Grandma and Grandpa Thomas, Part 2

Grandma loved for me to brush her hair. She always wore it short, but I guess it just felt good to her scalp to run the brush through her hair. I liked doing it. I would stand behind her chair while I brushed her hair.

Grandpa Thomas worked for the Van Buren County Road Commission. He drove a snowplow in the winters. Grandma would get up at 3:00 in the morning and cook him a hearty breakfast -- eggs, bacon or sausage, oatmeal, sometimes buckwheat pancakes, and enough coffee to fill his thermos for the day. Then after he went out to start plowing, she would go back to bed and sleep for a couple more hours before starting her daily routine. That was my first introduction to coffee -- with lots of cream and sugar, of course. One thing Grandma would fix for me sometimes was coffee on bread. She would pour coffee with cream over a slice of bread on a saucer or shallow bowl, then sprinkle sugar on top of it. I can't remember if she ate it with me or not. But I've never known anyone else to ever fix that.

Grandma had a quick temper. When she got angry about something it was like a flash -- it went away as fast as it came on. She was known to throw the Aggravation board off the table occasionally, if she was losing the game. Grandpa made an Aggravation board out of wood after we wore out the original cardboard version that came with the game.