Melissa Miller is a GPC student.

I’ll never forget the summers when my cousin and I spent two weeks with our grandparents. Grandpa and Granny Miller were our mutual grandparents and Aunt Cleo and Uncle Willy were my cousin’s grandparents. Our grandparents lived around two miles apart in the country on large acres of land outside the small southern town of Cairo, Georgia. We had many grand adventures and loads of fun those summers.

One of our adventures involved a gigantic blueberry bush that belonged to Granny and Grandpa Miller. It was at least eight feet wide and eight feet tall. The blueberry bush sat next to the house and was surrounded by pine-trees, camellia bushes and azaleas with pathways about. My cousin and I both loved blueberry pie, blueberry muffins and blueberry cobbler, so it was our job to pick plenty of blueberries. We would grab our tin pans and head out to the blueberry bush ready to start picking. Of course, we had to eat as many as we picked, so it took us a while to gather all we needed, but as soon as we finished, we knew what was next. We’d both go tearing into the house, yelling "Granny, Granny, we got the blueberries." Granny would come to the kitchen and tell us to get out the cookbook and say, "Let’s get started." It would be the three of us with Granny teaching and my cousin and I doing as we talked about so many different things. Once we finished mixing everything, we would sit back and wait for the steaming hot pie oozing blueberry pie to emerge from the oven, ready to be devoured. Of course, this was only one of the many fun things we did.

My cousin and I both had our bicycles, so when Granny and Grandpa Miller got tired of us, we’d jump on our bikes and head to Aunt Cleo and Uncle Willy’s place. To get to their place, we had to ride a couple of miles on country dirt roads with very few houses. This journey was fun except for two places in between our grandparent’s houses. There was an old abandoned church and graveyard halfway between the houses. The wood was rotting on the outside of the church and the windows were caked with dust that no light could shine through and it sat back from the road surrounded by old trees and wild shrubs. Since we just knew the church was haunted and we did not want to be attacked by a ghost, our hearts pounding so hard we could hear them beating, our legs moving like pistons, we would peddle as fast as we could right by it. As soon as we passed the church and graveyard, we felt like we had survived another day and calmed down to enjoy the ride. Pretty soon though, we would have another challenge, only this one wasn’t dead. This one had lots of teeth, four legs and could run fast as lightning. Just before attempting to pass this area, my cousin and I would slow down and stop to discuss our game plan to get past this ferocious beast. I am proud to say that we were able to get past the beast with all parts intact and without disfigurement. After that, it was smooth sailing to Aunt Cleo’s and Uncle Willy’s house.

Aunt Cleo and Uncle Willy had a working farm, where we helped out with the horses, pigs, cows and chickens. The pigs were our favorite and we got to help feed them. Feeding them was pretty gross because they ate anything. We fed them old corn stalks, food scraps and the most disgusting thing was dead chickens. We’d throw all this food in the pigpen and the pigs would go wild for it. We’d also put grain in the trough for them to eat. One time, there was a bunch of new baby pigs and they were so cute, that I wanted to pet one. I climbed over the barbed wire fence to chase one down, and as soon as I did, here came mama pig after me, all one hundred and fifty pounds. Scared to death, I started screaming and running back to the fence. I put one leg over and sure enough, my thigh got caught in the barbed wire. So there I was, straddled on that barbed wire fence about to be attacked by a one hundred and fifty-pound pig. My cousin started to pull me off, but I was good and stuck. One of Uncle Willy’s helpers saw us and rescued me. My cousin scared me again when he told me I had to get a tetanus shot or I’d get lockjaw, so off to the doctor we went. You’d think that would be enough, but not for my cousin and me.

My cousin and I both loved to hear our grandparent’s stories and would ask them lots of questions. They’d eventually get tired of talking and tell us to go play. For us playing could be anything, including spying. We would lay on our bellies and crawl like snakes from the den to the bedroom and try to catch them unawares. One day we got lucky and thought we saw smoke coming out of the bathroom where Granny Miller was. We thought this was really curious and wanted to figure out what was going on. We stalked Granny Miller for several days and came to the conclusion she was smoking. The only reason we could figure she was hiding was because she didn’t want Grandpa Miller to know she was smoking. This was just too good to keep quite, so we wrote a note to Grandpa Miller tattling on Granny Miller, knowing she was going to get in trouble. Well, Granny never got in trouble but we sure did. Grandpa Miller scolded us for sneaking and spying on Granny. He did a really good job, because that was our last adventure in spying.

Some of my best memories in life are those summers with my cousin, our grandparents, the country, and our imaginations.