Memories are a treasure that no one can take away from a person. I believe happy memories can be as valuable as silver and gold. I was very blessed to have had a childhood filled with happy memories. Many of those memories include my grandparents and their house by a lake in Carlisle, Tennessee. I stumbled across a painting by Pamela Meredith titled "House by the Lake"" which I retrieved from Fineartamerica, (2013). The painting is a white house with a red roof surrounded by trees, grass, a path, and a beautiful lake. It is a perfect replica of my paternal grandparents' house from the 1960's and 70's. As a child, my younger sister and I spent many hours at that house. My grandmother never held a job outside the house, but she worked very hard at keeping house, growing beautiful flowers in the yard, and keeping my sister Pam and I while our parents worked. Pam and I were not old enough to go to school yet so our time with Granny was valuable as well as memorable. Granddaddy worked at a factory in town that made car parts, but he was home every afternoon by 4:00. Granny and Granddaddy are no longer with us, but the house still stands by the lake even though it is old and abandoned, and my memories of that place are as fresh as they ever were. .
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Granny was an amazing woman and I always thought she could do anything. There was nothing she couldn't cook and I can remember as I got older how it seemed as if she could take something from nothing and make the best meal. When Pam and I were young, Granddaddy would come home from work and he would always give Pam and me a stick of juicy fruit chewing gum from his shirt pocket. Granny would say, "Now J.T. don't go spoiling their supper with sweets. I have food cooking on the stove right now". Granddaddy would wink at us and give us a little crooked smile, and we would keep right on chewing our gum while Granny would just shake her head and keep on stirring pots of food.