Family History Revised

When my Grandma Bea came over here from Lithuania, she had with her a vision-- Bloomingdales and tongue sandwiches. She kept that vision alive over the years. At 16 she met Riter and Al who were already married by about age 10. Or maybe they were brother and sister, nobody really knows. Riter and Al and Grandma Bea all used to work at Bloomingdales after school. At the end of the evening Riter and Al and Grandma would all ride on a subway home to Bensonhurting, Brooklyn. Then they would eat a large dinner of tongue sandwhiches and chocolate. Uncle Julius would be the one cooking the tongues. Uncle Julius was Grandma's uncle. He was a giant. He was so huge that he was taller than the Metlife building. He was over 5 feet tall.

Grandma had a friend named Lila. One night Lila slept over at Grandma's house. Grandma's parents were sleeping upstairs. Lila brought some cigarettes over and they decided to smoke them. But grandma had never smoked a cigarette before so she didn't know how to do it. Lila lit a cigarette but then before she could start smoking it Grandma said- "Hey I'm hungry,lets raid the tongue drawer." Lila set the cigarette down on top of a lamp in the living room. Grandma and Lila went into the kitchen and picked at the tongue for about five minutes and then Lila smelled smoke. They realized the cigarette had caught the lamp on fire. They pushed the lamp on the floor and stamped the fire out. Grandma's little brother Herbie heard the noise and came out of his room. He was wearing his Coney Island Cyclone pajamas. He saw Lila and Grandma crawling around on their knees looking for something. They were looking for the cigarette butt. Suddenly Lila shouted "I found the butt!" and held it up. Grandma said "shhhh Daddy will hear!" The girls turned around and saw little Herbie sitting there watching everything. "What are you doing Beatty?" he said, "You were smoking, I know. And I smell tongue too. You should be ashamed of yourself-- smoking and stealing tongue on the same night! Daddy's gonna kill you." Grandma grabbed Herbie's little neck, "You aren't going to tell Daddy anything, you little brat! Cause if you do I'm gonna rip up all your toy neckties! Anyway, we have an excuse. We'll just say the lamp caught fire by itself."

The next day there was a knock on the door of Grandma's room. It was Grandma's Dad, Sam. Sam was a mean religious man who banged on the table during every meal shouting "God's watching you and he doesn't think you should be eating all that meat!" Lila and Grandma were still asleep and Sam had woken them up. They sat up in the bed as Sam walked in the room. "I know you girls were eating tongue and smoking last night and I'm not going to tolerate it!" From now on NO TONGUE! If you want tongue you better go to the cow yourself and de-tongue it!" "No Daddy!!" Grandma Bea cried. "You can't do this to me!"

But he could. From then on Grandma ate pastrami instead.