Westward

I just love that Robrt Pela at the New Times.  He is an outspoken and prolific preservationist who has gotten inside many of Phoenix's shuttered historic buildings downtown.  He expresses adequately the outrage that I feel about beautiful things being torn down and replaced by repugnant mundanity.

Last weekend, my dad, brother and I were thrown out of the Westward Ho after trying to sneak in to explore.  I thought we had made it after one of the residents negotiated the front buzzer for us, but a security guard quickly intervened.  He wouldn't even let us check out the lobby in which we were standing, and no amount of polite explanation (my dad) or angry-child outbursts (me) would change his mind.  He wouldn't even let me take photos.  Outrageous.

Robrt Pela made it in as described in this descriptive but photo-short article.  

This site has photos that seem recent.

This crappy site has some interesting pictures of the "tunnels" and a short video including some interior shots.

I'm just excited that so much of it has been preserved.  Unfortunately, there is no touring of the building due to "liability," which - fine.  But whose stupid idea was it to turn that building into a home for the old and disabled, thus closing it to the outside world forever?  Was there not a more appropriate, public use for such a building?

I'm not really aware of interesting WH trivia, and I've rarely heard it discussed among the old, native or history crowds.

I volunteer at a tiny art gallery every once in a while.  Because my schedule is insane, I only ever make it there about once a month, but I keep it on my schedule because why not.  The gallery is on the first floor of City Hall, almost completely unknown to the public, which is fine by me, because I just sit and read for a couple of hours in almost completely uninterrupted silence.

I was interrupted this morning by a quiet, somewhat grizzled older guy in all black and a feathered hat who came in to ask me about prints of the pieces, all recent shots of architectural landmarks around Phoenix.  He pointed to the Valley National Bank on Camelback and 44th st, saying, "That's my building."  Maybe I've just had too many downtown kooks up in my face recently, because I just smiled and nodded to the guy, thinking, yeah buddy, it's my building too, we all like it.

I asked him for his contact information to follow up about the prints and watched as he printed his name in exacting block letters, then spent the next 10 seconds squinting blindly into space, my mind desperately trying to remember and fact check without the internet.  As soon as he started to leave, I concluded: he designed the Valley National Bank building, the "mushroom bank," in 1968.

IT IS HIS BUILDING.

I didn't call after him to tell him that I had finally figured out who he was, because really.  His demeanor was interesting, very quiet, almost awkward, although I usually find introverted, subdued people to be interesting. 

Anyway, he is cool.  About the building.

Daria addresses the desert oasis

Finally, as I begin to seriously consider prospects that will take me out of Arizona, I have grown a tentative affinity for Phoenix.  Not for all of Phoenix, but for other-Phoenix - that is, Downtown.  The place where everyone assumes you're a Democrat, where drag queens operate frybread food trucks, and where completely different lives cross paths without much notice from anyone.  I really kind of love the weird juxtaposition of watching homeless people leaving shelters in the morning crossing the paths of shiny young college babes.  The sum of conflict is a wary sideways glance from each.

It's not perfect.  It's not even that great!  But I think I could actually be happy in Phoenix if I moved downtown and stayed there in my baby bubble of museums, galleries, farmer's markets, ancient delis, coffee shops, broken sidewalks and unexpected bits of interest.  It's gentrified, but, you guys - not that much.  I was walking down 5th Street today thinking, "Damn. This shit looks way better at night!"  Little bungalows lean with sagging porches and cracked bricks.  Spraypaint murals aren't exactly architectural improvements.  All the yards are dead, and Depression-era driveways open onto vast chain-linked dirt fields, the missing homes razed decades ago.  It is a kind of dry, blasted out charm. 

There's a lot of Phoenix that I do like, but each is a tiny pocket interspersed throughout hundreds of miles of irredeemable wasteland.  I love my grandma's house, and particular streets.  I love parts of north central, and certain buildings, and certain alleys or spots by the canal where old wind-breaking farm trees still live in the city.  I love sunny cold days when the entire fucking city is glinting in spite of its featureless gloom.  I like knowing where everything is, even if I don't care where it is. 

I've hated Phoenix since I was old enough to realize that other places aren't like this.  Like a reincarnated baby who remembers half of its old life, I felt distinctly screwed by living here.  No weather!  No seasons!  No architecture!  No history!  What are you supposed to do with this place?  It's so antiseptic, so staged, and the more other people love the strip malls stretching to the horizons, the more I hate the city.  And the people! I may have been treated to special breeds of desert rebels (guys in ZZ Top beards who call you madam without irony?  being taught to ride by a failed rodeo star? fine.) growing up, and they still weren't enough to stem the crush of human-shaped crap that populates every inch of this place.

I asked my grandmothers why they moved here.  My Grammy came here to follow my grandma.  They fetishized the warmth after years of Montana winters.  My other grandma came here for a man.  She had to leave Iowa or die, her doctor said, for the dampness that already lived in her lungs.  So she went to Santa Fe, where she went on a blind date which brought her here.  "Never thought of leaving after, eh?"  I jeered, resentfully.  No she never thought of leaving, she said.  One dull summer vacation day, when I was lying half on her coffee table and half on her couch, watching Bob Ross paint a winter scene on an antique circular saw blade, she said, "Change it!  I've seen enough snow drifts to last me a lifetime!"  I thought of the inches of frost that accumulated inside her freezer.  Like that?

I like enjoying the city for what it is, when I can.  Certain bits of research mean more to me because I'm from here, and I know that.  I love historic photos of the big empty valley, with only natural characteristics to identify it.  I visited the Luhrs room at ASU the other day to look for some things and came across a lot of early shots of Phoenix in the teens by Albert Ross, I think.  I took surreptitious, poor phone photos of the few that appealed to something deep and nativeish in me.

 Child swimming in the canal, 1924.  This one really gets me.

Praying Monk. 

Kids playing in the street at 7th st. & Van Buren.  Probably Monroe students.  The street looks so narrow. 

HP HBIC

It's the 1895 Charles Pugh House.

Queen Anne style.  I have read on the internets that it was a "bordello," but have yet to find any real corroboration for that.  (Every old house/hotel/anything was allegedly once a speakeasy or a brothel and I just feel like, make with the sources or GTFO)  It was a rooming house from the 1930s to the 1970s, and in the 1990s it was a restaurant, or a series of restaurants.  That was its last iteration, and I think it has been vacant for at least 10 years, probably more.  My grandmother just told me that my great-grandmother, a real estate agent, sold this house to one of the restauranteurs about 25 years ago.  wtf mate.

Gossip indicates that it's owned by two very old sisters who think it is worth $$$$$$, which may be why they're still holding onto it.  If they thought it was worth so much, you'd think they'd maintain it.  It might actually be, then.  They probably just mean the land, of course.  Bitches.

Well, I'm glad to know the basics.  It's one of like, two? or three Queen Annes remaining in the city and is foremost among the most endangered historic properties we have. 

I didn't prowl around it today because I was running late, however I will definitely be skulking in the future, and I have the remaining survivor Victorians on my list as well. 

Knipe House Update

December 2011

Front

Back

Oh, remember?  There was a fire.

Today:

Front. No more second floor.

Back. Phone camera doesn't zoom. Click on it.

The latter pictures are kind of gigantic, so closeups can be had.

Here's an article from April about the house.  Not much info, but it's the most recent I have seen.  Excerpt from a 2010 article:

"I’ve often thought that preservationists have a 'sixth sense' about buildings and sites.  They’re able to see the incredible 'after' in looking at the dirty, drab, and dilapidated 'before.' (DUH! -AUTHOR) Yes, the Knipe House is looking forlorn, but I remember Barbara Stocklin, our city’s historic preservation officer, saying that it is structurally sound but does need a new roof."

I think the press from this restoration will make Knipe much more well-known in Phoenix.  I'm seeing his name here and there in my researching of other stuff.  He drew the plans for ASU's old Industrial Arts building, and I think the 3 remaining PUHSD buildings on Monroe, around 6th.  See post-renovation photos at the bottom of their Wikipedia entry.  A delightful woman I know from the museum world got to go into those buildings 5+ years ago before they were renovated, and would only describe the interior with sounds.  "Peh! Ew! Uh uh!"  I wish I could have seen inside them!  Why do I only like moldering, fucked up stuff?  Picture of me.

Anyway, the same architect (Norman Marsh) designed all the PUHSD buildings, the Industrial Arts building, and the Monroe School, which is the subject of my research, so I am trying to find out if Knipe worked on it as well. 

OOOOOOOOH! Fun.

Dear World,

You are cruel.  Andrew Eldritch was right to say so. 

For only in a horrible place does this happen, in a desert so sadly deficient in historical properties of interest:

 

Do you notice the scalloped siding?  It is pink and purple.

The front yard is all concretey, and there is a very primitive and ugly add-on to the back that looks like a kitchen.  I'm thinking this was a rooming house, or some kind of commercial property, once.  I was going to explore the front area some more, but a guy was asleep behind the planter, so, maybe later.  You can see his knee in the shot. 

The sadder thing about finding a loner like this, so strange yet partially invisible between parking lots and modernity, is that it was once simply part of a neighborhood.  Rows and rows of pretty little Victorian houses once stood on the site where I routinely lose my car in a confusing garage. 

Old photos of the R*ss*n House (someone local found this blog while searching for the house recently and it alarararmed me because I don't want some 75 year old docent who thinks I'm a nice young lady to be reading this blog!  What good is a life unless you can bitch about it free of ramifications!  Double life.  Anyway, a picture of "that other Victorian house in Phoenix" from the 19-teens showed streets of similarly-outfitted two-story Victorians behind it, heading down what I guess was 6th Street from Monroe. 

Some piece of shit (generations of them) systematically knocked down every one of those to put up something commonplace, ugly, and unnecessary.  The Mercado is now part of ASU Downtown, but what about the other twenty-five years it sat empty and worthless?  Glad we lost irreplaceable pieces of history for that.  (I realize those houses were probably knocked down like 3 decades before the Mercado was built but that is not the POINT.)  I would make a comment about how these practices only drag the city down, but no one in this town one cares anyway.  They love their strip malls; they prefer them! 

Anyway, this house is on 2nd Ave, south of Fillmore.  Or, next to hipster travesty the Crescent Ballroom.

It's probably full of unpleasantness in the form of arachnids and/or crack users, but I would so like to go inside.  Actually, it looks pretty well sealed up.  Later on I'll research the address and see what it was.

ETA: It was a restaurant in the 90s.

Nature rules!

I saw my first jackrabbit today!  I mean, irls.  I didn't realize that I had never seen one with mine own eyes until one galloped across my path and I froze: what the fuck is that, a fucking antelope?  fuck, dude!

They're bigger than I thought.  Possibly not the most adorable of all rabbits. 

The one good thing about having to walk a quarter mile of trail to get to a bathroom at Tovrea (the house is not connected to city sewage and it would apparently cost a trillion dollars to do it) is it forces one to walk all of those nice paths. 

The gardens really are amazing.  Right now, the botanical glory of the site is just a footnote of the tour, which I think is weak and which I believe will be fixed eventually.  Even being from this exact part of the desert, I still find myself feeling a bit awed by the landscape, and I stop every ten feet to observe something new and beautiful.  There are tons of animals around, rabbits, and quail, and cactus wrens, and squirrels, lizards, oh and the feral dogs from the river bottom.  Apparently there was one on the property yesterday, but I didn't see it.

A security guard reported seeing a mountain lion on the site a few years ago.  Amaaazing!

I attended a cemetery walk at the Pioneer Cemetery downtown.  I'm not sure how often they have these, but I think it's pretty rare  That's why I had to go, even though I knew they'd be having costumed docents playing the parts of various factual dead persons.

You would think that knowing in advance would mitigate the anger I felt at their obnoxious and cheesy little playacts, but it didn't.  The cemetery association did some research on various graves, then wrote scripts for the docents to read.  "Hi. My name is Mary Malloy. I moved to Phoenix in 1880, but oops, I died of consumption two years later. Thanks for visiting me today, I get lonely here!"  Don't know why, Mary, there's lots to see.  You live between three homeless shelters and the State Capital.  Each docent nattered on about "their" lives and deaths, inserting false observations ("shure is lonely out hur in my grave!") in a strange way that, much as I am not terribly sensitive to these things, seemed disrespectful.  Particularly considering they're standing there with one foot on the grave of the person who really did die of diphtheria, or whatever.  Two of the docents were children made up to look like corpses, with Halloween wounds of fake gore.  The event was...really shit.  I felt second-hand embarrassment, kind of like when I watch Kate Bush's Babushka video. 

But the cemeteries were very interesting and are very old, Phoenix-wise.  1880s to 1910ish.  That's old here!  Most of the headstones are missing, but there are some large and cool ones around.  The tour didn't really involve relevant or famous Phoenicians and instead curiously focused on dead kids.  Like, we learned about a toddler who died when an oil lamp fell on her.  That's pretty sad, but why would this be part of the paid tour?  Was the toddler on the territorial legislature?  Did it name Phoenix, or hide gold in the Superstitions?  Because the people who did that shit were not part of the tour even though they are there.  Sometimes all-volunteer organizations suck because having your heart in the right place doesn't mean you're doing a good job, dudes. 

Not that I want to go around dissing on non-profit volunteer groups, but this is why a lot of small museums shut down forever.  Because they are doing it wrong. 

Some of the cemeteries go by a couple of different names. Loosely is one of them. 

This cemetery is full, but doesn't look like it due to all of the missing stones.  Many were broken or stolen, and some were just wood to begin with.  Some were carved of sandstone, which by now has been eroded into unrecognizable chunks of rock. 

Some of the graves pre-date the cemetery, because they were moved.  I don't remember where from.  Some families then moved their dead from the Pioneer to other places, because it was beginning to look fucked up in there from lack of caretaking.

There were a few of these plain looking vaults.  Unusual for here.

Jacob Waltz's grave.  He's the famous "Lost Dutchman" who allegedly hid gold in the Superstitions.  He's also one of my dad's personal favs.  The stone seems to be a later addition.  The head (or foot?) of the grave has a chunk of granite which at one time was painted gold.  There's a dirty shot glass next to it.

Kind of interesting to note the differences between this place and Cemetery Lindo.  Lindo is not closed to the public even though it's part of the "complex" of historic cemeteries.  Also, people still visit the graves at Lindo even though it seems that the youngest graves are 60+ years old.  I saw recently wilted flowers, pennies and small offerings of food on the stones there. 

After the tour, my dad regaled the staff with stories of Jacob Waltz and then offered to pick up the headstones that had fallen or been kicked off their pedestals by delinquents.  They were horrified by this proposition and insisted that only a machine could hoist such a heavy stone.  He laughed contemptuously, then said, "Eh, I'll get a buddy to help me. No problem."  They actually took his contact info for this.  I guess I'll be curious to hear if they call.  They said the City had decided not to address the toppled stones, which is another example of why we can't have nice things in Phoenix.

Finally

Something good going down in preservation!

Is the Knipe house being restored?  This pic is from the Arizona Preservation Foundation's Facebook, but there's no information there or on the website. The side of that truck says "AZ Shoring Bracing".

See here for a July 2010 post in which I flip out about the house's unstable future.  There seems to have been lots of debate about whether to bother with it as it is so deteriorated, and Leighton G. Knipe is not famous in spite of having left an architectural legacy in Phoenix.  The Downtown Phoenix Journal (link below) lists some of his works, but there are/were lots of private residences on that list, too.

So what's going on!  Why are they fixing it!  What's going to happen??  I can't find any information on the internet.  The last reference is something about La Grande Orange looking for a downtown Phoenix location.  Will I someday buy a latte and a $3 cookie at the spot where I used to hang my fingers through a chain link fence, wondering if it was worth the risk of potential homeless attack to enter?

Architect Bob Graham talks about why he thinks the house should be restored here.  It's obvious that no one has actually researched L.G. Knipe beyond basic information about his Phoenix contributions.  HLAME.

I went exploring in the gardens around Tovrea Castle today, viewing the propagation beds where baby cacti are born, and a dump site of indeterminate (to me) age where I found an interesting button, which I took home. The first rule of historic sites is that you don't remove things from historic sites, but shit, I'll put it back. When I'm done with it. The dump sites mostly consist of old metal cans, broken glass and, ironically, pottery shards.



Saguaros generally don't like living very close to each other. In the garden, they can be up to twice as close as the ones above. In spite of this, many of the original saguaros have survived from the late 1920s, making the gardens a curious example of a semi-successful bad move.

This thing was originally built in 1928 or 29 as living quarters for the man who built the castle. It's been unoccupied for...a while. Probably 1968.



Scraps of some highly questionable wallpaper. This is the first time I had no desire to enter an abandoned, derelict building.

Bossy the Chicken

My friend Zach keeps chickens in his backyard. I love the chickens so much and am pissed that I can't have any.

Lux and I are back together.

Urban Archaeology!

While putting some textiles away after an exhibit, I noticed what appeared to be child graffiti on the bare plaster walls of a small closet underneath the stairs. I pushed the dozens of dusty tablecloths back to find signatures, a crude drawing of the British flag, the alphabet in a wobbly cursive, and other apparently random scribbles. One of the signatures, in a child's pencil scrawl, was "Selma".

Selma Goldberg lived in the house from 1897 to 1904. I was VERY excited to see this name after having spent my summer researching her family. She was a little girl when she lived in this house, prime age to be hiding under the stairs and tagging up secret places.

What was more exciting, and strange, was that none of the museum staff knew about the writings. Oooh discovery! Although I felt like - really, guys? You've never skulked around inside of the closets...? Because that was basically my first move after taking this position. Phone flashlight in the closets, and open all the books. That closet is the only place in the house that wouldn't have been refinished or painted or stripped in some way over the years or during the renovation. The place has been a museum for 35 years, so the director checked the archives for any mention of the scribbles during the renovation or after - nothing. People had to have noticed them, but the "Selma" inscription is very hard to see in the dark, and that's what gives the scribblings a little more relevance and gravity or age.

I might not have thought to look for anything in an understairs closet if we didn't have one in my childhood home, and if I hadn't written in a few closets myself. Secret inscriptions are apparently a big historic homes "thing," but no one knows about that sort of thing here because we have so few of them.

Top says Hattie, with Selma below. I need to figure out who Hattie was.

This says Annie. There was a young girl by the name of Annie living in the house beginning in the nine-teens.



The alphabet in a childlike but stylized cursive scrawl.

Fat, rat, cat, carved into the inside of the doorframe. This kind of reminds me of that period after kids become comfortable forming letters into words, and start writing on everything.

Another interesting detail, noticed after emptying the closet and crawling inside with a lantern, was that all of the undersides of the stairs are numbered. The staircase came in three pieces from somewhere on the east coast, and each step was apparently numbered for ease of assembly. The lettering is so period and fancy, an amusing secret construction detail.



It is interesting to think of simple workaday details being around for GENERATIONS after you are dead. The guy who wrote his fancy "N" on each plank - did he think someone would ever be interested in that? Or that those letters would ever be seen? Of course not! And now it's on the internet. It's something living people rarely think about, or I assume. I used to frame pictures in little galleries around town, and it kind of weirds me out to think that things that I put together and possibly designed will be in someone else's family for god knows how long. We used to sign everything we did. Sometimes people were rude. Will some kid one day turn a frame over and wonder, was my great-grandfather a dick, or were the initials of the person who assembled this really "FU"?

I'm not sure why I think it's weird that our belongings will outlive not only us but the memory of us, particularly since half of my shit used to belong to other people I have never met. How fucking strange is that? Anyone who loves antique things has to deal with this. The hand mirror I use every day to check if the back of my hair is a rat's nest is a 100+ year old stray from an ebony vanity set. I passed on the bristle brush. Can't help but wonder about whatever girl may have had this thing first.

Wallace & Ladmo

I didn't realize how ridiculous and adult the bits on Wallace and Ladmo were. I caught the tail end of this show's run and my remembrances on it are as such:

-I hated/was afraid of Gerald
-I preferred the cartoons
-My cousin went on the show with her brownie troop and won a Ladmo bag. She was slightly older and bratty and mean to me. She used to make me let her open my presents! Anyway, I considered her getting a Ladmo bag to be proof of the end of all reason and fairness in the world. Turns out - maybe right.

Wallace and Ladmo was a famous local children's show that ran for over 30 years, ending in 1989. Children were obsessed with the Ladmo bag prizes. Some of the first-person narratives I've read about them are still filled with exhilaration or deep bitterness re: who did and didn't get a bag. I'm sure you can ask any Arizona native between the ages of 30 and 50 only for them to smash their fist into their palm and complain about not getting this brown paper bag full of posters and candy. My re-interest was piqued by an exhibit at the Mesa Historical Society. It was pretty all right, but the Lehi School building that MHS is in is a lot more interesting than the museum itself.


drunk?


"Aunt Maude's stories never turn out the way you expect."

GIANT SIGH

"In the mid 1960s, the city of Westbrook, Maine had listed this house as one of the next houses to be condemned and demolished. My folks bought it for very little money, mostly the back-taxes owed to the city. By the time we moved in, our entire neighborhood were already terrified of the place, adults included. The place was seriously creepy. It had no insulation, broken pipes everywhere, thousands of bats residing in the3rd floor attic, scary bad wiring and it had weathered to a dull slate-gray color and hadn't seen a speck of paint in well over 40 years."

by flickr user SurrendrDorothy. There's more info.

I would have done anything to have had that experience as a child. I love moldering old houses. I am kind of annoyed by restoration, in fact, though I realize it's often necessary. Things (and people - other story) should show their age. It's what makes them interesting.

The museum I intern with is an 1895 Victorian dollhouse. It is a perfect showpiece, fully restored and staged in high Victorian frilliness. When the city bought it in 1970, it was a dirty disaster of a rooming house filled with drug addicts, hippies and fleas. There are tons of poster sized photos from before the renovation, and I can't get enough of them. I wish the museum would try to get in contact with people who lived there before they all die off. I need some first person accounts. The house is pretty magnificent, but I feel blah about all the glossy grandeur. It looks a little fake.

Victorian Houses tumblr.



My museum in the 30s or 40s. Peeling paint & screened upper porch.

Arroyo

Oh, the Rosson is all done up for the Fourth of July with some wind-flapped bunting.

And the canna lilies are looking especially jungley. They are self-propagating, lush and tall, with great leaves the size of an elephant's ear. And they like it hot. Good Arizona foliage.

I am researching an early Phoenix family who lived in the Rosson at the turn of the century. For whatever reason, they're the least documented family to have lived there (before 1915. after that, it's every man for himself). It might even involve in-person research. there might be microfiche involved. this sounds both exciting and dreadful. I haven't used a microfiche viewer since uh, mostly never, but my only experience was in the early 90s. I remember giving up almost instantly. Luckily I am a grown ass man now and it is likely that I will persist.

On Mariposa

Following my grandmother's somewhat unexpected death in 2003, my aunt renovated her house and moved in. As the executor of the estate, she was supposed to have sold the house and split the profit four ways between she and her stupid siblings, but she decided that it was not an option to let the house go. I felt the same way. My dad criticised this action and rudely dismissed her desire to keep the house as "a shrine to mom." Not so. She tore everything out of the house, the original kitchen, the ugly 70s tile, the dark carpet, the ancient drapes, and she remade it into something that more or less resembles the Apple store.

But the backyard remains. The old radio flyer wagon is still there, which in my grandma's day was used to transport large bags of cat food from the door to a storage room. The ancient ferns still sit by the alley wall, one 100 years old, the other about 50, brought here from Iowa by my great-grandmother. The guest house (we called it the maid's quarters) which was full of moldering artifacts of mingled family pasts. Warped encyclopedias, medical texts from the 70s, discarded motorcycle parts, and spiders. So many spiders. Also rolls of carpet covered in cat pee, full disclosure.

This is the narrow sideyard. When I was small, my cousins told me that a witch lived there. It was overgrown with bushes at that time and they told me that she hid behind the last one. Even last month when I walked back there to take a picture, my brain recalled the slightest waft of apprehension.

The outdoor fireplace, never once used by my grandmother since 1964. This was another dark area of the yard for me as my cousins told me that this fireplace had been used by a very old woman to burn the bodies of the children she had killed. In my mind, the fairytale was a strange mix of Hansel & Gretel, and the Holocaust. Somehow, I already knew about the Holocaust then.

It was kind of a bitch being the youngest cousin. During summertime sleepovers, my cousin Angie would shove me out of the twin bed we were sharing, telling me that the ground was covered in so many roaches that they would carry me away. To hell, assumedly, where they came from. I would cling desperately to her so that she couldn't shove me out of bed, determined that I would take her with me if I failed.

They would also put dried locust skins in my hair in the summer, but this just feels like complaining now. And when my grandmother would find out, perhaps because I had failed to get one out and had returned to the house with a dead bug skin tangled in my hair which was immediately spotted, she would get the flyswatter out and slap their arms and legs with it a couple of times each, squawking at them comically that they were bad! I never got swatted. Not with a flyswatter, or a broom (her other weapon, mostly against cats), and never was I spanked. I was the total ass-kiss grandchild who did everything she told me to and asked for stories about the farm, which were her favorite ones to tell and my favorite ones to hear.