Grandparents

I am now 66 years old, and just yesterday received my first social security check. In other words, I am old.  And just how in the hell did I ever get old, anyway?  It seems to me like it happened overnight.  And now, after all these years, it is just my sister Susan and I that are left, and we both miss our parents and grandparents very much.  Susan and I often talk about them, and she has wonderful stories about staying with my father's parents (Claire and Fleta Hoyt), seen in the photo on the left.  My Grandmother Hoyt would read to Susan each night, and Grandfather and Grandmother Hoyt would often sit out on their enclosed back porch and listen to the Chicago White Sox games on the radio during the summer.  Truly magic times.  By the time I grew old enough to appreciate them, they had retired to Costa Mesa, California, and so I never knew them as well.

I did, however, get to know my mother's parents (William and Louise Spillard, seen celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in the photo on the right), but not as well as my sister. My mother Mary and sister Susan lived with them while my father Nelson served in the army as a dentist on Okinawa during WWII. He returned in 1947, and after living together at my grandparent's house on East 85th place for another two years, my mother, father, and sister moved into our house in the south side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago.  Susan tells me that she just loved living with Grandmother and Grandmother Spillard.  It was the happiest time of her life.  And when she was older, they would take her to the horse races every week, and treat her to a wonderful dinner afterwards.  By the time I came along, they evidently had had enough of taking the grand-kids places, but I am certainly not bitter about that.  I probably would have lost a fortune at the track.