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| Granddad's summer house as it appears in 2010 |
It was a large older house with two front porches, one screened in, extending almost half the length of the front of the house. Entering the front door, the paneled two story entrance hall had a fireplace and 2 sets of double doors. One set leading to the living room, the other to the dining room.
There was a hallway in the back of the entryway leading to the rear kitchen door and the rear stairs. Near and at the base of the front steps, across from the fireplace, was an old fashioned coat rack. On each side of the fireplace stood large heavy dark ebony hand carved wooden chairs which had once belonged to the Huidekoper family and probably had come from Europe in the early 1800’s.
There were some stained glass windows and wide wooden front stairs with rounded wooden railings. The stairs went to a landing, turned and continued to the open area on the second floor. Then wood railings and banister aside the upstairs walkway leading to the bedrooms and sun porch.
My favorite ‘bedroom’ was the large enclosed sun porch in the front of the house. It was over the front porches and had a row of windows on all 3 sides over looking the lake with single beds at both room ends.
Windows next to the beds opened onto the adjoining roofs of the ground floor porches on either side. And I have to admit, sometimes we snuck out at night onto one roof or the other and then carefully climbed down the flower covered pergolas.
When daylight came the family gathered for really fantastic old fashioned breakfasts in the dining room which was located directly behind the screened in front porch on the south side of the house.
After breakfast in the summer it was off to “Church School” and learning the Beatitudes, the commandments and similar philosophies at our local Methodist church.
Photo: Looking north along the lake at a point near where I would turn to walk down Line Street.The church was about a third of a mile away and a pleasant walk along 2nd street which ran parallel to the lake.
But not so pleasant when it was raining, and it rained often in June and early July.
Sometimes I found myself balancing on the rails of the railroad tracks which ran between 2nd street and the shoreline. Other times I skipped down the sidewalk on the west side of the street.
When it wasn’t raining, clouds of dust often billowed from the unpaved street as a car occasionally went by. The dust was especially heavy if they hadn’t oiled the road recently.
One dreary, foggy and very rainy morning, when I was 10 or so, and feeling a bit tired of having to attend Church School, I got up my courage to ‘explain’ to Granddad (who frowned greatly on complaining and excuses) that I’d rather not go to Church School anymore.
By the time I returned from Bible School, the rain had died to a occasional drop and mist.
Granddad was stooped over, busy working in one of the many flower gardens which lined the fences separating the back yard from the orchard. He turned and glanced at me, to let me know that he knew I was there.
Timidly, trying to be brave and very convincing, I spoke my piece.
He looked me straight in the eye and I remember looking away for maybe longer than I should have. My presentation obviously hadn’t gone nearly as well as I had hoped.
Granddad touched his fingers to some flower blossoms as if pointing.
Then he gently put his hand on my arm and began speaking words to me that morning went something like this:
“God made these flowers and God made you, grandma and me”. Adding a smile and with a bit of a glint in his eye, “and he made those night crawlers you caught last night”.
I noticed that he said live, not learn.
“Religion lends meaning to our lives and sets guidelines so we can all get along. You need to study and learn Christian values so you can live those values.”
Then he turned away, leaned over and went back to tending the soil around the flowers.
The conversation was over.
Granddad always spoke very softly and was always brief. So softly one had to listen carefully to understand all the words, or so it seemed. There were no long complicated lectures.
He hadn’t said so, but I understood well that my plea to forgo Church School that summer was denied.
When Christmas came that year, my gift from Granddad was my own bible.
Sometime later, reading part of the new testament I came across a hand written note on a small single piece of paper which simply said: “To my grandson with love.”
The slip of paper was initialed with initials I didn’t recognize. The initials were NTL. It as a mystery why those particular letters would be there. Years later I would learn who wrote them and what they stood for.
That summer, the summer Bible School, and Granddad’s heads up about God sparked an ever increasing curiosity and interest in religion.
Over the years I went on to read many versions of the bible and tried my best to comprehend the philosophies they taught.
Later I was fortunate to be challenged to live these strength and wisdom giving philosophies. Without the lessons and teachings of the great religions in my life, my life would have been infinitely more difficult.
A few years later I become active in youth fellowship at our community church and during Junior and Senior high sang in our church choir.
During my early teen years I and many of my friends were especially inspired by Paul Franklin Hudson, our minister and by several youth ministers including a very special one named Bob Sheehan.
Then, when I was 16 or so I was invited to give the sermon to our community church in Pleasant Hills. Once a year, we had a “Youth Sunday” when the young people of our congregation provided the Sunday services.
My sermon was about Albert Schweitzer and entitled "Strive to learn, Dare to belive".
But that’s part of another story. And I’m getting off the track.
This, after all, is a story about another and very special experience.
The Fall after the summer Bible School experience, Grandma suddenly fell ill and just as suddenly passed away. Young as I was I attended her funeral. It was a sad funeral, and the day of the funeral was a heavy, dark and melancholy day, at least for some of us.
A few of my Aunts and Uncles attended and most of the family members went to Granddad’s city house in Ben Avon after the funeral services. The adults had gone to the living room for some kind of discussion.
It was a very large, and normally very quiet, house.
The walls were thick, made of real brick and heavy plaster. The ceilings were nearly 12 feet high and the heat was from ever silent steam registers fed from a large stoker fired coal furnace in the basement.
I had settled on the couch upstairs in the library, in front of the fireplace and Granddad’s new TV that had a big 10 inch direct view screen.
TV itself had just recently come on the air. If anything could take away the trauma, hurt and pain from Grandma’s death, maybe the Television could. Granddad wasn’t in the library, he must have been back in his bed room.
Suddenly the voices on the television where overshadowed by explosive arguing and fighting down in the living room.
The voices and tempers were raised and echoed up the stairs clear to the library.
Never had I experienced this in Granddads always peaceful home. There seemed no mention in these angry heated words of the loss of their mother, or display of sorrow.
The issue seemed to be ‘who gets what’.
More specifically, the arguments were over who got which lots and land at granddad’s summer place at Conneaut.
Granddad wasn’t even dead and the fight for his property had begun. Their mother had just been laid to rest.
I was mortified and maybe a bit frightened by this disgustingly inappropriate behavior. Instead of sadness and grief, greed was in the air. Voices of anger rattled my ears.
Granddad must have heard the commotion as I saw him come down the hall and turn and go down the front stairs.
Apparently he had then asked the squabbling adults to come upstairs as now there were voices climbing the stairs. I turned down the TV.
Granddad came into the library, got something from under the long table behind me, then turned and walked out.
The look on his face, echoed the disgust and dismay he must have felt.
A few minutes later as uncles and aunts filled the library, Granddad was back with his Sunday hat in one hand, 9 small pieces of paper and a large scrolled blue print in his other hand.
He wrote a number on each small piece of paper and unrolled the map on the table behind the couch where I was sitting. The room fell silent.
He said there would be a drawing, that lot numbers had been written on the slips of paper and the map, and each would inherit the property they drew from the hat. He shook the hat several times to rearrange the numbered papers.
Greed itself drew each slip and the fight suddenly seemed to grow to the pitch of a battle.
“Now trade each other for the lots you want. I’ll draw for those not here. When you have the lot you want, write your name on the paper.”There was more haggling and slowly the shouting and grumbling trailed off and finally seemed silenced. Granddad took the slips of paper from each, turned and walked out.
Disgust seemed engraved into his brow. Anger seemed embedded into the wrinkles of his face.
I kind of followed Granddad as he left the library. He walked down the hall and went slowly up the stairs to the 4th floor, then hand on the railing, down the long darkened hall.
He turned into to his billiard room.
When I entered minutes later, there he stood. Head bowed like he was in prayer, standing between the cue rack and the closet where he kept his prized violin and ivory billiard balls.
He looked up at me with a great sadness in his eyes.
“Their mothers dead, and they don’t seem to even care”.He lowered his eyes to the floor like he was saying something to God, quietly spoke a few more words which I didn’t catch, picked up a cue stick from the rack, then gently laid it on the billiard table and every so silently, left the room.
Something told me not to follow and I didn’t.
I was sad. For granddad and for my grandmother.
That evening I climbed into my fathers car and it rained in my heart all the way home.
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| Family Reunion in Trinidad Colorado 1899 Granddad (back row far left) & Grandma (back row holding Uncle Wes) |
The careful penmanship and hand writing showed a great tremor. The title of the poem was “After 57 Years”. The poem’s very carefully scribed signature was one I never had seen before.
It was signed “Nosredna Trebor Licec”.
It was a very private poem, with very private words giving thanks to God for the opportunity of a man sharing his life with the woman he loved.
In a few carefully written words and sadly rhyming phrases, it spoke of that man’s love for his wife and how greatly he missed the wonderful woman who had borne his children and shared his life for fifty seven years.
Slowly I read each letter of that carefully penned signature backwards. And then I knew what the initials were in the note placed in the Bible Granddad had given me years before.With my eyes and heart glistened and graced by years of fine memories including the memory of that initialed note in a birthday Bible, I silently said goodbye.
Goodbye to my Granddad. And to my Grandmother.
If ever a man was blessed by his grandparents, it was I.
Note: This story was first published as part of an English paper at Florida State University in 1957. At that time, I was still in possession of Granddad’s original poem. The professor liked the story and poem so much that he read both to the class.
