Grandma's Hands
Great-Grandma Slutz lived in a neat little house in Fredericksburg, Ohio. If you were walking north on Mill Street (tiny Fredericksburg’s main street), you would cross a bridge over Salt Creek and then cross the railroad tracks and pass by, on your left, a house with the name “Graber” written on the door (which I pretended said “Grabber” because it was the home of a monster who would grab children who walked too close to the porch), and the next home was Grandma Slutz’s. This was the route I took walking home from school each day, starting in kindergarten. Grandma’s house had several concrete steps—probably five or six—that led up to her porch. To me they seemed quite high. You could stand on her porch and look down at the sidewalk, where Grandma waged war on grass and weeds that dared to poke through the cracks in the walk. She showed me how to kill them by pouring salt water or boiling water on them. Both methods quite effectively discouraged further growth. Directly across the s...