Cake-a-palooza!

Does every family have a big birthday month? February is the big birthday month in my family. Lots of celebratin' this month. We've got my dad's birthday, Karen's birthday, Jeffrey's birthday and Grandma Rita's birthday.

Grandma Rita is up in Grandma Heaven now, but we still light a candle for her in church on her birthday.

An altar candle, I mean. We don't bring in a cake or anything. Not that we couldn't. It's a pretty laid back parish.

Like conga drums at the 11:00 laid back.

But Grandma wasn't much of a cake person. Her favorite sweet thing to eat was Almond Roca. You don't see Almond Roca so much anymore. I guess it's one of those generational things. Like chess pies and Lawrence Welk.

Other fun facts about Grandma Rita:

• She introduced me to SPAM (in the form of a fried SPAM sandwich) when I was 12, and I loved it!
• She was a riveter in the Richmond shipyards during WWII.
• Once while walking her dog in Fuston Field (now Moscone Park), Grandma, then in her late fifties, was recruited as a last-minute pinch hitter in a pick-up baseball game. She hit a home run.
• John Wayne once asked her to dance. She said no.
• She could watch the same "Perry Mason" episode fifty times and never remember who committed the murder.
• Her favorite Country & Western song was "I'm Gonna Hire a Wino (to decorate our home)."
• After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, she lived in a Red Cross shelter at Marina Middle School for about a week. She would have checked out sooner, but she was having so much fun, we couldn't convince her to leave.

A certain imperturbable joie de vivre runs in the family.

Kurt "big daddy" True
27 february 2007