Old News: Grandpa Joe

I have a lot of memories of my Mom's dad, Grandpa Joe. One of the earliest is when I was

driving with Grandma Santa. Cars then didn't have up-and-down posts for locking the

doors. Instead, there was a slender chrome handle. If you held it and pushed backward,

the door would open and if you pushed forwrd the door would lock. One day Grandma Santa

spied me holding the door handle and she said, "Don't do that, you'll open the door by

mistake. Where did you learn that?" I told her that Grandpa Joe said he holds the door in the lock position so he doesn't fall out when you go around the corner.

Grandma drove the nuns from church wherever they needed to go, even from St. Louis to O'Fallon. According to Grandpa Joe, this is the only thing that kept her alive. In her later years, Grandma Santa had the mandatory plastic Jesus on the dashboard, but she also had several statuettes on the shelf in the back window. If you happened to catch a glimpse of a tiny lady in a maroon and white Nash Rambler and a veritable altar in the back window, that was

Grandma Santa.