How is he beginning his birthday? Dentist appointment at 8:00! Nice teeth for a new year!
When he was a little boy living in the projects in Long Beach, his Grandma Dills would make a pie, a whole pie just for him, for his birthday. He always requested Banana Cream Pie and the twin always had Chocolate Creme Pie. He says it was magic. He would look forward to it for weeks. A whole pie to eat just for himself! It would be gone in minutes!
Grandma Dills married Grandpa Dills when they were just kids in Illinois. They quickly had six children while he tended a bar and she cooked in the back kitchen. Years later after some drama, she left him and moved to California to live near her Victorian mother, who had retired there. Michael remembers her house filled with horsehair sofas and fine, breakable things. Grandpa Dills followed her after a bit, asked for forgiveness, became an electrical contractor and they fell into a good life in sunny California.
Michael's Victorian Great-grandmother is a whole other story. She actually worked for the mob in Illinois, half way between St. Louis and Chicago. She ran a house. Yes, that kind of a house. As this was during prohibition, they ran the liquor through the basement. She kept the money from the upstairs activities while they kept the money from the illegal liquor downstairs. She told Mary a story about being raided by the Feds. Her sons were in the basement shining the shoes of the men upstairs while the Feds searched the basement, she sat on the stairs telling them that she had nothing. After a thorough search, they left. It was then that she stood up and removed a tread on the stairs to reveal the liquor, which was stored in the stairs. He comes from interesting people!
Happy Birthday to the love of my life. May he have many, many more.
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