BIPLANE: We laughed out loud when Andy Heffner of Ormsby told us this story of his well-meaning grandmother.

“Back in the 40s, I’m going to say around ‘47, a biplane flew over Bradford writing with smoke over the sky,” Andy said.

His grandmother, who had been a local Sunday school superintendent, was in her house at the time. She saw the writing in the sky out the window, but her glasses were broken, so she couldn’t tell that it read, “Coca-Cola.”

“Right away she figured it was God writing in the sky,” he said.

She called Andy’s mom. His family lived on Cottage Row at the time. His mom calmed his grandmother down and explained it was just a plane writing in the sky.

His grandmother replied, “Oh, I thought it was the end of the world.”

We can hardly blame her for her reaction, though.

“We laughed about that for years,” Andy said.

In light of the recent cold spell, Andy also shared with us a story of the first time he tried grapefruit.

He wasn’t sure of the year, but he recalls it was right after WESB went on air. He was a child at the time, and it was bitterly cold outside that day. He remembers his parents getting the children out of bed, and it was so cold he had to sit wrapped in a blanket.

Outside, “It was 40 below zero. All the pipes in the downstairs apartment burst,” he said.

His dad brought home grapefruit, and each child was given a half a grapefruit as breakfast. “It was so sour we couldn’t stand the eating of it.” Andy discovered a way to make it taste better.

“Dad had this wooden keg that had rock salt in it. When nobody was looking, I put rock salt on my grapefruit.” It did the trick, and it wasn’t until later he learned the salt neutralizes the acid in foods like grapefruit and lemon and makes them taste sweeter.

He knows a lot of people who pile sugar on grapefruit to make it sweeter, but he wondered how many knew the salt trick.