on the weekends i would usually go from our tiny little apartment in the low income housing projects of garfield new jersey, to my grandmothers huge 12 acre house in woodstock ny. but sometimes i wouldn't go up with them.....my mom would drop me off at my real fathers parents house, grandma agnes and grandpa jim. joe ( the sperm doner) was somewhere in the midwest drunk shoveling cowshit and had been gone for years. last time i saw him when i was a kid me and my mom were in a mall and he was working in the shoe store....suprise, suprise....on friday nights (might have been saturdays i was like 6) i would take the ride with grandpa to chicken delight, while grandma stayed home and set the table with quilty flowered placemats and wooden handled silverware. i had my special plate and fork though. the kitchen always smelled like chicken and rice i don't know why. and the huge grandfather clock would go off every hour...fucking thing was so loud it used to scare the shit out of me when i was sleeping.
it was always the longest ride home from chicken delight cuz grandpa would never let me pick out of the bucket until we got home. i would run down the driveway into the house and sit at the table. grandma would always make me get up and wash my hands. so i'd go wash my hands and always hear the sarcasm from the kitchen "and use soap this time!"....my mouth would be watering for fried chicken, cole slaw, and grape soda. the police scanner was buzzing behind me as i sat at the table scarfing down chicken legs, wondering if grandpa was gonna give me a sip of his vino. if im not mistaken grandma smoked so much that in one hand she would have a chicken leg, in the other a marlboro 100, and the phone pinned between her ear and her shoulder talking to one of my aunts. grandpa would always tell me to slow down and watch for bones. then tell me some story about "a guy he knew" that once choked to death on a chicken bone cuz he was eating to fast. he also knew a guy that lost his arm from hanging it out the window, a guy who made a funny face and it stayed that way permanently, and a guy who fell into the paper mill cuz he was standing to close....you get my drift. sometimes we would go to uncle phil and aunt carols after dinner. i used to love that cuz they lived right up the hill from carvel. plus my cousin philip used to fly me around the house over his head and tickle me until i pee'd a little. but on the nights we stayed home, after dinner we would go into the living room and put on either the dean martin or the lawrence welk show depending on what night it was. and once a year we would watch dean martins man of the year roast. grandma loved center square paul lynde.they both had there recliner chairs and i would lay on the pladue green couch in my one piece whinnie the pooh pajamas with the footsies. the feet in those things used to freak me out cuz they were half suede or some shit. when grandma was done playing solitaire in the kitchen she would come into the living room with one of the multi~colored plastic boths from the cabinet filled with vanilla and strawberry ice cream and cool whip, topped off with hershey's syrup out of the can. then she would sit and do her crossword puzzles and chainsmoke. she exhaled the smoke so loud i used to hear her in the morning from my room when she was in the kitchen. usually on the phone gossiping about some lady in church. i would swirl all the ice cream and cool whip together until it was soft like carvel ice cream. grandpa would sit in the middle and sing along with dean while occasionally letting out a little fart, until he started snoring. he always went to bed before me and grandma and slept like a rock. one time i came into his bedroom to wake him up and when he opened his eyes he had this weird look on his face. he opened his mouth and pulled out three nails. he was hammering something in the basement and forgot to take the nails out of his mouth before he went to bed. he woke up on his back dont ask me how he didn't swallow those fucking things.
when grandpa went to bed grandma would put on one of her crime shows. i would go up to the attic and listen to my dads old 45's of the guess who and steppenwolf that he left behind on my little 45 record player, while swinging my g.i. joe's from a string attatched to the ceiling. the attic had two sections, one was where i played and sometimes slept when i was feeling like a big boy (the attic steps were creepy and scared the shit out of me usually), and the otjher section had a desk and office type shit in it. with a wooden plaque of snoopy in his flight gear that said "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance...baffle them with bullshit" hanging on the wall. i never went ovewr to that side at night and used to run down the stairs when it was time to go to bed. there was always a man chasing me when i ran down those things. and if i stayed up there grandma would come up around eleven and read me a bedtime story. we were all down with the walt disney book of the month club. so once a month i would get a brown package in the mail. i used to love that...like clockwork every night grandma would lay in bed at 10pm and watch the news. and shut the tv off as the grandfather clock was striking eleven. once in a blue moon she would stay up for an extra fifteen minutes to watch the odd couple or mash. if i slept upstairs my friend tommy would come to his granparents next door. his room was in the attic as well and our windows were level to each other with nothing but the driveway between us. we would yell to each other until we both got yelled at. when i finally layed down a mild scent of mothballs would woft up my nose from the cracked closet door as i tried not to make the headboard smack against the wall from trying to get comfortable. i never really liked sleeping up there cuz i woke up before everyone. and i would alwasy wake them up cuz i was right over there bedroom. no matter how quiet i tried to be the cold tiled floor was creeky as hell. and the wooden bannister on the staircase was kinda loose and would hit the wall if i touched it echoing through the whole house. i couldn't wait to wake up because at my house all we had was cheerios and toast. but in the little cabinet attatched to the stove in grandmas kitchen there sat usually 5 or 6 boxes of straight sugar. apple jacks, sugar smacks, frankenberry, cocoa krispies, and frosted cherry pop tarts. it was fucking paradise...