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Snake Act

My grandmother was a vaudeville and sideshow performer in the early 1900s. She performed as the Amazing Ruth with a pretty sizable python named Elmer. Elmer was dropped from the act in 1922 when he ate the neighbor's cat in Sarasota.

Jamis

Inadvertent Twister Model

She worked as the controller (kept the books) for an old beloved amusement park in Denver called Elitch Gardens. They were getting ready for the grand opening of a first of its kind roller wooden coaster called The Twister. The day before opening day they hired a model and a photographer to capture the first ride for the front page. As she told it, at the last second the model panicked and refused to ride. My grandmother volunteered to sit in and became the cover story.

Backstory: She was in her 30s when this happened raising 3 kids on her own. She grew up in Nebraska, daughter of a florist, and as a young girl her mother (widowed early) would save up to take her on the train to see the annual flower show. Low and behold she overcame great odds - teen pregnancies, domestic abuse, a decade of mothering through poverty - to land that dream job in which was the first chapter of stability my mother knew.

When I think of my grandma I am in awe of how she maintained such a playful spirit through so much struggle. Not just because of this story but because of the fun loving, laughing time I had with her as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman, and a mother myself.

Ashley

Left-handed Red Diaper Baby

Roz went to a Communist summer camp in Ontario (Canada) when she was a young girl. Back in the city, at some point she was forced to switch from left to right-handed in order to conform. These two stories don't appear to be related to each other on the surface.

Elliott Fienberg

Untold Secret Story

My mom’s mom’s abusive marriage to an alcoholic husband became scarier when she got pregnant, so she left him and got an illegal abortion that nearly killed her. This was decades before Roe, decades before women were allowed to open their own bank accounts. She rented a room in a house and met a younger man who was renting a room nearby.

He became my Grandpa, who treated her with respect and kindness. They were unable to conceive, likely something related to her dangerous abortion, so they adopted my mom. She has not told the story to any of my siblings, and I’ve been bursting to tell it for years.

Anonymous

The Rolling Pin

My most vivid memory of my grandmother was from a Christmas Day when I was about 17. We were chatting about her journey to America from Ljubljana, then part of Austria-Hungary.

Born in 1899, she was slightly younger than I was when she made the crossing. Her voice grew quiet as she recalled that it was the day after a German U-boat sunk the British ocean liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915. Her ship and others had searched for survivors but found none.

She didn't speak much about that voyage, and I regret not asking more questions during her lifetime. One of my most treasured keepsakes is her solid maple rolling pin, which she brought from her homeland.

Now, when I'm making pies using that same rolling pin, I think of her trans-Atlantic journey during wartime. It's a simple object, but it connects me to her story and the courage it took to leave everything behind for a new life.

Terri Lonier

Movie Theorist

My grandmother loved to watch movies and she had a theory that in every movie someone throws up, brushes their teeth, or eats an apple. It’s so funny but I think of her any time I see someone do any of those three things in a movie.

Elisabeth Coffey