Okay, so today I'm back to talking about my zany family. You see, it didn't stop with my mother's family. Phyllice and I were fortunate to have people with a wonderful sense of humor and charisma on both sides.

My paternal grandmother was a "whiz-bang" too. She was what would now be called a liberated woman. Picture an older woman in the 1950's traveling all over the country by herself, running a man's business and consorting with people of questionable political allegiances. Everyone in the family called her "the gyspy" and were sure she kept a packed suitcase by her front dooor. If you said "go," she was ready. Now add the element of a very fractured grasp of the English language.

She and my grandfather emigrated from Minsk, Russia somewhere slight after the turn of the century. She immediately taught herself English, but it was peppered with what we called Tobyisms.

Here's an example. My dad was driving along a country road in Indiana (they lived on a farm in Crawfordsville at the time) and all of a sudden she tugged at his sleeve and said they were coming to a new town and she wanted to stop. He looked around and didn't see anything that would support what she said.

"Ma, I don't see a sign for a new town. What are you talking about?"

She pointed to the sign directly in front of them, and in an exasperated tone said,"Are you blind, Al? Right there...Bridge Out."

Anyway, that was just the tip of the iceberg for Grandma Toby. I admired her spunk and wish I'd known her better. The last time I saw her I was nineteen and she came to my wedding. That was 1959 when traveling by air was still special. In fact people usually got all dressed up when they took a flight.

Unfortuantely there was an airline strike. She lived in Florida and I lived in California. She was pushing eighty at the time. Well, I was the first grandchild whose wedding she was able to attend, so she traveled crosscountry on the train by herself. When she arrived in California, totally exhausted,her comment was something like, "There wasn't a plane flying in the sky, so what's the big deal about taking the train. It only took a few days."

That's all for today.