does not care nor one who is obsessed is that enjoyable to be with (and the same holds for men - no double standard).

It's a balance requiring grounding and an ability to see the BS in our culture. That said, we all have our off days.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Indeed. My point's simply that we should *always* be questioning the standards commercial culture puts before us. Modern culture tells us a woman -- sometimes a man too, but *always* a woman -- should maintain the figure of a twenty-five year old her entire adult life. I merely say "why?" Insisting on such unrealistic standards is just another way the Boys keep us insecure, vulnerable to marketing gimmickry, and distracted from more important concerns.

 

[mungojerry]

This thread is called shocking stories etc....... Where are the stories? For the last 5 or 6 pages there has been a discussion about female figures and plastic surgery. Stick to the subject matter it is far more enjoyable.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We drift around a lot here, but eventually come back to the main point. It's just the way the Lounge works.

So, back to the point --

My father did a lot of shocking things, most of which are unfit to be repeated here. But I got my revenge when I was three years old -- I took his pack of cigarettes out of his jacket, dipped each individual cig in a bottle of bleach, put them back in the pack, and then put the pack back in his jacket. The result wasn't quite what I'd hoped for, but it was, in its own way, quite satisfying.

 

[DecoDame]

THREE? That's a precocious Evil Genius level of premeditated mischief, Lizzie. Holy Cow.

At four, I just poured the bleach on the floor and slapped it to make funny noises.

 

[HudsonHawk]

We drift around a lot here, but eventually come back to the main point. It's just the way the Lounge works.

So, back to the point --

Nip it in the bud...nip it...

 

[2jakes]

[/COLOR]

This thread is called shocking stories etc....... Where are the stories? For the last 5 or 6 pages there has been a discussion about female figures and plastic surgery. Stick to the subject matter it is far more enjoyable.

My grandma made homemade soap & "special medicine" for those in need .
She also own a revolver & was highly respected in the neighborhood.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our family didn't need guns. We were known for our mouths.

I've told this story before, but it remains one of my favorites. Some years ago, my mother had spent a couple of hours shoveling her car out after a big snowstorm. No sooner did she finish than the plow filled her back in again -- even though he had lifted his blade for a few other driveways on the street. She shoveled it out again and again he filled her in. That did it. She shoveled out, backed her car into the middle of the street, climbed on top of it, and stood there waiting for the plow to come back. When it did she called the driver every kind of SOB there is, in a loud, penetrating voice that carried all the way down the block. The plowman, terrified, radioed for the police, who came, and got called every additional kind of SOB there is. The cop told the driver to stop filling in the driveway, got back in his cruiser, and went away. The plowman apologized, and has never filled in my mother again. Squeaky wheel, meet the grease.

On another occasion, she got tired of being bothered by door-to-door canvassers handing out literature for politicians or churches or whatever. She took their pamphlets, impaled them to a tree in the front dooryard with a tenpenny nail, and drizzled ketchup over them. She was never bothered again.

Her finest moment, though, was when some neighborhood bullies smashed my Halloween pumpkin. The next Halloween she embedded dozens of common pins in the outside of the pumpkin so that the points stuck out, and then poured half a can of Karo syrup over the pumpkin to make it good and sticky. The punks came by as expected, grabbed the pumpkin, and understandably had an awfully hard time letting go. From then on our pumpkins were unmolested.

Nobody frigs around with my mother.

 

[MikeKardec]

I love those story Lizzy! The pumpkin set up was diabolical.

I was always impressed with the difference in the female friends of my father's who moved during their lives, rather than staying in their "home town." Those who stayed home in whatever small town it was, there were quite a few along the way, were paralyzed by the responsibility of maintaining their social standing. Those who moved seemed more likely to feel they had been granted liberty to be who they were. After dealing with stuffy home town relatives who were still, in 2002 worried about people knowing about an aunt who in 1913 had had an illegitimate child (semi concealed as the child of a sister).

On the same trip I traveled to Phoenix to see an old friend of Dad's. She was showing me pictures of her family and proudly commented on the son she had out of wedlock. She was a lady who had built a career for herself in the 1930s as a minor newspaper reporter, moved from HER home town in Oklahoma to a city where she knew no one, made a life and had no apologies or embarrassment for any part of it. Of course she loved her son, who had passed away, but it was the matter-of-fact-ness in her voice when she told me about him versus all the flips and twists my cousins when through trying to talk about but not talk about an aunt they had never known.

Accumulated social pressure can be a killer.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The surest route to a happy life, then or now, is to care not a whit about your "social standing." Bourgeois aspiration is the root of all evil.

 

[2jakes]

My grandma never had to use the gun...but when she spoke she didn't yell
or curse at you....she would give you that look & said what she had to say & the revolver was there
to finish her sentence.

 

[TimeWarpWife]

The only real skeletons in my family are my grandmother was pregnant with my mom's older sister before she and my grandfather married. My grandfather's mother had two children and she was never married to either of the fathers. My great-grandmother found out on her wedding night that her first husband had a venereal disease, kicked him out of the matrimonial bedroom, and promptly left him and started annulment proceedings the next day. My paternal grandfather was an alcoholic and my grandmother had to get his paycheck away from him the day he got it or he'd go drink it all up, not caring he had 4 hungry children at home. The only really interesting story in my family is about a great-great uncle who was out hunting one day when a thunderstorm came up and he decided to get under a tree for cover. Unfortunately, lightning struck the tree and hit my great-great uncle, his horse, and his hunting dog. Great-great uncle was the only one who survived. However, he wasn't left unscathed and my grandmother said he couldn't hold his head still - it was always bobbling around. He'd also "forget" to put his clothes on sometimes and show up at the breakfast table naked. My grandmother recounted one particularly funny story of seeing him "bouncing" down the steps without a stitch of clothing on. For the most part, my family was just a bunch of working class people who worked hard to take care of their families and give their children a better life than they had.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Many of you here are familiar with my great aunt the silent film actress whose pictures I've posted before. Apparently her marriage to her second husband, an American serviceman who was seventeen years younger than her (she was born in 1902 and he was born in 1919) was something of a minor scandal in the family. Especially because it was believed that the reason she married him was to get back to this country.

 

[Renault]

My dear sweet aunt killed their milk cow ( not on purpose) one morning before school. Old cow would wait til you was finished milking then she'd kick the bucket over. One of the side kicks that you gotta watch for. This morning my aunt was a little slow getting the bucket out. Well it got kicked over and it kinda made her mad. So she picked up a piece of old 2 x 4 laying on the ground and slapped her up side the head. Ol' bossy went down for the count. Hit her just right! My aunt was about 13 at the time.

Grand dad just went for the house and started sharpening butcher knives. He really never got upset over much.

 

[Renault]

During the depression my dads family lived in a one room bat and board house in the "blackjacks" south of San Antonio. Grand dad was a notorious poacher. But they only shot deer for their own consumption. Or to share with the neighbors that were just as hungry. His favorite trick was to shoot on a moon bright night from top of a blackjack oak that was full of acorns. The local game warden would give obligatory chase. But never seemed to catch up with him. Warden generally showed up about dinner time of a Sunday and eat with them. Same deer he was trying to catch grand dad with the night before!!! Also grandma was a famous pie maker. So he never left hungry!

 

[Fading Fast]

My dear sweet aunt killed their milk cow ( not on purpose) one morning before school. Old cow would wait til you was finished milking then she'd kick the bucket over. One of the side kicks that you gotta watch for. This morning my aunt was a little slow getting the bucket out. Well it got kicked over and it kinda made her mad. So she picked up a piece of old 2 x 4 laying on the ground and slapped her up side the head. Ol' bossy went down for the count. Hit her just right! My aunt was about 13 at the time.

Grand dad just went for the house and started sharpening butcher knives. He really never got upset over much.

I know it is wrong, but I laughed out loud at your story. Your aunt was probably tired, maybe cold and certainly frustrated and the cow just pushed her past her tipping point. The imagery of a little girl picking up the two-by-four, whacking the cow and the cow going down like a sack of potatoes is just too funny. I can only image the look on your aunt's face when Ol Bossy hit the turf: It had to be a mixture of surprise, fear and maybe some regret.

And good for your Grand Dad, mine probably would have shot me if I did something like that.

 

[Renault]

We always laugh when this story gets told. My aunt had three older brothers. Dad being the oldest. They gave her lots of grief!!! She grew up tough as nails on that south Texas farm. She hated milking and she really hates living on a farm! LOL! Was t the first time that same cow had done it to her!

I never, ever saw my grand dad get made or upset at anything. But he didn't put up with anything from any of us. He's was another that was tough as nails. He actually attended the University of Maryland until he ran out of money. Studied engineering. You'd have never know. It looking at him!

 

[Fading Fast]

This is truly a friend of the family story (if it happened in mine, I would say so - see my first post in this thread, I'm not hiding anything). My Mom had a girlfriend who had a quick marriage and annulment in the early 1950s when her friend was about twenty (she thinks the entire event happened in under a year). No horror story, just two people who weren't compatible and they saw it early and got out. That said, it was a mini-scandal at the time, but my Mom's friend's family took the girl back home and life went on.

Fast forward about ten years and this women is getting married again. By this point, no one was talking about her annulment anymore (I'm sure some were, but my Mom said her memory was it was not a big deal by that point), but this women did a really, really smart thing. On her second date with her future husband she knew it might go somewhere, so she told him all about her first marriage. He didn't care and they went on, dated, got engaged and were about to get married.

At this point, a friend of the future husband came to the husband to be with a grave face and in a serious tone told him how he had just learned some disturbing news about his future wife. With great feigned distress, this friend told the future husband that he had learned that his future wife had been married already. The husband to be said, "oh, yea, I know that, she told me all about early on." Apparently, this friend could horridly contain his disappointment.

They got married and remained happily married until the husband passed away thirty-plus years later.

I've always been impressed that this women had the presence of mind to tell this man up front what had happened. It's a great lesson and one that has served me well. I am a big fan of telling the bad news / mistake / issue yourself and immediately, so that it doesn't come up later and look as if you were hiding it. While I might have "gotten away" with something a few times if I hadn't done this, it has, one, made me feel better about myself countless times and, two, prevented future embarrassment and a hit to my reputation. For me this story has been an incredible moral lesson.

 

[sheeplady]

This is truly a friend of the family story (if it happened in mine, I would say so - see my first post in this thread, I'm not hiding anything). My Mom had a girlfriend who had a quick marriage and annulment in the early 1950s when her friend was about twenty (she thinks the entire event happened in under a year). No horror story, just two people who weren't compatible and they saw it early and got out. That said, it was a mini-scandal at the time, but my Mom's friend's family took the girl back home and life went on.

Fast forward about ten years and this women is getting married again. By this point, no one was talking about her annulment anymore (I'm sure some were, but my Mom said her memory was it was not a big deal by that point), but this women did a really, really smart thing. On her second date with her future husband she knew it might go somewhere, so she told him all about her first marriage. He didn't care and they went on, dated, got engaged and were about to get married.

At this point, a friend of the future husband came to the husband to be with a grave face and in a serious tone told him how he had just learned some disturbing news about his future wife. With great feigned distress, this friend told the future husband that he had learned that his future wife had been married already. The husband to be said, "oh, yea, I know that, she told me all about early on." Apparently, this friend could horridly contain his disappointment.

They got married and remained happily married until the husband passed away thirty-plus years later.

I've always been impressed that this women had the presence of mind to tell this man up front what had happened. It's a great lesson and one that has served me well. I am a big fan of telling the bad news / mistake / issue yourself and immediately, so that it doesn't come up later and look as if you were hiding it. While I might have "gotten away" with something a few times if I hadn't done this, it has, one, made me feel better about myself countless times and, two, prevented future embarrassment and a hit to my reputation. For me this story has been an incredible moral lesson.

I've known people who weren't that honest, and IF the relationship goes on, it is a matter of mistrust.

In my mind, if you're previously married, lived with someone for more than 6 months, or have kids with someone; your partner deserves to know those things pretty quickly. I'm not on the dating market anymore, but anyone who DIDN'T tell me that stuff within a few dates/weeks I would seriously mistrust.

 

[Fading Fast]

I've known people who weren't that honest, and IF the relationship goes on, it is a matter of mistrust.

In my mind, if you're previously married, lived with someone for more than 6 months, or have kids with someone; your partner deserves to know those things pretty quickly. I'm not on the dating market anymore, but anyone who DIDN'T tell me that stuff within a few dates/weeks I would seriously mistrust.

Not only do I agree completely, but there is a bigger lesson here (and not very different from the "honestly is the best policy" advice many of us got as kids) - you will respect yourself more, others will respect you more and you will avoid a lot of embarrassment latter if you admit mistakes, failures, potential items of interest, etc. up front not only in relationships, but in life in general.