And yet the sun still shines and we still breathe air...

♫ THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!!!♫


GM FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY; 2 STATE PLANTS WILL IDLE OR CLOSE
It's the end of an era for General Motors.  At 8:00 this morning, the
100-year old automaker filed for bankruptcy, making its stock essentially
worthless.  The deal gives taxpayers a 60% ownership stake and expand the
government's reach into big business.  The government plans to pump $30
billion into GM on top of the $20 billion already given out.  A person
familiar with GM's plans says the automaker will permanently close nine
more plants and idle three others to trim production and labor costs under
bankruptcy protection.  Assembly plants in Pontiac, Michigan and
Wilmington, Delaware will close this year, while plants in Orion, Michigan
and Spring Hill, Tennessee will shut down production but remain on
standby.  Around 21,000 workers will lose their jobs.

 

My grandmother died in 1989.

I was pregnant for my last child and we expected it. She'd had Alzheimer's for years and it was like a living death to deal with, especially for my father and uncle.

This was one of the first times I ever had seen them fight over something.

My father and my uncle were raised by a father who threw them out of the farmhouse, made them put on boxing gloves and duke it out.

So they rarely fought.

However, my parents could no longer take care of my grandmother (since he and my mother both worked outside the home) and this made putting my grandmother in a nursing home a point of contention between the two men. In the end they put her in a nursing home, and the one became two, and in the second one, she contracted pneumonia and died.

 

My grandmother was a very Victorian woman, who cooked meals for "thrashers" at harvest time. She had come from a very good family in Illinois and raised a family on a farm in Michigan. She would work all Christmas Eve night to transform the house from a mere home to a Christmas fantasy for her only two boys. She made thousands of cookies; she made pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin. She made her own arthritis medicine and soap and hand lotion (Lye soap, not that glycerin stuff.)

 

She cleaned fish, helped to butcher chickens grew an enormous backyard garden- made her own jam's and jelly's and before it was ever "the cool thing to do" she and my grandfather ate organic peanut butter. A fact that I relish because I had to point out to a girl friend once that the peanut butter she needed for a recipe, was not bad because of the oil on top, it was organic and you had to mix it up. I knew this because I had eaten a couple of organic peanut butter sandwiches in my time.

 

She and I made a quilt on her peddle powered sewing machine. I still have the machine in my living room. It's used more like an end table. But the machine is still inside and works. It just had the belt taken off because my children liked to play with it. I have an electric sewing machine I sew on-infrequently....

 

Even though she was extra-ordinary, I didn't really appreciate her. I was in my early twenties when she became incapable of taking care of herself and I was stupid and selfish. I saw her as silly and old and puerile. Although, my grandmother gave me my love of history, family history, and spent long hours with me; I guess we don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. I guess I am the "Scarlet O'Hara" of this story and my grandma was the "Melanie".

 

The day she died I walked into JCPenney to pick up a stroller I ordered and people were laughing and talking like it was just another day and I so much wanted to scream "Why are you acting this way!?! ALTA SHRUM IS DEAD! Don't you understand, my grandmother is dead!!!

 

I kind of feel this way about GM because my classic cars are GM cars. Not to the same dramatic extent I did that day, but the feeling reminds me of it, because in this state….It is a big deal.

And for me and my husband this is….A BIG DEAL.

 

Don't you understand, my GM is dead!!!

 

......And yet the sun still shines and we still breathe air...The world turns and we exist....Imagine that?

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George Bernard Shaw  - "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."