SWIMMING IN WINE

Not to long ago I had to help a relative with a school assignment. YUK! I hate to be the one to have to do that. It was a big assignment, but the teacher gave them plenty of time to get it done,two weeks. They had to do a family tree, complete with history of the family as far back as the students could go, (of course she didn't expect miracles from 7th graders). But she also wanted pictures, five family reciepes, and five old family storys.

Well my little guy was distraught. He'd never been around any family. I said, "No need to worry I have a family tree" so we ran to my tresure box and dug it out. It was in itself a treasure. It went all the way back to the 1800's and came complete with pictures. Old Old pictures of his great great grandparents and of my uncles. One uncle in his wrestling pose (he had a trunk full of medals and belts he had won in the navy. News clippings, complete with picure of another uncle in an army uniform from WWII, killed just a couple of months before the war ended. And the list goes on. We had a ball putting it all together.

Then it came to the storys , there were so many, all of my uncles were boxers and wrestlers. Do we tell about the uncle who was like "Rocky" from getting to many punches in the head?? Do we tell the one about my Moms brothers always using her for a sparring partner and breaking her nose?? Well we finally decided that a variety of generations would be the best. But we both liked the ones about my grandfather the best, and there was one in perticular that we just couldn't reset . And here it is.--(I have to alter the first part just a little or it will give away the anwser to my previous post).

SWIMMING IN WINE

My family came from Europe. It doesn't really matter which part of europe they come from, this one thing they all seem to have in commen. They all want to own resturants and they all like their wine. My grampa had a resturant but he liked homemade wine. All homes in Chicago have basements and so grampa always had barrels of wine in the basement fermenting. I don't know where he got the barrels but I'm sure he had no trouble getting the grapes smashed since he had twelve kids(I bet they all had purple toes).Unfortunately this was in the days of "Elliot Ness" and prohibition.

Grampa must have made somebody awfully mad, because someone snitched and one night the "Fed's" came to the door pushed there way in and ran to the basement. Grampa was pretty slick, rumor has it that his excuse was something like--I no understand what do bad , I no speak to much english---.

Well with twelve kids standing there they took pitty on him and didn't arrest him, but with hatchets in hands they broke every one of those barrels of wine. And that took some time there were "FOURTY" , yes fourty big barrels of wine, and it flodded the whole basement. Can you imagine?

The teacher loved the old pictures and the storys and he got the 100 point +50 bonus points, which he needed badly in that class.

Boy I'm thristy -- guess what I'm gonna have.