Happy Fourth of July !!

Growing up, Fourth of July was always a special time for our family. My grandparents lived three blocks from the University of Arizona in Tucson where there was always a fireworks display.

So the whole family would assemble on the front lawn. It was the perfect spot, the lawn was large and a little bit up on a hill so we had a great view over the other houses.

Nani Gene and Papa Jim (my grandparents) would set up a bunch of folding lawn chairs and blankets on the grass. And pull out the card table for the food. We're Italian so there HAD to be food!

All of us kids would be so excited waiting for it to get dark and for the show to start. Luckily we didn't have Daylight Savings Time in Tucson so it got dark earlier. We'd hear the band playing and knew it was almost time. Then the first one would go up. It was usually a dud, but would make a nice loud crack which was totally cool.

We had all the required number of ooohhhs and aaahhhs. We ate watermelon and seedless green grapes (they didn't have seedless red grapes back then). My grandfather called the green grapes something like "pisha freet". That's the phonetic spelling because I have no idea what the actual words were. But they meant "fruit that makes you pee." In fact, that was our family always called green grapes which was not cool when non-Italians asked us what the heck that meant!

We'd also have cookies or cake or whatever people brought over. The weather was so nice and warm. No mosquitos in Tucson so the evenings were wonderful. My last Fourth of July on that lawn was in 1973 when I was 7 months pregnant with my twins. I looked so forward to having my own kids be part of that tradition, but my grandfather died a few weeks later and my grandmother never went back to that house after he died. So the tradition ended that year.

Now we have our own tradition. Where we live we can buy "safe" fireworks and do them in our streets. They don't go into the air. Just bounce around the street. Some are fountains of light with whistling or popping noises. Enough sound and light and color to be very festive. So we gather our kids and grandkids around, have food (of course) and spend the evening creating our own displays and walking around the neighborhood watching other people's displays. Now Ed and I are the grandparents! And we love it. Even without the grapes that make you pee.

Rosaries and driving

I was talking with someone today about crazy drivers and it reminded me of my Dad's mother. No, she wasn't a crazy driver. In fact she didn't drive at all. But my Dad was another story. His driving skills were - how shall we say it - a little on the frightening side. So you can imagine our fear when he was in his 80's and could barely see above the wheel and yet continued to drive!

One of our favorite memories was at his 85th birthday party. We had a family BBQ in my brother's backyard in Chicago and there was dad in his wheelchair which he needed 90% of the time, using the oxygen which was now required 24/7. He had gotten fairly weak by that time and his hands shook as he lifted a bite of cake to his mouth. Suddenly he looked up and said, "Oh, I have to remember to get to the DMV and renew my driver's license!" There was dead silence in the crowd due to absolute awe about what he just said. My brother and I looked at each other with a Yeah-dad-we'll-get-right-on-it" look. I simply said, "Okay" and dad went back to eating his cake.

But back to my grandmother. She was such a sweet woman. One of those people who never said a bad word to or about anyone. Just raised her kids, cooked, cleaned, and did it all with a smile on her face. She came to visit us in Tucson shortly after we moved there in the late 1950's. This is the requisite photo of Tucson resident (aka my dad) playing dress up and pointing a toy cowboy gun at pretty much anyone who was willing to have a picture taken. Grandma, of course, agreed to it. Although it appears she had a bit of a death grip on her dress at the time.

Another required Tucson activity for visitors was a trip to Mt. Lemmon. This is the highest peak in the Tucson area - around 8000 ft - and a great place to go in the winter to see snow, or in the summer to escape the heat. The drive is beautiful, although there are spots where the cliffs are high and the views are, well, a bit disconcerting to flat-landers. (That's what we Western folk call people from areas without mountains). So, up we went. Being a good Italian Catholic person, Grandma always had her rosary with her. And, man, she lost no time is whipping it out of her purse at the first hill. She rubbed that rosary raw all the way up to the top of Mt. Lemmon, and all the way down. Sometimes we'd hear a little prayer murmur coming from the back seat. But mostly she was quietly praying.

She did have fun once we got to the top and had lunch amid the pine trees. But after we got down, she made it clear that she enjoyed (!!) the ride, but would never go up ther again.

I miss her.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blogger friends. Hope you all have a wonderful day!


Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. The whole family is together just to be together - no pressure with gifts or anything else. Just eat (and eat, and eat, and eat), laugh, and be thankful that we are all together.


When I was a kid, I loved Thanksgiving. Since I didn't yet have an appreciation of family, my fondness for the holiday was mostly about food. Nothing like a slab of turkey nestled next to dressing and mash potatoes. All covered with gravy. And a big glob of cranberry sauce - my mom used the kind out of the can so we had these little purple circles on our plates.


One year we had a family with us at Thanksgiving who had just moved to Tucson from Chicago. There were two boys - Gary and Johnny. I was 12 and madly in love with both of them. They, of course, were 16 and 18 and did not notice the goofy little girl. But that day when they were at dinner with us, I only had a delicate dab of everything on my plate. And I took very small bites. Wanted to be a lady - much like Scarlett O'Hara in GWTW. I picked at my food, trying to look sophisticated in spite of my acne, buck teeth (pre braces days), ponytail and total lack of a personality. I nibbled, they ate and taked with my cousins. Then they left! They had other plans! Once they were gone and I realized that no marriage proposals were going to happen that day, I reloaded my plate in true Sandi style and proceeded to devour everything. I think I was almost glad they had left!

And just describing all that makes me hungry - think I'll go baste the turkey. Have a great day, everyone!!

And now, back to Tucson

My family moved to Tucson when I was 10 years old and, except for a couple of years in Denver right after my kids were born, I lived there for 30 years. That's where I grew up, got married, had my kids. It's where my grandparents lived and died, where my mother died, and where many of my aunts and uncles lived. It was home.

Now I've been gone for 21 years and when I go back, so much has changed. I still remember where places from my history are, but so much is new. So many places I grew up with have been torn down. Know what really makes you feel old? Remembering a "modern" building going up, only to now see the empty lot because it was "old and falling apart." I mean, what does that say about me!!!!

This last trip we drove past my grandmother's and great grand-mother's houses. Lots of nostalgia, lots of sadness. The photo below is my grandparent's house. It was a few blocks from the University of Arizona and such a charming neighborhood at the time. Now it's been stuccoed, all the front yard is gone, and there is a wall around the property. The little building to the left is a little one-bedroom apartment where I lived with my girlfriend when we were in college.


Here is the house I remember! The front yard was a family gathering spot. We sat there every Fourth of July and watched the U of A fireworks display. We had Easter Egg hunts on the lawn. It's where my grandparents had their marijuana garden. It's where we had all our big family dinners. The yard had orange trees, loquat trees, even a pomegranate tree. Now it has gravel. My grandparents were so proud of their house and yard. I have so many photos of family members visiting from Chicago and standing by an orange tree - usually with a cowboy hat on.

Here are my grandmother and grandfather enjoying their front yard.

How I miss them and those days. Surrounded by family, greasy Italian food, lots of laughter, and the feeling of Tucson in the late 1950's and early 1960's. My great-grandmother lived less than a mile away from my grandparents. She also lived one block from the school where I went to 5th grade so I would go over to her house often. Grandma was the quintessential old Italian woman. 4' 10" on a good day, constantly wearing an apron, gray hair in a bun, nylons rolled down to just below her knees, that one gold tooth that seems to be mandatory in old Italian women, and an accent so thick you had to really concentrate to understand her. Here is Grandma and this is her house today. The front section used to be a porch. There was a little wire fence around the front yard and a small gate that we would go through.

This is where we would go every Christmas Eve to see her Nativity display and be with family. As you can see, this is a very small house. But there would usually be 50 or so people inside! Many smoking, all laughing and talking, and, of course (we are Italian, after all) everyone eating. The back yard was almost as big as the house. There was also a little guest studio in the back. Grandma has an amazing garden, fed daily by coffee grounds and egg shells. And we would have lots of family picnics in her yard. I'm so glad to have these wonderful memories. I'm sad that almost everyone in these photos is gone. I wish my kids could have known my grandparents and great-grandmother - and Tucson in the "old days." They would have loved every minute of it. Hopefully we're creating good memories for them that someday will be their "good old days."

If he were still here today he'd be 118 !!

Today is my maternal grandfather's birthday. He passed away in 1973 - two months before my kids were born so they never had a chance to know him. But, boy, would they have enjoyed him.

Papa Jim (his name was actually John but for some strange reason everyone called him Jim!), was born in Italy and came to this country when he was in his late teens or early twenties. Somehow his family and my grandmother's (Nani Gene) family got together and decided it would be nice for them to get married. He was 16 years older than her and she was just 16 on their wedding day. She always told us that she was forced to marry him, how unhappy she was because he was so much older. But they were together until he passed away which was 52 years later. So something was working.

This is one of my favorite pictures of them taken in 1930. My mother was 7 that year so Nani Gene must have been 25 and Papa Jim was whatever 25 plus 16 is.

They really were a good couple - in spite of all her complaints!

Papa Jim loved to play around with his guitar (which I still have). He didn't really play, but he sure had fun. I remember as a kid laughing when he would do his Groucho Marx walk around the house while strumming the guitar.


He was VERY Italian. Never lost his accent and never stopped missing his home land - although he loved Tucson. It reminded him of the village he had lived in when he was little. I don't think he was ever very healthy, so my grandmother is the one who went out and worked while Papa Jim would sit home drinking red wine and smoking with his friends. He had a few jobs here and there, but mostly he sat. He did play up the sickness thing, though. When I was in college my girlfriend and I rented the little cottage next to my grandparents. I remember one day she was leaving for work and he was sitting on the porch moaning and groaning about how sick he was. But, within about an hour of her driving away, a couple of his old crony friends came by and they drank wine, told stories, smoked, and had a great time for the bulk of the day. Then, just before Nani Gene got home, he put the sick face back on and timed his moaning and groaning perfectly for her arrival.

Driving was not his strong suit. Oh, he loved his car - as did everyone in the 50's and 60's. But he had trouble with the little things like pulling into the carport without hitting the side, backing out without noticing my grandmother's car was parked behine him and crumpling her front hood (man, you should have heard the yelling that day!), following the rules of the road. One day when we had first moved to Tucson, my dad and I were driving somewhere and Papa Jim was in the car with us giving dad directions. He said, "Turn left here." So dad turned and discovered he was going the wrong way on a one-way road. "Jim, this is a one-way road!! We can't drive down here." Papa Jim said, "Eh, we only go a little way - no problem." Surprised he never became a cab driver.

While my grandmother was the worker bee of the family, Papa Jim was the cook. He would whip up the most authentic Italian meals. All kinds of meats, thick rich sauce that he would cook for half the day, meatballs, fried fish for Christmas - the works. Of course, often his sauce has a 1/2 inch layer of oil on the top. But you could always spoon that out before eating.

I remember when we first moved to Tucson and he took me to a little bakery down the street. He went there often for donuts and the man who owned it was tired of throwing away the dough from the holes he cut in the donuts, so he decided to fry them up and give them away to his customers! We'd get a big paper sack of donut holes long before Dunkin Donuts even thought of them. The grease would seep through the paper bag and the taste was heavenly.

I wish my kids could have known him. He was funny, loving, and had so many great stories. Most of them sprinkled with Italian cuss words. The photo below is Papa Jim (the one with the hat, Nani Gene (in the dark outfit), my paternal grandmother, and the dorky kid is me.

Happy Birthday, Papa Jim. Wish you were still here.

Smells Like Gary

Gary, Indiana, that is.

A couple more stories from the road. When I was four, we moved from Illinois to Dayton, Ohio. At least once a year we would drive to Chicago to visit family. I, of course, spent most of the trip either whining or sleeping. As we passed through Gary, Indiana on the trip, we drove by either a foul lake, sewage treatment plant, not sure what - but the small was not pleasant. If I was asleep, it would usually wake me up. My Mom would say, "We're in Gary, I can smell it!" I came to recognize the odor as a sign that we were almost at Grandma's house.

But one of my favorite stories happened when I was 11 or 12. We were taking the trek back to Tucson from Southern California. It was summer and very hot. Back then there were no superhighways so the drive led us through every little podunk town from San Diego to Tucson. One of these was Gila Bend, AZ. You could drive 75 on the highway, and then within about 10 feet had to screech down to 25. The town's main source of revenue was speeding tickets. It was an interesting little town - had about 10 bars and 5 churches - and a population of maybe 1000 people. One main road.

My grandfather, Papa Jim, was always destination-bound. Once we got in the car, our only goal was to "get there". If anyone (including my grandmother) had to go to the bathroom or got hungry, you had to beg several times before he would stop. And then he would pick the dirtiest, most run-down place on the route. One of these fine occassions happened in Gila Bend. After significant crying by the kids, and threats from Nani Gene, he finally stopped at a bar/restaurant with a bathroom that would even make Europeans shudder. We all went in and used the facilities, and got something to eat. Papa Jim had a nice, cold beer.

Suddenly he started getting dizzy, was sweating, and couldn't see very well. He said his whole body hurt and he was totally convinced he was dying. He called me and my cousin, Ken, over to his side. He held our hands and said (insert heavy Italian accent here), "I-ma dyin'. I-ma gonna miss you. But I wanna to tell you that I wanna you to have the trailer park after I die." He then let go of our hands, and Ken and I walked to our parents and cried, "We don't want the trailer park! What are we going to do with a trailer park!?!" In the meantime, my grandmother went over to Papa Jim and said, "For god's sake, Jim, you're not dying. You just drank that beer too fast. Now stop complaining and scaring the kids and get back out to the car." Which he did. And we drove home.

As an aside, they sold the trailer park a couple of years later. About 6 years after they sold it, some developer bought the property at a hefty price and built the first air-conditioned mall in Tucson.

Not all Italians are good cooks

The other day someone I know (who shall remain nameless) made a spaghetti burrito for lunch. But I ask you, is this any worse than the salad sandwiches my mom and grandmother used to eat? They would actually take left over salad, slop it onto a piece of bread, fold the bread in half and eat it like a sandwich. Yish!

When I was growing up, I hated leftovers. We would have “leftover night” at least once a week when my mom would haul out a zillion little containers containing 5 kernels of corn, a half pork chop, the aforementioned salad (now looking a bit dejected), one serving of meatloaf, two tablespoons of pasta. This was our dinner, along with a slice of American bread and butter. What I would find interesting is that we often had "leftovers" that we never had the first time! As a kid, I never ate away from home so I would remember if we ever had that particular chicken dish. I once accused Mom of cooking small portions just so we would have leftovers – but the glare I got for that comment prevented me from every uttering it again… By the way, for those of you who aren’t Italian, American bread is the sliced stuff that comes in a wrapper and you can buy at the grocery store – not made by grandma in her kitchen. I was in my 20’s before I realized the rest of the world didn’t call it American bread!

And my mom always saved left over mashed potatoes so she could make potato pancakes. I lived at home until I was 21 and never had a potato pancake. We kept them. They turned green. We threw them out. That was the routine.

Actually, my mother was an excellent cook. Some of her specialties I can replicate, most I can’t. She made the world’s best Fettuccini Alfredo – of course that was before we learned that it was a heart attack on a plate. Sometimes knowledge is not a good thing. But she really could cook. And she had this knack of creating a wonderful meal out of just a few things she scrounged up in the refrigerator. I wish I had inherited that gene, but, alas, I didn’t.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was definitely NOT a good cook. Part of the reason is that she always had to work because my grandfather was too sickly to go out and hold down a job. At least that’s what he wanted her to think. For one family event, Nani Gene made a coconut custard pie. She let it cool and cut it into eight pieces in the kitchen. After dinner, I was asked to go get the pie. I was 10 at the time and every bit as graceful as I am today. I picked up the pie plate from the counter, hit my elbow, and immediately dropped the whole thing. I looked in horror as the eight pieces bounced on the floor. The key word is “bounced”. They were like triangular erasers. I carefully picked them up, dusted them off, arranged them nicely in the pie pan, and brought them out to the dining room. No one was ever the wiser!

Another time Nani Gene was going to make us Beef Stroganoff. Small issue – she didn’t have the beef, mushrooms, mushroom soup, noodles, or sour cream. So she boiled a few neckbones (why do all older Italian women eat neckbones?!?!?), made some kind of gravy, and poured it over Minute Rice. Yummmmmm. Our favorite – Bones and Rice. Mostly we just invited her to our house for dinner.

My grandfather was a pretty decent cook (since he had all that time on his hands), but his sauce (gravy to all you Italians out there) was a bit greasy. Had this little ½ inch layer of oil on top. Once you got past that, it was pretty good!

Oh, yes, I also had an aunt who would take leftover pasta, with sauce, and brown it in a little olive oil for lunch.

Another aunt had a phobia about germs so overcooked everything to kill any germ that may be lurking in the food. She also made odd casseroles – she would put a little of anything she had in the house into the casserole - chicken, broccoli, cheese, raisins, carrots, pork, celery, ground beef. No matter that the flavors didn’t blend. No matter that it looked like a compost heap with eggs. It was germ free. Her prize dish, however, has to be the candied yams she made with Hershey's Kisses tucked inside. She swears she saw Martha Stewart do that. Again, she gets taken out to dinner often!!

I think I’ve become a pretty decent cook. Some of my mom’s talent rubbed off. Except for the occasional new recipe that would elicit comments from the kids like “Experimenting again?” or “It’s not bad, but no need to keep the recipe.” Well, I have an evening alone so time to go have MY favorite meal – popcorn and red wine.

What the Hella You Want?

I saw a blog today from an 88-year old woman who lives in San Francisco. 88!!! I find that quite awesome. Of course, today she was badmouthing my generation (the Baby Boomers) and all the hoopla about us turning 60 - but I can forgive her that!

My great-grandmother was 88 when she passed away. Can't imagine her using a computer - the tv and telephone were about as high tech as she got. And this was in the days before push-button phones and remote controls! Grandma had 16 kids (3 sets of twins in a row) and three husbands. The first one died, the second one, well, no one's sure, and the third one died. She may have been a bigamist, but what the heck. With 16 kids she had enough to worry about without dealing with marriage laws!

Grandma was the stereotypical old Italian woman - about 4' 9" tall, white hair pulled back in a bun with a hair net over it, ALWAYS wore an apron (even to church), had nylons rolled down to just above her knee, one gold tooth, very heavy accent, and an intense love of family. She was small, but no one messed with her family and lived to tell about it!! She baked bread, made wine, made pasta (although we called it "macaroni"), baked cookies, had a garden and chickens, and loved her soap operas. My mom called Grandma one day and Grandma was crying. Mom said, "What's wrong?" Grandma said, "Peggy was in a car accident and they don't know if she'll live!" Mom started to get upset until she realized we didn't have a relative named Peggy - that's when she figured out it was a character on General Hospital!

But the soaps did cause her a few problems - like the day she was eating a slice of bread with peanut butter on it, the phone rang, and she was so distracted that she put the bread (peanut butter side up) against her ear instead of the phone! Not pretty! If you called her at a really bad time, she would answer the phone saying, "What the hella you want?!?" She loved the actor "Humpity Bogart" and listened to a lot of Perry Como records. Her house in Tucson was very small, but we managed to squeeze about 40 people into it every Christmas Eve. She wouldn't have it any other way!

Grandma had a stroke about two weeks before I had my twins. I delivered Jenni and Joe in the same hospital and one of my aunts took the babies up to see Grandma. Hopefully on some level she heard them and knew that there was a new set of twins in the family - she would have loved that! I wish my kids could have known her - she was an amazing woman.

Pass the salad, please

I visited my daughter on Sunday (mostly to drop off some things for the kids) and we wound up walking around her yard looking at the flowers blooming, herbs growing, etc. I'm guessing that's her Italian side!

Visiting the home of a full-blooded Italian comes with the requisite walk around the yard and garden. Not sure why, but it's always the first event in any visit. Maybe that was just my family because they all grew up in downtown Chicago and were just so darned happy to even HAVE a yard or garden!

When I was 11, we lived next door to my Aunt Fanny (real name Phyllis) and her son Patty Boy. My family was big on nicknames - "Patty Boy" is now 66 and bald, but he's still Patty Boy. Anyway, my Aunt was showing us around her yard and we got to her prized peach tree. Full of beautiful peaches. She pulled one off to show us and there was a hole in it! So she pulled another one - another hole!! She soon realized that most of the peaches had holes in them, and, upon further inspection, had BB's in the holes! Turns our her darling son was trying to shoot birds in the trees and kept missing. All he could hit were the peaches! Whoa, you do not want to see my Aunt Fanny mad!!

A few years later, my grandfather (Papa Jim) was showing his friend, John, around the house and the garden. John was a detective with the Tucson Police Department. They looked at the orange trees, the pomegranate bush, the fava beans - and they finally got to the lettuce patch. Now, my grandparents lived about one block from the University of Arizona which, at that time, was full of "damn hippies" as they called them. Back to the lettuce. John looked at the patch and said, "Jim, you have marijuana growing in with the lettuce!!" Papa Jim had no idea what marijuana was so John proceeded to explain it to him. Seems the "damn hippies" were planting pot in the gardens of all the homes in the area and then coming back in the dark of night to harvest! John and my grandfather pulled it all out and threw it away. But it did enlighten us as to why my grandmother was suddenly craving salads!!

Brownie, we hardly knew you

My family was never big on pets. Their early days were spent in the middle of Chicago during the Depression so there were no nice back yards, places to take dogs for walks, etc. - everything was mostly brick, steel, or concrete. Also, the women in my family are absolute house-cleaning fanatics (which slowed down at my generation almost skidded to a stop with my kids)! Everything had to be spotless, shining, squeaky clean. They loved to say "you could eat off the floors." Not that we ever actually had our food served on the floor, but for some reason that was a badge of honor.

And pets, of course, are messy.

So, when my Mom decided to let me have one, I was ecstatic. Of course, there were limits as far as size and mobility. But, there I was, in the pet store, about to purchase my brand new turtle!! What a find - tiny little hard shell, cute little head that occassionally came out, four little lizardy looking feet. His name was Brownie (okay, not very creative, but as long as he answered to it, I was fine). We knew it was a male because he had a deep voice (!!)

I also bought a little red turtle dish for him - shiny plastic, little plastic hill for him to walk up, little plastic palm tree. Put some water in the bottom so he could watch his hands, cool off, surf - whatever turtles do. Had special food for him, supplemented with lettuce. He lived in my room and I would occassionally take him outside for some fresh air.

Then one day we went to visit my grandmother and I brought Brownie with me. Put his little red dish on the side table and fed him. Then went out in my grandmother's front yard. About 30 minutes later I heard this scream and someone yelling, "Sandi, get in here!" I went inside only to find my little red dish empty! Brownie had escaped! In my never-had-a-pet grandmother's house! I was doomed. We looked high and low (mostly low) for Brownie but couldn't find him. My grandmother was almost hysterical worrying that he would crawl on her bed at night or that she would step on him with her bare feet. My mother had visions of him dying in a corner and smelling the place up. I was worried that he would go outside and get hit by a car (I said I was a kid!!).

Well, we never found him and I'm not sure my grandmother every forgave me. I brought my little empty red plastic dish home and that was pretty much the last pet I was allowed to have for a long time.

Be safe, Brownie!!

Go West Young Man

The other day the temperature in in Chicago was ONE!!! Granted, it was 1+, but it was still ONE! As one of my office mates said, why even bother measuring it if it's that low!! And yesterday my dad called to say it was snowing - huge flakes - and the wind was blowing so the snow was sticking to the sides of buildings, trees, etc. From his nursing home window, it looked beautiful. From the front seat of my brother's car, as he's trying to get his three kids to school, the "view" is mostly unprintable.

I, on the other hand, am watching my garden bloom!

At the end of this month, it will be the 20th anniversary of my move from Tucson to California. Definitely the longest I've ever lived in one place. I did live in Tucson for a total of 30 years, but that was with a couple of short moves thrown in the mix. My family was originally from Chicago - straight from Italy via Ellis Island to Chicago. Grandma (my great grandmother) and Papa Jim (my maternal grandfather) were the most "Italian" of the group - heavy accents, very traditional. Grandma had 16 kids with three husbands (three sets of twins in a row!!). Her youngest son, John, decided to venture out West to a place called Arizona. First one in the family to leave the Chicago nest. When he didn't return after several weeks, Grandma became worried and decided to go to Arizona tolook for him. When she got to Tucson, it reminded her so much of the village she came from in Italy that she didn't want to go back to Chicago. After another few weeks, Nana Gene (my grandmother) told Papa Jim to go to Arizona and bring her mother back!! So Papa Jim made the trek West.

Well, it turns out he was from the same village in Italy so he, too, decided to stay. And in 1954 my grandmother finally moved to Tucson to join her mother and husband. Eventually most of Grandma's children moved West - although only nine of the 16 survived to adulthood. But, of those nine, seven wound up either in Arizona or even further west in Southern California.

Growing up in Tucson, I always felt so short-changed because we didn't have four real seasons - okay we did have one week of Spring in March, but never had a White Christmas. My parents would love to call their relatives in Chicago on Christmas Day and say, "Yeah, we're sitting outside in short-sleeved shirts." That would make me sad - singing Jingle Bells in 80 degrees just never worked for me!

But now, when I talk with my dad and brother and hear their stories about their Midwest winters, I figure maybe Grandma knew what she was doing blazing the trail for all of us.

Grazie, Grandma!