Quote 19
Grandma stepped back and clutched her throat, showing shock. "Don't tell me the bank's failed. Banks is failing all over. Had I better draw out my funds? Is there still time?"
"No, ma'am, the bank's still in business." Otis looked down at his boots. "Your seventeen dollars is safe." (6.108-109)
When Grandma Dowdel is summoned to come meet with Mr. Weidenbach, she demands to know if that bank has failed. She only has $17 in her account, but that's still money that she'd like to hang on to.
Quote 20
"What do you want to learn to drive for anyway?" she said. "Don't you go around Chicago in taxicabs and trolleys?"
I couldn't explain it to Grandma. I was getting too old to be a boy, and driving meant you were a man. Something like that. (6.46-47)
Grandma Dowdel just doesn't understand that learning to drive isn't a practical choice for Joey—it's a rite of passage. By learning to drive, he feels that he'll be more of a man than a boy.
Quote 21
Presently she said, "I'll tell you what that reporter's after. He wants to get the horselaugh on us because he thinks we're nothing but a bunch of hayseeds and no-'count country people. We are, but what business is it of his?" (1.13)
Grandma immediately takes a dislike to the reporter who's coming to write a story on Shotgun Cheatham's death. She knows that a city slicker like him is just there to make rude observations about all the hillbilly folks in the country.