Lela M Hircock

My grandma had gumption man. She was a sweet little fire-cracker. Everytime we kids went out to the farm we left with a big bag of candy and the best memories.
  I had the fortune of getting to live with my grandmother when I was around fifteen. I got to know her really well and see her for the woman that she was and not just as my old grandma. I got to hear stories about her youth and watch her light up when she told about good time or toughen up when she talked about hard times. I got to see her. I got to her friend and that is the greatest gift that I could ever have asked for.
  She told me stories like the one about how she and her family were so poor that they couldn't have instruments or music so she'd get a pot or a pan and bang away on it and yodle... and she could yodle. She told me about the time that she skipped church to go to the local hang out with a boy once and she felt so guilty. I listened as she told me stories about raising my father and about her marriage to my grandfather. She regailed me stories about the Madison County Covered bridges and how one of them that burned down had the signatures of aunt and uncle when they first married.

  She loved her some John Wayne, she even recieved once a giant cardboard cut-out of the man from someone. She was very proud of her hometown, you see, and Winterset or Madison county in whole was the birthplace of John Wayne. Other than that she loved butterflies and her favorite birds were Cardinals... The Earlham High School mascot is the cardinal. She loved roses and music boxes and collecting newspaper cllippings. She and I used to look through her small collection of coins or her piles of really old photographs, of which I haven't been allowed to have any since her death, or her collection of rocks and shells. She liked my poetry and she loved my artwork. And, she loved me. I loved her more than anything in the whole world, my grandma.