Over the river and thru the woods to Grandma's Signal Saloon

Although the tradition is rarely seen in the more suburban communities any more, there was a period when our aging grandparents would move into our homes until such time that they just didn't wake up the next morning....it was simply the way it was.

I never knew my grandfathers...they both had passed before I was born, but Nana, on my Mom's side and Grandma Kender on my Dad's side, both left me with some good memories.

Interesting enough, I had always thought we lived in a big house in Dayton, Ohio, but now  looking back,  based on today's standards it was really quite small with two bedrooms downstairs and a converted attic upstairs and just one bathroom, yet Grandma Kender moved in with us and we did quite well.

There was an occasional period when my friend "The Jer" and I would playfully torment Grandma. realizing now that she was suffering from Dementia ... but how did we know.......we thought she just acted a little odd, and that was the norm around our house.

"The Jer" and I would like to sneak up on her and kind of yell and startle her and she would turn around and with no teeth in her mouth  yell  "blaah" and try and scare us away...which in fact she did.

Before she reached a point where she was unable to care for herself, Grandma Kender owned the greatest place in my small world. It was called "The Signal Saloon" down on Edison Street in what was then called "The West Side" around 3rd and Broadway and she lived up on the 2nd floor above the bar.

Dad would take me over there on Saturday mornings to pass along a handful of cash to Grandma and he would hike me up on a bar tool and I would be served my usual, "Roy Rogers", the male equivalent to the female Shirley Temple....a coke with a bunch of maraschino cherries...Dad would drink his usual "boilermaker" a shot of bourbon and a beer...and always with the words of caution, "Now don't tell your mother".

About all I could remember was the place reeked of what I later would learn in life to be stale beer and urine...lots and lots of urine...all splattered from a giant trough  in the men's room and tracked across the tiny white mosaic tile floors.

As you can see in the photo, the Signal Saloon was right next to the railroad tracks and was named for something to do with a nearby railroad signal.

Hanging out at Grandmas was also the first time I ever witnessed a train going so fast and so loud it was like a controlled giant windstorm tossing me backwards as it went by....I would stand only a few feet away and watch as my pennies would get smashed on the rails that I placed right before the train zoomed by.

Grandma also had some chickens in her backyard including the grown up little purple one that I had gotten for Easter, and later became unmanageable in our home on Sandhurst....so it was shipped off to Grandma's to live what I thought would be a long life...a long life for a chicken though...meant only until it was fat enough to be cooked.

On a recent trip to Dayton, I went by Grandma's Signal Saloon which has now become a church.....who would have figured....also, while driving in the neighborhood, I found that Paul Dunbar, a famous poet who grew up in Dayton, lived only a few blocks away...he died young after the turn of the century and probably didn't hang out at Grandma's.

Grandma died when I guess I was about 9 or 10...she moved around from family to family in her last months....the building with its new customers probably still shakes when the trains go by...nothing has really changed about that area....but I do hope the smell of stale beer and other scents has finally gone away.