Remembering Grappa Eddie

Grappa Eddie died on Thursday, August 20, 2009. He spent his last week in Hospice with the family gathered around. We were looking at pictures and laughing and remembering his adventurous life--or at least the stories he told about it. I hope to post more of hist stories here in the near future ...

I will remember many afternoons spent sitting around the kitchen table listing to his stories. He had a million of them!

I will remember plum dumplings every fall. This is a traditional Bohemian feast. Gramma Pickles actually made them, but Grappa always won the contest for who could eat the most.

I will remember Grappa taking my brother and me fishing with looonnnggg cane poles at Rabes Lake probably before I was even in school. Fishing was important to him.

Grappa drove a yellow school bus for many years. After long days at school, I can remember speeding down 5th Ave. Road at 80 miles an hour. For years, I actually thought there was a separate speed limit for school buses!

I will remember bailing hay on the hottest days of summer, on ridiculously steep hills. My brother and I were still pretty small then. We could pile the bales 2 or 3 high, but Grappa would have to stop and re-stack the bales to get more on the wagons.

After I learned to quilt, I decided that I would make a quilt for Grappa Eddie. When I shared my intentions, everyone in my family said "Why do you want to make a quilt for Grappa? He's not going to be around much longer." This was in 2004. My mom took care of the quilting and the binding. When we gave it to him, we made sure he understood that this quilt was to be used, and not put away and "saved" to keep it nice.

I found some orange blossom fabric and fell in love with the colors and the textures. It reminded me of Grappa. He had a talent for picking the best boxes of Indian River grapefruit and oranges from the travelling truck drivers who sold them on the road in northern Wisconsin. Grappa knew how to pick the fruit at the peak of ripeness, sweet, and fresh, and juicy. He knew what he was doing!

The pattern is called Northwind, however, I softened it to "Orange Blossom Breeze" because Grappa didn't tolerate the cold as he did in his younger days. This quilt was my way of keeping him warm with memories of his cross-country drives down south and the sweet, fresh fruit of Florida--where everyone has a fruit tree in their yard!

After Grappa moved into the nursing home 2 years ago, Gramma returned the quilt to me. They decided the detergents in the nursing home would be too harsh on the quilt. She gave it back to me--it still smelled like their house. Now I get to keep the quilt and remember Grappa Eddie.