Sadie and the Pepsi Bottle

My grandmother was an amazing woman.

Born in 1904, she was an adult during the depression. Her first marriage ended in divorce when she refused to live one minute longer in the same house as her mother-in-law, who treated her badly. Her husband begged her on the whole ride home to her own mother to not do it; she refused, as he would not live anywhere but with his mother.

This was sometime in in late 1920s. Please think about that for a minute. My grandmother sought out and received a divorce in the late 1920s.

Context is important here, regarding the Pepsi Bottle Incident. My family went to visit Grandma Sadie, often, at her house. It was a small house in a rural town in Iowa. Her garage for her car barely fit the car in it, and I remember the walls of that garage were dirt on the bottom, and the top half of the garage was sort of set down upon the square hole of the garage. It was good use of the hill, I suppose.

One time after a visit, we were all piled into the car, and Grandma was standing in the side yard near the driveway, leaning on her cane, to wave goodbye and wish us well. She walked with a cane for as long as I knew her; it was a part of her. She was holding an empty Pepsi bottle that one of us had finished and had walked with it to the car, not thinking. She took it, in order to put it with the others she would take back to the store for their deposit.

As my father put the car in reverse, and as we were waving goodbye and she was too, she all of a sudden began to BEAT THE GROUND in front of her with the glass bottle. I was shocked, because her movements were so swift and confident, and not at all like a Little Old Lady Who Uses a Cane™. In my shock, still watching, I saw a small thing pop up from the ground where she continued to slam the glass bottle.

It was a mouse.

My grandmother saw a mouse in front of her, heading toward her house, and said, “Not today, Satan.”

I have this woman’s DNA in my veins.