Grandma Henke

Alice was sent a meme asking for seven random things about her. I thought it was so much fun to read what she wrote I decided to write seven random things about myself … even though I wasn’t actually memed.

1. In high school I was on the drama team that went to State. I did a pantomime entitled “Harold, Leader of The Pack”. I got a “10″ on it from the judges and our high school took State in drama that year … It was either 1964 or 1965 … good old Jordan High. The funny thing was how this pantomime was born. I was taking Drama from Mr. Sachos at Jordan High School and the entire class had been asked to perform individual pantomimes as an assignment one week, and I had either procrastinated or forgotten (I can’t remember now) and was totally unprepared. Apparently a lot of others in the class were in the same boat because he started calling out names of students to perform and the first three answered “unprepared”. Mr. Sachos was the teacher and he blue up at the class for a good two or three minutes (like only a drama teacher could) and said if one more student was unprepared the entire class would be punished … and then he called on me. No way was I going to say “unprepared” so I thought of the song “Leader of The Pack” and decided to see how I could do at being a tough guy waking up and going through his morning routine, and then lifting weights. I was really surprised when I got an A on it but my dad was a performer and had kind of passed the gene along, I guess. Anyway, that was the pantomime I won with at State.

2. I had a big old orange macho man striped tom cat named, Tom, when I was a little girl. He was the biggest softy you can ever imagine and loved me as much as I loved him. He was a farm cat and never came in the house. He ate the mink feed that would drop onto the ground and was huge. When I picked him up he was an arm full. We went out of town for a few days and when we came home this big old bawl baby cat put his arms around my neck and boo hoo’d for a good five minutes. He would rub his head on one side of my neck, then the other then put his head on my shoulder and sob. He wouldn’t let me put him down! I’ll have to find the poem I wrote about good old Tom.

3. Our family had some land on the shores of Bear Lake up near Logan, Utah. My older brothers taught me how to water ski. We got so Dad could pull all three of us at once … me the middle skier … and then my brothers would get close to me and bend their knees and I would kick off my ski’s and climb onto their legs and then onto their shoulders. We’ve got movies of it or I wouldn’t believe it myself.

4. My friend, Claudia Black, and I used to put on quite a show as “Mother Goose and Mother Nature.” I was Mother Goose. We lived in Blanding, Utah and whenever we were asked to perform in town we would make up a skit that included little verses about various people we knew would be there. There was a song from Sesame Street that we’d sing and dance to called “Jelly Belly” that was very inspiring with the pillows we had added to our tummies and back sides (wouldn’t need those props now). The words were something like “Jelly belly nice and fat, Jelly belly is where it’s at. You shake your belly from left to right and you do the jelly belly with all your might.” We had so much fun writing our routines and practicing that it was almost anticlimactic to perform.

5. The first pie I baked all by myself was pumpkin. I cooked the pumpkin down and everything and the pie looked sooo delicious! When I served it up to Lynn I could tell he was very surprised at his first bite. On his second bite he started to look a little green. I had inadvertently used salt instead of sugar to sweeten it.

6. My brothers used to haul me all over town on the handle bars of their bikes when they had to tend me. I got so I could balance there pretty well and had no idea how dangerous it could be even though we’d had a few spills. Then we had the “crash”. Bill was peddling as fast as he could towards home and hit a small rock in the road and I went flying and spilling through the air, the bike went flying and spinning through the air and Bill went flying and spinning through the air. And we landed in the same spot in that order. I was skinned on the forehead, nose, chin, elbows, and knees. You’d think I would have been hurt the most but it turned out to be Bill. He landed in a rather unhappy landing on the bicycle.

7. The last random thing is how much I miss cutting my Dad’s hair. He used to live next door to us here in Ivins and I loved seeing him every day. I used to leave extra pancakes, french toast, and fried bread on a plate on the counter with a cloth over it. While we were gone during the day he’d come over and have it with peanut butter on it and have a sip of milk. I used to cut his hair for him … he had pure white hair that was like a little halo around his bald head. I really miss doing that and hearing him say, “This time don’t take so much off the top.”