KP Caddy Granny Shows Her Pink Power

In some ways, Jo Ann Wood’s place in Home looks exactly like you’d expect from a grandmother. The shelves inside the 77-year-old’s 1,300-square-foot rambler are lined with antiques and knick-knacks. Outside, manicured lawns, rose bushes, rhododendrons, and hydrangeas frame the house, with fountains trickling softly between the blooms.

Look again.

More than two dozen scantily clad skeletons grin from all over the yard surrounding a light pink house. Bodies and body parts of long-forgotten vintage trucks are strategically placed to serve various purposes. It’s a little spooky and a little whimsical, but unapologetically gaudy and naughty.

As for Wood herself: She’s a pink-haired, tattoo-covered, skeleton-loving, motorcycle-riding Caddy granny.

Her 19-foot-long 1959 pink Cadillac Coupe de Ville with sweeping tailfins pointing at the sky is the pride of her pink prizes.

“People stop to take pictures all the time,” Wood said. “I like to get a reaction from them.”

For Wood, pink is power — an exclamation point to her way of saying she won’t be tamed. Her style ­ — bold and playful — and her vibe — free and expressive — didn’t arrive all at once. Wood has lived around the Key Peninsula her whole life, raising kids and grandkids, caring for her late husband, Rod, through illness, and her second husband, Randy, through a stroke. For more than 55 years, Wood worked as a private caregiver for terminally ill patients.

She has seen death up close, over and over again, and she surrounds herself year-round with skeletons, not as a warning, but as a reminder: Laugh while you can. “Nobody should be afraid of death; it’s part of our being,” Wood said. “Instead, find the good things in life and enjoy yourself, no matter what the day brings.” And for the last 35 years, she’s been living that mantra.

At 48, she got her first tattoo from an artist in Port Orchard. Then came another. Then another. Then it became a hobby.

“I’d always be thinking, ‘When can I get my next one, and where can I put it?” she said.

Her arms are covered, and she even has some on her neck and up her cheek. Today her collection includes, among other things, skulls, skeletons, family tributes, car insignias, and pink Prada high heels with fins to match her Cadillac because “Real Prada heels are $1,500. Who can afford that?” She returned so many times that she struck up a connection with her tattoo artist, and years after her first husband died, the two got married.

One of her favorite tattoos is one of her pink Cadillac adorned with the text of a tribute to her and her girlfriends: “Cadillac (Ladies).”

For decades, piloting the Cadillac became a tradition that helped express Wood’s freedom. Every August, Wood, her sister, and friends would pile in, all dressed alike in pink tops, shorts, and flip-flops, and cruise to Port Orchard or Aberdeen to go bar-hopping. “People would be waiting for us in Manchester every year,” she said. “They loved seeing us roll in.” Sometimes they’d pull into taverns, where reactions were just as memorable. “We walked into a place in Belfair once,” Wood said. “Two older gentlemen looked at us, and one said, ‘Do you think it’s our night?’ We said, ‘No, honey, it’s not.’ ”

The car was a rescue from a Vaughn property in 1991, abandoned in the woods with trees growing through the floorboard. “It was really, really ugly,” Wood said. The restoration took five years. The roof was too far gone, so her husband, Rod, cut it off, turning the hardtop cruiser into a convertible. He then repainted the once sky-blue body in a pink hue called Cyclamen Rose using Krylon spray paint. Thirty years later, the color still gleams. Wood had wanted a pink Cadillac since seeing the Clint Eastwood movie of the same name.

But it’s not just the car that turns heads. Back in Home, her property has become its own kind of landmark. Long before she found her current place, Wood had a dream of a pink house with white shutters. “I drove all around looking for it,” she said.

Then one day her son told her the pink house on the corner of Third and Key Pen Highway was for sale. “I couldn’t get there quick enough. I said, ‘That’s the house.’ I had to have it.”

When she bought the place in 2009, the yard was bare and lifeless. She quickly gave it character. She added fountains, flowers, skeletons, and a sign above the garage proudly declares her property as “Cadillac Ranch.”

Step inside, and the pink theme roars to life: a bubblegum-pink dining table, and similar shades for her refrigerator, pool table, jukebox, toilets, and sinks. Skeleton figurines and skull ashtrays mingle with antiques and family heirlooms, while vintage hats perch on mounted skulls like mannequins.

Neighbors often stop to take photos; sometimes, strangers don’t even make it to the door. Once, after arranging a Facebook Marketplace sale, Wood watched the buyer pull up, then speed away. When she called to check, the man said, “I was too scared.” Wood just laughed. “I wasn’t even mad,” she said. “I thought it was funny.”

Not everyone understands the pink-and-skeletons mix, but Wood doesn’t decorate for approval. “I just do it because I like it,” she said. “If somebody doesn’t, so be it.”

To Wood, pink and skeletons aren’t contradictions. They’re proof that a grandma can be tough, tender, and entirely her own — a woman who turned life’s losses into freedom, and freedom into a Cadillac painted pink.