honeymooners
grandma would make the girls scrub the outsides of the windows, even though it was a farm and the windows would get dirty right away again anyway. she would say, "but it'll be different dirt." she also ironed everything.
grandpa was very involved in his community, probably helping out sometimes with the camp where i used to work, the camp of which i'm writing the history now. he did more of the writing and scrapbook keeping than grandma. it's his handwriting on the back of most of the pictures. mom says she has a journal he kept during his honeymoon (the first picture is from the honeymoon), detailing how they spent every cent.
i mostly remember him for the candy jar at his place, the rootbeer floats he used to make me, and how much he loved puzzel games.
on easter, my cousins kim and beth (both of whom were born in the early 60s) were telling me stories about the grandparents since i didn't really get to know very well. grandma was already sick when i was born. i guess grandpa probably already had the cancer he eventually died from too, but it was in remission.
they were iowa farmers, as were their parents, and their parents before them. all of both their grandparents came over from norway as young adults with young families.
but of course, i remember my grandparents as being older.
this was a picture taken the christmas of '80 of them with all their grandkids (i'm the baby). we're in the farmhouse in which my grandpa was born. they moved out in '85 or '86 when grandma got too sick to stay out in the country, into a condo in a nearby town. grandma died a couple years later, and grandpa (at the age of 81, i think) died a few years after that. i was in 8th grade when grandpa died, a day or two before valentine's day.