Unconventional Granny Koot
By Laura Kanady Cormier

Laura Kanady Cormier

My sisters and I spent part of our happy childhood visiting my grandparents and great-grandmother in Franklin County. Our great-grandmother, Gertrude, died at age 90 in 1985 when I was 25. Everybody called her “Koot” because of the unusual things she sometimes did that made her bunches of fun to us children.

Granny Koot lived in a huge, meandering house with a wrap-around porch. There were pastures, barns and a river for swimming. She often played her upright piano for us in the parlor. We popped Jiffy Pop popcorn over the stove eye and ate it while watching her black-and-white television in the den. I remember warming myself at the heater in the “eating” room and admiring the paisley flowers in the linoleum. In the winter, we’d run upstairs and jump in bed under piles of blankets and snuggle together to sleep. In the summer, Granny Koot would sleep with her feet out the window to keep cool.

When we worked our courage up to venture into the attic, we found old military uniforms, schoolbooks from the 1800s and old portraits in heavy, ornate frames.

Forever playful, Granny Koot (Sarah Gertrude Green) drapes herself across the stairs of a slide.

In the kitchen, a shelf full of salt-and-pepper shakers went all the way around the top of the room. Some were cats or cows that meowed and mooed when turned upside down. When we spent the night, Granny Koot baked us as many canned biscuits with butter as we could stuff in our mouths. Since she lived alone and didn’t keep much milk, we got to have her special coffee, a thick, black syrup loaded with sugar.

There was a well where we loved to bring up buckets of ice-cold water. There was an outhouse in the lower yard. Even though Granny Koot had indoor plumbing, she preferred the outhouse’s solitude where she’d occasionally sneak a cigarette.

She loved flowers and we often followed her around the yard while she pointed out “Money Plants,” all sorts of blooming flowers, and variegated ivy. Once we climbed into her old car and drove down the deserted roads looking at flowers while we slowly floated back and forth over the centerline. A stop was put to our driving around after it was discovered her driver’s license had expired.

Now that I’m grown, I realize how fortunate I was to have a great-grandparent into my mid-20s—and all my grandparents into my 30s and 40s. After Granny Koot passed away, we would occasionally make the trip to her old house, climb over the fence, and wander around talking about happy memories. Eventually, the fields took over and the house got too dangerous to venture into. However, in our hearts it will always live with laughter and the sounds of happy family memories.

Laura Kanady Cormier lives in Cleveland with her husband, Dennis.