Interview my grandparents

I’m so happy I got to do this. I now have DVDs of both my two living grandparents and my fiance’s two living grandparents, so our kids will be able to hear their great-grandparents tell their own stories. My grandfather has cancer and may not live another year, so I feel more at peace after having done this.

I interviewed my grandma on video last year about the family history and I also had ONE video I shot with my grandpa when he was still alive where I asked him about his escape from the Armenian Genocide in 1915. I never got a chance to ask my 3rd grandparent anything, she died when I was a young teen and I never met her husband because he died in the 1960s.

The night before Thanksgiving, I asked my grandmother a question about a pair of socks that are a family tradition, and we ended up talking for two hours.

(My grandmother’s uncle used to wear a pair of tiger socks every Christmas morning. My dad has them, and they’re hilarious. They even have little felt claws sewn on the top.)

My grandmother’s father and two uncles owned and operated the first Pap’s Blue Ribbon distribution plant in Waco, Texas. Apparently in Texas, the beer business practically used to be like the mob. Her uncle used his connections to set her cousin up with another distribution plant in a little town. There was a lot of competition for it, of course, and I’m sure there was a lot of money to be made from owning it. Anyway, her went to his office early one morning and, when he hadn’t come back by noon, his wife went to check on him. When she arrived, he’d been shot. The police ruled it a suicide, but all the men in the family were convinced that someone in the business had done it.

Also, another uncle of hers – Uncle Zeno, actually, who prompted this whole conversation – always had lots and lots of money, but no one really knew how he made it. Most of the family suspected he was some kind of smuggler or bootlegger.

We have quite an interesting family history, it would seem.

i had asked more questions prior to them passing. I still have one grandmother. I need to spend more time talking to her.