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Posted by: rs on 5/25/1998@23:57hrs:
In Reply to: Re: Grymes Hill posted by: joe locascio on 5/25/1998@02:29hrs:
Grymes hill is Wagner College (not Lugwrench U., as a friend of a friend has called it). It's my alma mamma. I was interested to see that St. John's, a really good basketball school, is now high on the hill. Did St. John's move into Notre Dame down the street, the girls college, or Augies (Augustinian Academy) where Wagnerites in the throes of Religion 101 were known to nail Luther's 95 theses to Augie's Door around once a year just to show 'em who was king of the hill?
Also down the street from Wagner was the Hormann Castle. Now my mother and I had a running argument over this gingerbreaded castle with its gables and turrets. She said her father was a builder, meaning contractor, or subcontractor, more likely, who built it, meaning worked on it. I maintained he was a carpenter who probably drove a few nails. At any rate, this immigrant later opened Molinoff Hardware on Richmond, which was later operated by his son Jake (everybody should have an Uncle Jake, it just sounds good to refer to your Uncle Jake). A lot of my aunts and uncles were raised over the store, and I still have lots of cousins with hardware in their blood, whether they'll admit it or not.
Now for the Grymes Hill story. Grymes Hill meant wealth and privilege, at least as compared to FawCawnahs. Grymes Hill is where the FawCawnahs kids went to shovel snow in the winter and cut hedges in the summer to make twenty bucks.
So one time my friend Nicky Reuter and I grab shovels and start ringing doorbells on Grymes Hlll, looking for beer money while the snow was still falling and drifting, heavily. We get hired by this little old lady to clear her drifting driveway halfway into what is turning into a really big storm. The snow is new, wet, heavy, deep, drifted, and coming down like there's no tomorrow. Nick and I are sweating. We're going to earn this twenty dollars,in fact, we should have bargained for a lot more. As soon as we clear the entry to the drive way, the part near the garage door has drifted up again. We cannot get ahead. Finally the sweet little lady who was good enough to hire us comes out and we pause, sweating, and watching it come down.
"The radio says this is the worst blizzard of the winter." I just take it in, like, you don't need to convince me, I've been shoveling it for an hour. Nick, however, quicker of wit and never loathe to utter it, simply says, "No shit, Lady," which absolutely slays me for its perfection. I've never stopped laughing over this.
-rs