My grandmother passed away yesterday (3/24/08) at the all-too-young age of 98. I say "all-too-young" (with grammatically dubious dashes), because she never seemed like she would die. I remember when I was a child and she was in her early 80s, I assuredly thought she'd still be baking me gooey Apple Pies and scrumptious Chocolate Cakes well into her 120s. Even towards the end; as she was sick, frail and bedridden, her spirit remained strong and I had no doubts that Willard Scott would be announcing her 100th birthday on "The Today Show" in 2009. Her spirit was just THAT strong: she was the definition of a tough old broad and will forever be missed by those that knew her.
Anyway, I attended the funeral this morning. It was sad, funny and beautiful. I was most effected when my Aunt played Sophie Tucker's "Some Of These Days" on a little portable boom box. Lyrics like:
"And when you leave me you know it's gonna grieve me
Gonna miss your big, fat mamma, your mamma some of these days"
Seem to be written about my big old fat grandma.
While at the funeral I saw my dad's cousin Charlie (or Charlsie! for short). He's a gregarious, funny, amiable fellow that you immediately take a liking to after hearing a single burst of his humongous laugh. His parents were also first cousins, which is neither here nor there.
He told me this amazing story about my great uncle Lee Myles (my grandmother's brother). Lee was a big-band leader who was a contemporary of Irving Berlin and had articles written about him by the likes of Ed Sullivan. He started his own automotive transmission store aptly named "Lee Myles". It's a chain today that's located mostly around the northeast. His store had a big billboard with his name on it, smack in the middle of the Long Island Expressway. It had a big clock, so people who waited in traffic could check the time. Can you imagine people driving around without knowing what time it is?
Charlsie worked for Lee (and later ran one of his stores) and recounted a very funny story to me. Sometime around 1959 or 1960 Lee was contacted by General Motors. They wanted to pay him 7 Million Dollars to buy his stores and another 500 thousand a year to run the place. 7 Million bucks is a lot of money now, I can't even conceive how much that was back then.
Anyway, Lee was excited and was about to make the deal. In the final meeting GM told him and Charlsie what they wanted to do: take Lee's name off the billboard on the expressway and replace it with a GM sign. After all, it would be great advertising; all those motorists checking the time with a huge GM clock. This was a major thing for them.
Lee walked out of the meeting, looked at Charlsie and said "Fuck them!". Charlsie tried to convince Lee that he could maybe negotiate and have the sign say "GM presents Lee Myles", but Lee would hear nothing of it; no damn company was taking HIS name off the L.I.E. He turned the deal down flat and nothing was ever mentioned of it again.
He's my new hero. What a wonderful stubborness! Nanny was special, but obviously she came from a special family: and I'm glad to be a part of it.
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Music and Memories of My Mother
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