July 1947
I was just twelve when Grandma Neely died. The not so great Grandma from the point of view of us kids. That was Grandma Cardwell.
Grandma Neely, who sold her house in Crossville to Uncle Fred, had plans to travel from kid to kid. That would have been a lofty plan and filled out a hunk of her life for she had ten children.
While she was in Tazewell visiting Uncle Luther and his family she fell and broke her hip. Mommie, attached at the hip it seemed to her mother, immediately made the trip from Crossville to Tazewell to see her.
Kids it turned out were not allowed to go into the hospital. Uncle Luther took Ivy and me along with his boys to a Crystal Hamburger place, where he bought each of us a nineteen cent hamburger and an Orange Crush. We had never had a soda. My first sip filled my nose with such fizz that I spit it out along with the remnants of the hamburger.
That has nothing to do with the death of Grandma, who died later that day from a stroke, related or not to her broken hip. It is relevant to the fact that my only memory of Grandma's death is of the tingly effect of Orange Crush.
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