When I was growin up, Grandma Jo lived in a big old southern house in Beaumont, Texas. This wasn't the house my Mom and Aunt grew up in, that was a modest suburban home that Grandma and Daddo would later rent out and finally sell as the neighborhood slid slowly down. The house I knew as Grandma's was acquired from one of Daddo's older ladies. To this day, I'm not sure exactly how that worked.

My maternal grandfather was short man with bald skull peaking out over a fuzzy fringe of pure white hair and twinkling blue eyes. Once he gave in to growing bald he would have my grandmother pluck any stray hairs that escaped the fringe. An odd little vanity, grandma said it was to keep him looking tidy, but he wasn't a tidy man. Somehow it made him look childlike or maybe Geppettoesque... and Daddo collected older women.

I have no idea how grandma felt about grandpa's women. He never stepped out with any of them. He always went for the older ladies, more the mother figures, who would sort of, take care of him. He had his lady at the bank and the grocery lady who took extra good care of him. There were always "aunts" around the house, in the finest southern tradition, and they helped him out.

The house was from the only one of Daddo's ladies I remember meeting, Aunt Maude. The house had been built by a successful florist and was ringed with gardens and raised, stone walled beds with built in sprinklers that grandma never would let me turn on, they sprayed the sidewalk and that was rude. Aunt Maude lived in it for quite a wile, but eventually decided she wanted something smaller or elsewhere or something and it became Daddo and Grandma Jo's. I'm a bit hazy on the details, but it was one of those so cheep it might as well have been a bequest kind of things.

There were pebbled walks and screened in porches, high ceilings and enormous, cast iron heating grates in the floor, big enough for me to crawl into when my favorite marble fell though. This place was so big Grandma rented out the second floor and almost never used the gigantic living room with the brocade furniture and the adjacent dining room. We only went in there when special company came over or walked though when Aunt Jo would visit - the door off the carport opened into the living room.

I remember the wood floors. At the time the house was built they sold something called wood carpeting. Big rolls of hardwood that were rolled out and nailed down in two shakes in any room big enough. Those rooms were big enough - big enough for little kids to get a good run up before slidin along. I don't remember ever getting yelled at for that, there was so much space to slide. I don't remember ever getting hurt doing that either.

Aunt Jo had a little yorkie named Bitsy that she used to bring over to visit. Poor dog had emphysema from living with my chain-smoking Aunt, but it loved visiting Grandma. Aunt Jo would come in the door by the carport and put Bitsy down. She'd run to see grandma and by the time she'd reach the (always open) French doors leading from the living room into the family room she'd be going too fast to make the turn. Her little claws would scrabble on the wood floor, you'd hear a thump as she'd hit the wall and ricochet off to jump into Grandma's arms.

The house had at least three bedrooms downstairs and, while I slept in all of them at one time or another, the one I remember was the one off the living room. It was rarely used and still had the original high ceilings and dark wood. Just the place for a little kid afraid of the dark. Unlike my Ohio family, Grandma Jo never told me to get over my fear of the dark, but I wasn't allowed to have the main light on, which I would insist on at my other grandparents' house (where I was teased about it). Instead Grandma Jo would turn on this little porcelain nightlight. It was a small white elephant studded with colored marbles. The dim light would paint the room in magical colors and I would sleep.