Story 3: Big Grandma's "Special" Fireworks

I guess you could say that Big Grandma liked to keep up with the Jones'.  She did not like to be out done.  She was afraid of nothing...except the Devil himself.

One fourth of July, while living in Pennington Gap on Stone Creek, the neighbors lit off some fireworks.  They lived back in the 'holler.' My grandparents home was atop one mountain and the neighbors was across the road and up on top of the other mountain.

I can image it was a warm night like many of them are in the South. Lightening bugs flashing and crickets singing, the Napier family was having a good ole' time lighting fireworks off their mountain.

Big Grandma is remembered to have said, "They think they are so big with their fancy fireworks. Well, I will show them fireworks they won't likely forget."  With that, she and her partner-in-crime (son-in-law Lewis Nimety) went out to the shed for some "fireworks."  Only Big Grandma didn't actually have any real fireworks.  She was looking for a stick of dynamite!!

Remember, I told you what Grandpa did in the mines.  He was the one that drilled the holes for the dynamite.  I suppose he just brought some home.  You never know when a family may be in need of dynamite, right!?

She and Lewey found the "good stuff" and took it out near their small field which was as far as you could get from the house without going into the woods.  And then it happened.  They lit that stick of dynamite and in the words of Big Grandma, "We about blowed that mountain clean off!"  Shoot. She's lucky she didn't blow an arm off!  Crazy woman!

I mentioned that she had a partner.  She would often use her boys as her little minions.  Her first partner was son-in-law, Lewey.  He would do just about anything she asked him to do .  Like the time he dressed in a sheet and went up behind the house and past the windows moaning to scare my Aunt Mary.

As her youngest son Ray grew up, he became one of her little proteges.  When she got bored, she would ask Ray to go get the cats and throw them in the pillowcase...you know, to make them hiss and fight.  She would laugh her head off at the hissing and pissing. Oh my word, I don't usually use such language, but that is what she said.

I don't know what it was about her, but she loved a good fight.  Her favorite thing to watch on TV was professional wrestling.  She called it 'rastlin'.  She would holler and yell at the TV and laugh till she cried when they got jumped on.  Her favorite move was when they would jump from the top of the ring!

Big Grandma loved Ric Flair...she said he was a "purty boy" (that means "pretty" to you Yankees.) She also loved Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan, but who doesn't?!  One of the grandkids bought her the action figures of Ric, Roddy, and the Hulk and she hung them on the wall next to the pictures of the family!  Now THAT is a fan!

I think we will talk about how she handled jealousy tomorrow.  I might entitle it "Big Grandma's Jealous Rage" or "What Happened to the Mule?" Read that story here.