by Joni Cunningham

Created on: March 10, 2010

Grandma Was A "Good" Witch

I was a Kennedy baby, born the September before his assassination in November 1963.

Growing up in a small Florida town on property that was once part of the Florida Orange Grove Corporation, I never realized my grandma wasn’t like most. When I was about 3 my mama went to work and my grandma “Mimo” took care of me until my mama got home from work. My father was a self employed sign man and I spent a lot of time with him being his helper, but when he was out putting up signs I’d stay with “Mimo”.

Mimo was my father’s mother.  I remember bits and pieces of my life with her, it’s kind of goofy I guess, but I remember her old station wagon smelling like chicken feed.  It wasn’t a bad smell, just a particular smell. Why I included that, I really don’t know.  I’ve heard that sometimes smells and tastes are closely tied in with memory. 

My childhood day were filled with collecting eggs and feeding chickens, working in the garden, snapping beans and chopping sugar cane to make syrup.  I remember faintly when it was time to slaughter the hogs; they made such a terrible squealing sound just before the loud shotgun would blast. I never witnessed Pa bleeding the hogs.  Pa was a mostly Cherokee and wasn’t my father’s father, but he was “Pa” and I remember him being quiet but always kind to me. Looking back I think the hogs sensed what was happening, it didn’t seem violent or cruel, it just meant the smokehouse would be full of hams, and that no one would be hungry.

One day a cat killed one of Mimo’s guineas.  She and I had a funeral for the guinea; we buried it under a flower bush in her front yard.  That is the first living thing that died that I remember grieving for.

A normal mid day event was Mimo sitting in her rocking chair waiting for Days of Our Lives to come on. I remember the beginning of the soap opera with the hour glass and the man’s voice saying “like sands through the hour glass…so are the Days of Our Lives.”

I never paid much attention to the soap, I’d sit on the floor next to Mimo’s feet playing with my plastic cowboys and Indians or some little baby doll with a bottle that would wet its diaper immediately after the water from the bottle was gone.

Shortly after Days, another daytime show would come on and THIS ONE did stick with me.  Dark Shadows,

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