Growing Up In America - Capturing The Dream

America The Beautiful - A Time Of Memories

2006-10-01T14:33:00.004-04:00

The Anderson Kids - Photo Of My Uncles & 2 Aunts - Taken About 1908

Sitting, Left To Right: Wes, Elizabeth (Bid), Bob
Standing, Left To Right: Avery, Arie, Hazel

Click Image To Enlarge

The stories of growing up in America below are all true. Some of the names, and exact places may have been eliminated or shortened to respect privacy.

In addition to this blog, I hope you will use the links in the left column to visit my other web sites and blogs.

I also invite comments including those of your own memories and experiences.

You can contact me by leaving a comment with your email. I will not make the email viewable by the public. If your message requests a reply, please understand that it may take some weeks or even months before I or one of the folks helping me* responds.

If expecting a reply please be sure to check your spam/junk mail filter as some have reported the email reply ends up there.

Hope you enjoy the stories and memories....

Dave

American Family Heritage

2006-09-01T10:17:00.001-04:00

He was born in Ottumwa Iowa in 1872 (some say) or 1870 (others say).

Granddad was my friend, my mentor, and along with Grandma, perhaps they were the most important people in my life.

Grandma hugged a lot but didn't say too much, instead setting an example of how a grandma should be. Granddad didn't hug quite as much but had a lot of incredibly important things to say and even more to teach his grandchildren.

In a quiet, respectful, loving and very special way, they taught me about life, about our country, about our wonderful world. Most importantly, they taught something intangible called values and honor and respect and dignity.

Granddad Anderson with a Muskie Aug 2, 1910.

Among other things, Granddad showed me (and many of his 30 other grand kids) how to plant corn and prune an apple tree or even pluck chicken feathers. How to shoot, hunt and fish plus hundreds of related skills.

How to work, how to pray, and the importance of respect. Grandma, how to hug, love, care, cry and many ways of life.

When with Granddad or Grandma, I was showered in respect, dignity, courage, love and all the other great attributes they had learned growing up in Iowa, visiting Colorado and then finally moving east around 1895.

Granddad was a self educated, self made, serenely quiet man. In his city house he had over 1000 books in his library, and they were not there for show. He had read them all and could quote most.

He loved poetry, billiards, hunting, fishing, drawing, flowers, gardening and most of all his wife and family. He was very stern, but also very warm. His concepts of responsibility and wisdom and hard work brought him to the world of both financial and personal success. The N.Y. Times described him as a "Pittsburgh Industrialist" but to me he was just Granddad.

Truth is, he didn't seem to be interested in money or financial success, or it least he never showed it. He usually wore a somewhat wrinkled white cotton shirt, but skipped the tie when working in his garden or tending his flowers and dozens of fruit trees.

He taught me practical things like how to sharpen a scythe and cut the fields, trim a mulberry tree and shoot at the blackbirds and crows that raided our corn. Where else could a city kid like me get an education like that?

And he taught me something called values. Values I’ve cherished and carried with me through a lifetime of over seven decades.

Like Granddad, Grandma was quiet, warm and loving. Most of the time she had one of her Grand kids or Great Grand kids in her arms and her knitting on her lap.

Sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch. Enjoying the breeze and overlooking the lake at their summer house with a glint in her eyes and a graceful, very soft smile. If she was not there, she was upstairs sewing on her treadle Singer sewing machine. An old fashioned woman living an old fashioned life. In my entire life, I never heard her complain or say anything bad about anyone or anything.

When I was little I also visited Granddad and Grandma in the winter almost every weekend at their "City House" in Ben Avon, Pa. I'd climb the first flight of stairs past the stained glass windows on the landing and on up to the library. Sometimes up another flight of stairs to granddad's billiard room where across from the cue rack and spittoon was a very large play area for kids.

Opposite the door to the billiard room was Uncle Ave's room. Ave worked at Granddad's factory and wholesale business and had been wounded and badly scarred by mustard gas in world war I. Ave was artistic, quiet and shied away from obnoxious people. Like Granddad he painted beautiful pictures, mostly oils and many in the style and appearance of Frederick Remington. When Ave came home from the first World War, his wife took their kids and took off with one of her unscarred boyfriends. I never heard Ave speak of his family or even acknowledge his family. The wife took the children and abandoned Ave.

I met and spoke with Ave’s children, my cousins, in later years but heard no good words and many inappropriate words about their father. Cousins who really only knew or seemed to remember memories embedded by a self righteous mother rationalizing some of her own behavior. Although living only a few miles from Granddad’s summer home, tragically those cousins never chose to associate with the rest of the family. Even though they were invited and even long after Ave’s untimely death.

But I did get to share my life and growing up experiences with dozens of other first cousins.

Along the windows in the billiard room there were large window seats. And when you lifted the lids of the window seats there were hundreds of children's building blocks and toys galore. Giant block towers were waiting to be built and come crashing down, only to be built again in a newer and better way. There were pen and ink drawings on the wall that Granddad had drawn and some of Ave's western paintings. There was a huge blackboard showing diagrams of Willie Hoppe's angles for 3 cushion billiards. A blackboard that we grand kids couldn't touch and boxes and boxes of toys that we could, should and did touch and enjoy. The fine billiard table meant Granddad took his game of 3 cushion billiards very seriously and the heaps of toys meant that he took his grand kids just as seriously.

In those long winters of my childhood, I spent many a weekend snuggled upstairs in Granddad’s library pouring though almost a thousand books. That was long before TV and there was plenty of time for Granddad's stories and rocking in his giant rocking chair.

Granddad in about 1886. I looked just like him at a similar age!

Stories of covered wagons and how the Indians had scalped an older relative in Colorado. Of growing up in the years after Abe Lincoln. Of children that had perished when Grandma and Granddad had moved east.

Of men great and small. And of their hopes and dreams.

Of cherishing but not too much. Of religions and Moses and Abraham. Of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John and Peter and all the rest.

Of the lessons and philosophies of other religions and world history. Archimedes, Socrates and Plato. Science, Philosophy, Poetry and Music. Of John James Audubon and Luther Burbank.

Of twisting 4 dials on an old floor model crystal radio that had 2 giant tubes and even a speaker. Of joy, happiness and later sorrow and weeping. Sadness and tears when a cousin died in the war and silent weeping when Grandma died a few years after the war ended.

I wept too, not just when family or friends died, but when winter weekends (or the summer season) ended and I had to go back to my parents home and the terrible fear and trauma of their sadistic world of abuse and greed, hate and anger. That was a far different world than the peaceful security of my Grandparents home.

In later years I would come to realize that Granddad and Grandma knew the abuse was going on in my parents home and that they both tried to keep me away from my own family as much as possible. In those days there were no social service agencies.

And in those days of old, families tried to take care of their own problems.

I grew up to be a teacher, a professor and a businessman. And for every day of the more than 70 years I have been here sharing God's good earth, I appreciate more and more the memories and wonderful experiences and philosophies given so gracefully to me by Granddad and Grandma.

So in a way, this short story and this blog are a way of thanking my Grandparents and those wonderful friends that have stood by me over the years since.

I offer a very special thanks to those wonderful Grandparents who took time out of their lives for me and 30 other grand kids.

It would take much more than a Blog or even a book to tell all they taught me, all they did for me.

Footnotes:

<< Photo of Granddads city house in Ben Avon as it looks in 2008.

He bought it in 1906 and sold it shortly before his death in 1954.

Outwardly not much has changed except the back porch was replaced with a newer modern one and some updates to the patio.

In the old days the lot next door was also granddads and had a large gazebo and incredible flower gardens.

When his sons went off to war, Granddad got discouraged and sold off some of his East Site property at Conneaut Lake.

The photo to the left is an ad he placed in the Pittsburgh Press in 1918.

Later, living on the west side of the lake, Granddad sold a 100’ of Lakefront beside his dock to the Rockwell family from Meadville, then in about 1949 sold about a half mile of lakefront (now the beginning of Aldina Drive) to some investors who wanted to fill and develop the lakefront.

In about 1951 he sold his summer house, which we called the “big house” overlooking the dock and lake to Art Britton who claimed he wanted it for his crippled daughter. Art promptly re sold the house to the Wiley family, who years later resold it to Cyril Mead who added the swimming pool where beautiful gardens once stood and my Aunt Katharine and Uncle John Dearing were married .

Of his original 40 acres or so on the west side of the lake, Granddad kept about 18 acres for his heirs. And they still use some of that land, including the dock with the willow tree he planted in 1938, to this day.

As a teenager Granddad (Cecil Robert Anderson) began working for Martin Hardsocg near Ottumwa Iowa where Granddad was born.

Later he invested in Martin Hardsocg’s company (the company was named Martin Hardsocg for its original founder in Iowa). Granddad eventually became Secretary Treasurer of the company and later President and sole owner.

During those years Granddad got many patents and sold some of them to mining tool manufacturing companies including Martin Hardsocg.

At the bottom of this page are clips from newspapers and other documents mentioning Granddad between 1880 and 1930. Some of the clips can be clicked for more information.

With many friends help I’ve constructed a family tree and made the family tree public on Ancestry.com. It now has over 1000 family members and hundreds of photos and as I am able, I try to keep expanding its scope.

For some family branches such as the Wray family it dates back to about 1050 (England/Wales).

For privacy however names of living relatives are not shown to the general public but are available to bloodline cousins on written request.

Breakfast At Grandmas: The War Years 1941 - 1945

2006-08-01T15:20:00.003-04:00

I stumbled past old Al's room and tripped for a second as I rushed down the back stairs. Led onward and downward by what seemed to be scents of heaven. Scents pulling me nose first right down those very dark, narrow and somewhat creaky, dark stained and worn oak boards.

I stumbled a bit more and landed on the kitchen floor almost knocking old Al the cook off his feet. I was seven and always in a rush.

I didn't have a cook, but my Granddad did and we called him Al. And Al was looking at me with a bit of a frown that quickly faded to a smile.

Granddad had been as poor as a church mouse when he and Grandma were kids in the 1870's, but he worked very hard and in the America of the late 1800's and early 1900's he had succeeded pretty well.

On this trip to the lake Granddad had left Emma Carpenter and his other maids at his winter house in the city (picture below) but old Al came to the lake every summer back then with Granddad and Grandma. By then Grandma was in her 70’s and Granddad knew it was too hard for her to fire up the wood stoves.

Al seemed sober today and I couldn't see any bottles of aftershave or whatever he'd been drinking sticking out of his pocket.

With the wonderful aromas and scents of fresh baked bread and today's breakfast in the air I certainly didn't notice Al’s breath, at least this time. Al liked his booze but never drank when Granddad was in town. Granddad spent only a few days a week at the lake and the rest of the time he was in town and his "city place". Working or so I guessed.

I was a kid back then during the War and not supposed to know what booze was and I don't think Grandma ever told Granddad about Al's drinking cause Granddad openly didn’t approve of alcohol except for cuts and as medicine.

Al lifted the burner top on the big wood stove and threw another log into the flames. There were 2 wood stoves, a smaller green and ivory one on the back porch, the much larger black and silver one in the kitchen. It wasn’t too cold that morning so the porch stove hadn’t been fired up.

It was summertime and we were living at Granddad's country house at Conneaut Lake. Granddad had already come back from fishing that morning, cleaned the fish on the old log down by the chicken coop*, changed his clothes, put on a clean but somewhat wrinkled white shirt, and was standing in the dining room gently tapping the dial of his barometer.

One huge black iron skillet was full of today's catch. In the oven and warmer on top of the kitchen stove were huge brown rolls and a loaf of very fresh yeast risen bread.

Al moved the fish to the oven to keep them warm and began frying the ham and bacon, both freshly sliced. Fresh eggs from the hen house in the apple orchard would soon join the covered rolled oats and pancakes already on the dining room table.

"Son", Al said, "cover the rolls and carry them to the table and fetch me some more wood and I'll save a special treat for you... and by the way... fetch me some water if you could and chip some ice for your Grandfather." Granddad wanted his coffee black with just a touch of cream but very hot, and his water very cold.

Al called almost everyone who was a kid, son. Even the younger girl cousins. He called the men, my uncles and other older cousins, Mister and the lady folks Missus even if they weren't married. We got the water from a well near the garage about 150 feet from the house. I had got real sick from that well last year and I hoped Granddad would have a new one dug soon. Granddad had said he would and he always kept his word.

The dining room table was set for only 3 today. Granddad, Grandma and me. Some days it would be set for 12 or more and some days the kids like me had to eat in the kitchen when there were too many adults (or always when we were at Granddad's city house where all children, until they were 10 ate in the kitchen). In the summer at his cottage, which we called the big house, Granddad seemed more relaxed. He bent the rules and we were welcome in the dining room and just about every where else.

Back then Granddad owned about 50 acres of land adjoining his house. Years later when he was much older, folks conned him out of much of the waterfront and even the house we were sitting in. But those days weren't here yet and we enjoyed every moment at the lake.

Picture of Grandma Anderson when she was about 27 in 1899.

Grandma gave me a hug, then sat down. Then Granddad sat down, then me. It was a ritual, no one sat down till Grandma did.

The sun had just come up fully and the light bounced off the lake and then off the mirror and into my eyes. Grandma saw me squinting and said I must need glasses.

There was new flypaper hanging from the chandelier above the table but no bugs were stuck to it. The faint sound of a small outboard motor down on the lake and the much louder sounds of morning doves, and of birds everywhere chirping and singing were familiar and reassuring.

There were no air raid sirens out here in the country and Grandma's canaries in the two cages by the dining room windows sang all day long every day.

Back in those days, before the invention of modern bug sprays, there were 100's and even thousands of birds everywhere. I knew cause in years to come I would be the one chasing the crows and blackbirds from our cornfield or the Starlings from the birdhouse Granddad had built for the Purple Martins.

The world was alive and living and I had heard of John James Audubon and viewed the beautiful bird pictures in his books long before I was 5 years old.

There was no TV playing that summer morning cause TV's weren't in use yet and World War II was on. When we were sitting at the table there were always conversations and many were about the war.

About everything new. Like Freddie being sent to the Pacific to bomb the Japs and not being able to buzz the cottage every afternoon in his B17 which he usually did during Granddad's nap time. There was one talking rule though. If you spoke of troubles or something bad at the table, you had to get up and leave. Grandma said meals were meant by God to be happy times. And no unhappy talk was ever allowed.

In the evenings, we'd stain to listen above the static to the radio in the living room. We'd hear the news or Fibber Magee & Molly or maybe put a roll in the player piano which seemed to break a lot. The phonograph was a crank up job and I wasn't allowed to play with it or even crank it up.

Photo: Granddad’s city house as it appeared in 2009, basically unchanged from the way I remember it in the mid 1900’s..

But I never ever saw Freddie again or felt the house shake when he flew low over it. His plane crashed somewhere in the Pacific near or over China after a bomb run over Japan. Freddie and his enthusiasm and laughter would be gone forever, but living eternally in our memories.

It was early morning now though and there seemed enough food for 10 people. Granddad had his own chickens, chicken coop and pen and the fish, fresh from the lake, were as fresh as the eggs. Granddad got up just about every morning at 4:30 or so and went fishing. Once in a great while, if I had been very very good, I would be asked to join him. And that was an honor.

If you've never eaten real fresh food, freshly cooked on a wood stove, you've missed something very rich in much more than flavor and taste.

Granddad said grace which he did at every meal, then we all dug in. I don't know how many calories I ate (or for that matter Granddad and Grandma ate) for breakfast in those days but it must have been a huge number for all of us. I was thin though, maybe because I got to earn a little extra money by working outside all morning then playing hard all afternoon. Granddad too was very thin too but Grandma, well, she was more on the slightly plump side.

The cholesterol count would have been so high a modern MD would pass out. But the food was freshly grown or caught, natural, no additives. We ate real butter, real milk, real cream and real everything. We lived a real life. There was no plastic, no oleo, no trans fats, and little or no junk food. Most of the things we eat today hadn't been invented or if they had no one would have chosen to eat them!

Photo: Grandma & Granddad July 1924 age 51 or so.

I miss those days. I miss Granddad and Grandma and old Al and the fineness and wafting scents and sounds of a world long gone but still incredibly alive and vivid in my mind. A world where folks had time to have a real breakfast and time to hug and enjoy their emotions and the great and wonderful gifts of nature.

Where the smells and sounds of cooking filled the house with hunger and anticipation and old Al's recipes meant food fit for the Gods. And believe or not, there were lots of kids who were blessed with down to earth Grandparents like mine.

In my mind I have thousands and thousands of hidden memories waiting to be rediscovered and in a way, relived as stories told and remembered, like this one.

I can somehow smell the scent of the fresh country morning air after a night so clear the the Northern Lights glimmered and danced all night above then horizon. And most every night back then the sky was filled with sparkling, brilliant stars and a shining moon so brilliant that it almost hurt your eyes. There was very little pollution a hundred miles from the cities. The air was clean and you felt good.

I can close my eyes and see Grandma sitting on the front porch in her wooden rocking chair with one of the Grand kids dozing in her arms and her knitting resting on her lap.

In my mind I can still see Granddad walking up from the boathouse with a stringer of fresh perch and grinning from ear to ear.

If I can listen very carefully I somehow think I hear my Grandparents speaking very softly as they both did when they put loving arms around me so many times.

To offer reassurance and dignity and guide not just me but all of their grandchildren gently and surely toward this great adventure and journey we call life.

*Footnote: A few summers after Granddad’s death, the large log down by the chicken coop, that he had cleaned many a fish on, vanished. For those of us that cared enough to notice, it was a big and unsolved mystery and the talk of summers to come.

In 1986 I attended a Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Gady’s house in Florida. Cousin Nancy, also attended. After dinner, Nancy pulled me aside and confided in me that it was she who took the log, noting it gave her a good feeling and good memories of our Grandparents and that she still had it. She related to me how, as a small child, she’d stand in the orchard watching Granddad clean the fish. noting that from time to time, he’d let her help. And one day standing there next to the log, not long after her mom died when she was about 10, he had held her in his arms to comfort her grief.

How many grandkids would save a 20lb log and then haul it all the way to Florida?

That’s how much our grandparents meant to all of us. Nancy’s gone now. I feel in my heart that she’s with Grandma and Granddad.

Granddad Anderson's Place

2006-07-01T16:08:00.000-04:00

Let me try to describe the rich experience of a very special childhood growing up on the west side of Conneaut Lake in Northwest Pennsylvania during the war years of 1040 and beyond.

We called Granddad's summer house, 'the big house' cause next to it, granddad had a smaller cottage for family which we called 'the little house'. Life back then was in many ways similar to that depicted in Little House on The Prairie. Granddad had been born in Iowa in 1870 or 1872, so his values and way of life were the much like the Engle family depicted on TV.

Behind and beside the main houses were flower gardens, a vegetable garden, an orchard, grape arbors and more. Behind that, freshly scythed fields blended gracefully to my uncles house, a tennis court and stable for Bill, our horse (the stable would later be converted to a summer cottage).

Behind the tennis court were acres and acres of woods interspersed with open fields, a creek, a small swamp and a much larger swamp. A single train track formed the east and north borders of granddad's property. Twice a day the train came. Once heading north, the other south. A loud growling churn and rhythm of the old steam engine, the whistle, the deep rumble as the earth shook and we ran to wave at the conductor, fireman and brakeman.

My cousins and I loved to watch the trains go by. We counted all the cars and wondered with all the roar, soot, smoke and cinders why some of the older box cars or maybe our woods didn't catch on fire.

Hidden near the middle of the woods behind the giant yellow pines granddad had planted on the west side of our property was a fairly small and incredibly picturesque swamp full of water lilies and more and which formed a kind of border to the back of the woods. Then behind that more woods, a larger swamp and creeks full of minnows which we caught and used as bait to go fishing.

There was truly an incredible richness and beauty to growing up touching both nature firsthand and the emotions of the depression, the war and a tangled family. We vividly experienced, smelled, tasted and felt this fine countryside before, during and after the War Years of the 1940's.

As he had done in the few acres north of the big house, granddad had planted dozens of both scotch, yellow and white pine trees, spaced about 75 feet apart as the orchard blended to fields and the woods. There were about 5 rows of these beautiful pines with about 8 trees in each row.

Further back in the woods, behind this group of pines, there was a brief meadow, then two small sand pits. A mile or so back to the west came the real woods, the little and big swamps. From white birch trees to old hickory stands, there were maple, oak, elm, and a dozen more kinds of trees. We experienced nature as God had made it.

There were wild elderberry bushes and hazel nut bushes. Lots of rabbits, squirrels and immense flocks of birds. Pesticides weren't in use yet, so some of the bird flocks darkened the sky with hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of birds. From wrens to robins, from purple martins to crows, blackbirds and starlings your ears told you you were never alone. For my 10th birthday granddad gave me a book by John James Audubon so I could identify and learn about these beautiful and amazing creatures that could actually fly.

Before I had got my own 22 rifle at about 11, I had a Daisy BB rifle. The bad birds which ate our corn and destroyed to garden became targets, but of course bb guns don't shoot very straight or very far, so the birds escaped easily. When I got a little older I got a 16 gauge shotgun to make sure the blackbirds and crows actually left a little corn for our family.

We didn't really shoot the birds, but the sound of the shotgun would scare them away. We even made our own scarecrows, but our home make scarecrows didn't really work too well.

Crows are pretty smart, and I got the feeling they were up there making fun of our efforts to chase them away. The birds got some corn and we got some corn. In the late summer and early fall, fresh corn on the cob was added to the garden grown green beans, peas, carrots and fresh fish from the lake. In the fall the apples ripened. We even had a few peach and plum trees. Add the grapes, the grape juice that grandma canned, the jams and all the rest and you had food like most folks today can not imagine.

The scents of our meals cooking mixed with the flavor of the two wood stoves, homemade bread and rolls, and of course pies. Except for things like flour, granddad's shopping list didn't have many other foods on them. The ice man brought the ice for the ice box, the milk man the milk and there was no such thing as a supermarket. Granddad even made his own soap!

We hunted and fished and explored and camped overnight in those woods. There were few mosquitoes back then, as there were no bug sprays but thousands of birds (and bats) which kept the mosquitoes in check. At night we went to sleep to the sounds of crickets and awakened to the sounds of morning doves and the breeze whistling and rippling though the birch trees were we'd put up our tent. After the war, we got a big army surplus tent that you could actually walk around in. With kerosene lamps and an old card table in the tent I'm sure folks could hear our laughter miles away.

At the east end of the property was (and is) the lake. There granddad had planted willows along the shore. Back then he owned about a mile of lakefront, from just north of fireman's beach all the way up past the old sea scout point.

There were only a few motorboats on the lake back then, and the fishing was unbelievably good. I never heard of a fishing license. Maybe kids didn't need them.

Weeping willows along the shore and even one at the end of the dock was planted later when I was born in 1938. The waterfront was just east of the old railroad track and ten wooden steps led down the cinder bank of the rail road tracks to the waterfront. Mint grew next to the steps and at the base there was a small plum tree. To the left were three 30 or 40 foot high pines the remained untrimmed all the the way to the ground. The triangle of pines made a great hiding place when we were very small.

The shore willows grew very large and sometimes we'd have storms so violent they'd actually blow down half or much of a willow tree. Back in the woods the downed trees were removed, so as they rotted they became a great place to get grubs. And those grubs got us fresh perch, rock bass and once in a while a small mouth bass.

At the south corner of the dock and waterfront stood granddads boathouse which held 2 rowboats. One for the grand kids, the other one granddads fishing boat which we weren't allowed to use or even touch because he left much of his gear in the double bow rowboat.

Heading west from the big house there was a huge elm tree and there two 30 foot ropes supported a wonderful wooden swing. West of and in front of the swing was a small eight sided tool house, where granddad kept his rifles, tools, and fishing poles. And yes he kept the tool house locked although he never locked the house. The rope on the swing was so long you could almost soar over the top of that tool house. And last I looked, 70 years later, it and the other houses were still there!

Next to the tool house was a glider. A type of swing that would hold six people were people could relax in the shade of a hot summer day. Along the fence south of the little house was a small four person glider made just for the kids. What other granddad in the whole USA was so thoughtful? But then he had 39 grandkid and I knew them all. Kids like me and my 38 first cousins just on granddads side of the family.

West of the tool house was our food supply: granddad's garden, apple orchard, chicken coop and the split log we cleaned the fish on. Between the chicken coop and the garden was a 10x10 compost pile. You didn't buy fertilizer (or much else) in those days, you composted your garbage with fallen fruit, cut grass, food scraps, chicken guts, fish cleanings and goodness knows what else. Remember, there were no garbage men and no garbage service. What we couldn't compost we recycled (yes even in those days). The government needed the tin cans and more to make tanks and bullets to win the war.

There was a big and very old RCA radio in the big house and a smaller one, a Philco, in the little house, but thank God, there were no TV's yet. So our time was spent touching nature, feeling the earth between our fingers, hearing the sounds of planet earth around us, smelling the freshness of cut grass and tramping through autumn leaves. We actually tasted the richness of fresh grown food. We hugged those we loved and we cared deeply about everyone and everything. Our emotions were as rich and strong as the flavors of life and living.

About a hundred feet west of the big house were white painted lattice fences covered with grape vines and rows of roses, pansies and other flowers. Granddads favorite hobby was flowers and his second favorite (next to fishing), was grafting trees. We even had a black walnut tree after all the black walnuts in the U.S. perished in a blight. And somehow he crossed a black walnut tree with a butternut tree. Never heard of those things? From the birds to the trees, from the wood stoves to home baked pies and a gentle good life in rocking chairs and lawn gliders, we've lost so much in 21st century America.

North of the big house was a smaller 'circle' a gravel circular path with hedges, flowers and hanging mulberry trees where we could hide on a hot summer day and share the mulberries with the birds. My aunt Kat and uncle John Dearing had their wedding in that flowered circle. There were even a few humming birds which fascinated me. North and Northwest of the circle was our driveway, that had a larger circle with a dirt road around it. South of that was a row of popular trees granddad had planted, some of which stand a hundred years later.

Our horse was named Bill. I learned to ride when I was about 5 by climbing on ole Bill and going round and round that same dirt road circle. I guess I was blessed, I even got to help clean Bill's stable!

North and West of the circle were more rows of pine trees, yellow pines bordered to the west with a that 500 foot row of popular trees.

As I got older, we scythed those fields all summer long to keep the place looking nice. There was no such thing yet as a riding mower or even a rotary mower and we didn't have a tractor.

I think I made as much as 10 cents and hour, but eventually I worked my way up to 25 cents an hour. 25 cents would buy a milkshake and hamburger and I thought granddad paid me pretty well. After all the room and board and beautiful grounds and surroundings and even the woods, were all free.

As briefly mentioned at the west end of the orchard was a small shed where our horse, old Bill had a stall. Later after the war, ole Bill died and Granddad converted the shed into a small cottage and traded it to my father for a new 1947 Dodge which cost my dad, a Dodge dealer, about $1600.

(Wesley William Anderson Photos about 1924) Just east of that cottage to be was Uncle Wes's cottage which he owned jointly with my Uncle Arie Arie and Wes didn't get along too well but they were great uncles to us kids and as different as 2 brothers could be.

Wes loved to party and he played ragtime piano better than anyone I knew then or later. We'd sit in his living room for hours begging for just one more song.

(Arial Kasooth Anderson)

Arie, like his twin brother Ave was quiet, reserved and very kind. Like Ave, Arie and Wes both died of heart failure in their early 50's, an age when many men died back in those days.

(Avery Phineas Anderson)

Like Arie and Wes, Ave worked for Granddad at Martin Hardsocg Co in Pittsburgh (see below). Ave was an incredibly talented artist and was badly injured by Gas in World War I. His marriage didn’t work out and he lived the last few years of his life with Granddad in the Ben Avon house.

They left widows and fairly young children to grow up with no dad. It was the early to mid 1950's when most of the great family men who meant so very much to me, passed away.

My granddad too, in December of 1954 was gone from this earth and since I had long been abused by immediate family, my life was suddenly shattered beyond belief. But the story of the abuse is related elsewhere, this blog is for the good, better and best memories.

And these tens of thousands of fond memories vividly live on in me today.

Grandma had passed away in 1949 and although my parents were alive, by the mid 1950's I was and I felt very much alone.

My Uncles, Aunts and Grand Parents had instilled in me the love of hard work, respect, values and quest for knowledge that would support and carry me though my life. Although I was abused by my mother and siblings, I was truly blessed to have the rich family ties and experiences I speak of in this blog.

Photo: The road home.

Today our society seems in many ways not to know what some of those subtle emotions and feelings are or mean and sadly not to have the depth of caring, sharing and feeling to comprehend or understand what it means to really be alive.

Footnote to this story:

Today when you walk back through those woods of my childhood, briars, brambles and muck and stagnant water have taken over and you get eaten alive by the mosquitoes. The borough's and state's pest control tried and still try to kill the bugs, but of course the chemicals used for control killed most of the birds, and the bees, and so today there are no elderberries, no hazel nut bushes, and lots and lots of briars that have grown up in the open meadows and fields we once flew our model airplanes and kites in. The effects of man's meddling with nature are felt by all of us as cancer from environmental chemicals has gone from a rare disease to the 2nd leading cause of death in America.

When I was 25, I read Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring. I began to understand how fragile our world is.

Rachel, a brilliant biologist, author and one of the first environmentalists, was born the same year as my dad.

She even grew up in the Pennsylvania woods not far from where I did, and died at only 56 from Cancer, a very rare disease in 1964 the year she died. We didn't listen then, we obviously don't listen now. The 'Silent Spring' Rachel spoke of grows more silent every day.

Photo Credits: 1920 Employee Photo of Rachel from the Fish and Wildlife Commission (Public Domain photo).

The Hiding Place: The Old Wooden Boathouse

2006-06-01T19:22:00.000-04:00

Way in the distance, near the very center of this photo stands a willow tree planted in 1938 which today still graces the end of a land filled, grass covered dock.

Once upon a time, some sixty years ago or so, there stood a white painted old wooden boathouse. Just a faded memory now, it stood just to the south of that dock with the willow tree. It was my Granddad, C.R. Anderson's boathouse and dock.

In the boathouse, there was one fishing boat for Granddad and one rowboat for the grand kids. A header boarded walkway stood before the boats, a center walkway between the boats .

I was one of the incredibly lucky kids who was fortunate enough to experience this part of Granddad’s world.. But we had to be older, maybe 10 or so, to actually use the kids boat and the kids outboard motor.

So the boathouse was locked with a four number sequence combination lock so that strangers and family too small didn’t go for unapproved journeys in Granddad’s prize boats. After you reached the magic age of ten, or maybe even a bit more, Granddad would swear you to eternal secrecy and entrust you with the precious combination. And it would be years till I turned ten.

But the locked door made it even better for a secret hiding place. A hiding place for not just me but many of my cousins and maybe just few very close friends.

Long before, maybe even years and months before, we had tired our small growing fingers twisting and turning the rusting dial of that aging faded brass lock. We’d spin it slowly back and forth for what seemed hours. Trying, trying ever so hard to figure out, to master, the combination to the darned lock. But always in vain. Always frustrated. Never succeeding, but never giving up.

So we did the next best thing. We scrambled out onto the little wooden dock located a few feet just south of the boathouse and just north of the elderberry and raspberry bush jungle.

That ‘little dock’ was for other family members fishing boats. There we climbed into the water and swam under the four foot wide swinging boathouse doors that opened over the water outward to the lake. These were the doors the rowboats used to escape their cobwebs and voyage on great expeditions.

Hidden inside with the spiders and goodness knows what else, we laughed and giggled and took down the fishing poles that hung on the grandkids wall. The opposite wall was for Granddad’s fishing poles and we wouldn’t dare touch those.

Using night crawlers carefully gathered the night before, we fished for turtles, sunfish, perch, crayfish and even dogfish. The last two of which weren't fish at all. And it didn’t take too long to learn to recognize a snapping turtle from a turtle we could feed bread to and play with.

Struggling for hours with granddad's two handled fishing nets which were bigger than us, we tried to catch tiny silver striped minnows darting around the boats so we could fish later, sitting in the shade of the willow tree, off the end of the ‘big dock’ with real bait. But to get the best minnows we had to ride with granddad in his old black La Salle car, loaded with minnow buckets and special twin bamboo pole minnow nets, to narrow fresh flowing wandering streams hidden deep in the Pennsylvania countryside.

Come August we dried freshly picked Indian tobies on the edges of the boathouse roof where they couldn't be seen (or so we thought). When dried to a brown tobacco like color, we smoked those same horrible tasting tobies that we had silently and ever so carefully borrowed from uncle Wes's catalpa trees.

Of course we did much of this during granddad's nap time. Else we'd have been in more than a heap of trouble, we would have been chastised. We didn’t want to lose granddads respect or disappoint him. So the threat was never a spanking, but a quiet but firm scolding. To be scolded with ever so softly spoken words from a granddad who loved all of us more than anything else on this earth was just plain unacceptable.

I know this because of more than the tears he shed during the war when the first of my cousin's was killed and later when grandma died. I guess it was all the time Granddad spent with me and more than that his choice of words and his careful expression of those words in teaching me and sharing with me much of what he knew and believed in.

His hopes and heart rested in his hand. And his hand often rested gently on my shoulder. To disappoint him would have been unbearable.

The rowboats made creaking and rocking noises as waves bumped them around in their stalls. And I'm quite sure we must have made some noise that could have been heard outside the boathouse with all the fun and whispers and laughs as we frolicked and played and made believe.

Mindless TV and hype and political correctness hadn’t been invented yet and when they were, our exposure was strictly limited.

Instead, our senses were built on the scents, tastes, and touches of earthworms, seaweed, elderberry bushes, kindness and the daily example of the Christian morals and values that our grand parents lived.

At times, as little kids, we managed to haul down the old 1/2 horsepower Evenrude motor from the worn wooden 2x6 on the wall and mount it on the back of the kids boat. Then pretend we were on a adventure going up the lake. Of course we were still too young and had no gasoline and couldn’t really start it back then.

And of course Granddad knew we were playing in the boathouse and never said a word.

But a a few years later when we were about ten and had the secret combination, with a lot of pulls of the rope, the old Evenrude did start. With granddad's blessing we’d be off to many an adventure up by the islands with dreams of pirates and excitement beyond belief.

Several times we would then make the long journey home again with something called oars and more than occasionally, slightly to very blistered hands.

Sometimes one of us would swim alongside the boat to see just how far each of us really could swim. When I finally turned ten, I made it clear across the lake and was very proud.

After tiring of the boathouse and while Grandma was still alive, we’d often venture into the elderberry and raspberry bush filled field just south of the boathouse and pick 1/2 peck baskets of berries. There were humming birds hovering and buzzing around those elderberries and wild yellow finches darting about our heads. Grandma would see to it that there was hot elderberry pie for dessert or sometimes an afternoon snack.

Once in a while we’d even wander among the bushes a little further to a little sandy beach called Fireman’s beach. Between Fireman’s and town was a marshy swampy area. In later years they’d fill the area toward town and make roads and parking lots.

I remember getting very sick one of those summers, maybe from a well gone bad, or perhaps too many Indian tobies or too much elderberry pie. That happened one late August day, during or just after the war.

Especially I remember a young family doctor, Jim Martin, stopping by every day to see how I was doing. He stopped late every afternoon because late afternoons and evenings were when he made his house calls. A few years later one August in about 1952, I suffered a very high fever and later some seizures and Doc Martin was always there for me. He even loaned me his thousand power microscope one summer when I was just starting high school.

There was no health insurance then and his doctors fee was a dollar or two or a piece of pie. Maybe that’s why he would often show up at dinner time

Growing up in the America of my youth meant growing up in a world where life was simple, and people and feelings were real. The pressures and jumble and jangle of technology and plastic people living in a plastic world were things that fortunately didn’t exist yet and didn’t encumber the richness of our senses and experiences.

Looking back on those days is a wonderfully pleasant experience for me, for our lives were full of such incredible people and fun experiences and we had so much and none of it was measured in dollars.

The old boathouse by the lake is gone now and so are those rowboats and most of the fine people who once rowed them. Doc Jim Martin too is gone. And so are some of my cousins who shared those unforgettable experiences.

But the lake is there, the dock and willow tree is still there, and so are great memories of growing up in and playing in an old wooden boathouse in the very special country we call America.

Footnotes:

I last saw Doc Martin about 30 years later when he was in his 70's and still making house calls. But by then he was still charging $2 for house calls to favored patients when everyone else was charging $50 or more or no longer made house calls.

Doc Martin gave me a lift one day in about 1976 in his pickup truck. We had to stop on the way home at one of his patient's houses or I would have never known just how little his fees had changed. He told me he had enough money and didn’t have the heart to take much from his patients. He also said that he didn’t want to hurt their pride, so if he felt they couldn’t afford to pay at all, he’d ask for a piece of pie or cake.

By then Doc’s hobbies included ping pong, wood carving, checkers and chess. I spent many an evening at his farm home playing ping pong in his garage and he was very good. When tired I’d play checkers or chess with him while listening to his tales and experiences as a young MD. He never had even a trace of the ‘air of superiority’ that so many modern M.D.s have. As down to earth and as compassionate as any human could be.

In 1977 or so I cut down our black walnut tree which had somehow survived after the blight and Doc came over and hauled away the wood which he used for gunstocks and other carvings.

I moved away and never saw Jim Martin again but my wonderful recollections of him and his dedication to people and to old fashioned real medicine will live on alongside my memories of my very special grandparents.

The Evinrude Journeys

2006-05-01T17:33:00.000-04:00

Photo: Wolf Island, Conneaut Lake, Pa.

When I was about ten we gave up rowing the kids boat. Maybe we were weary of the open blisters on our hands from rough wooden oar handles or maybe we thought we were too big to be rowing all over the lake, which was pretty big.

So we graduated. Graduated to a real outboard motor. And with the power of a mighty outboard motor, my cousins and I began exploring the lake in a more adventurous way. Off to the gas station with an empty maple syrup gallon can, we’d dig the 10 cents or so out for a gallon of ‘white’ gas. Back at the boathouse, we’d mix a little motor oil into that wonderful can of gasoline, attach Granddad’s old 1.5 horse power 1936 Evinrude motor to the back of the rowboat, throw in our fishing poles and a can or two of worms, swing the boathouse door wide open and jump into the boat.

Splashing, pushing and out and away from the old white boat house, we’d drift out past the lily pads beyond the beams, flooring and other remnants of the old sunken dance boat. Where the water was deep enough that we could lower the motor, we did just that with another free bath from the splash. Then we’d wrap a short piece of clothesline around the flywheel atop the motor and yank! And yank. And yank.

After about 15 or 20 of those yanks and much fiddling with valves under the side of that mighty engine, that did something we supposed, that old Evinrude would sputter, pop, and backfire.
Suddenly, and sometimes not so suddenly, the boat would jerk forward and we’d hear put put put melody. Away we’d go. Our latest explorations and adventures to be were calling us on.
We’d never heard of a lifejacket and we all could swim for hours, or so we thought.

We didn’t head south toward Fireman’s beach, grabbing the tiller on the engine, we’d head north toward Wolf Island and the smaller island whose name no one knew and to many seemingly wild places beyond. Long before the lake became so developed and long before water skiers and jet skis existed.

In those days of day dreams and make believe, long before TV’s, each day was truly an experience, a true adventure, a dream come true. In our minds we were pirates one day and lost sailors the next. Scouring through the crystal clear spring fed water, looking for sunken boats and even lost treasure!

The scents of fresh air, dead seaweed, a rotting fish or two added a lost perspective to the excitement. With senses honed by that excitement and sheer anticipation, the boredom of today’s kids was something we were gratefully spared.

To our left was a swampy point covered with cat tails, weeds and an old sea scout house, a small maybe 10’ x 6’ shed perched on the water edge of the point. Granddad still owned this land which he had purchased from A.C. Huidekoper as part of an 18 acre chunk of the old Huidekoper horse farm on the west side of the lake.

Sometimes we’d stop and swim or fish cut a few cat tails and just fool around. Next there were a few houses, on what is now called Aldina drive. Later Granddad sold that point and almost a 1000 feet of lakefront for a few thousand dollars. Since it was swampy he didn’t think it would ever be worth much. Later it was dredged and developed and today is covered with houses and the frontage is worth millions (I guess its called inflation).

Photo: The Huidekoper house looking from the waterfront near Wolf Island.

A little further toward Wolf Island was Guy Gulley’s new house to be, a bit south of the old Huidekoper house.

And behold, there was a little island and then Wolf Island.

Jumping out of the boat onto the sand, we’d drag that old boat up on shore and begin looking for buried treasure. Surely someone must have buried something of value. Once we even found an empty wallet and some arrow heads.

Yank, yank, yank, put put put and we were off again, skirting around Wolf island to another tiny tiny island, another stop and then on to the Park and the swamps at the north end of the lake.

The spray and splash of summer wind and cold water on our faces as we sped onward to certain glory.

In our minds we had a lifetime to go on with those journeys, day dreams and childhood adventures.

We never could have imagined that that lifetime would someday fade into nothing but our memories.

The soft gentle reality of the times too would fade distantly into the history of America the beautiful, rarely or never to be experienced by kids again.

Uncle Howard And The Grubs

2006-04-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sometimes in the early spring bad storms and even tornados would sweep across our fields, yard and on out over the lake.

It was just that way one spring night a few years after World War II ended.

A fierce ground hugging tornado sped across Granddad's land including the waterfront, toppling several yellow pine, decorative pine and weeping willow trees and even ripping the porch clear off my parents small cottage.

The pines laying nearly on their side sprouted branches growing skyward. About a year later my father righted some of the yellow pine trees with a huge block and tackle tied to Granddad's 1947 Dodge using a very long one inch diameter manila hemp rope. Today some of the pines still stand, one with a loop in its trunk where it grew skyward.

But three of the tall decorative spruce by the boathouse were gone forever as well as the peach and plum trees at the base of the steps that led down to our family dock.

Also some other trees were far far too big to be righted. Among those were several weeping willows along the waterfront just north of our dock.

These water fed giant willows had been planted 25 or so years before and two of them had toppled over into the lake. One beside our neighbor Rockwell's house and their dock, the other stretching outward into the lake along our dock.

Luckily the willow that stood at the end of our dock was somewhat smaller (Granddad had trans planted it there in 1938) and it wasn’t so severely damaged.

Over the months and years with saws and axes we slowly hacked, chopped and slowly cut away portions of the 2 giant willows extending out into the water. Meantime the bases of the two fallen willow trees had or were rotting near their roots, some of which were exposed and pointing upward.

One hot August day my Uncle Howard Haller showed us kids how to dig the grubs out of the rotting wood, telling us they could be used as great fishing bait.

Uncle Howard had been the target of my mothers and some of my Aunts unending gossip and criticism for years.

Somehow in their one time affluent pampered sadly spoiled perception Howard was too lazy and didn't work nearly hard enough. Somehow, to them at least, he was simply not ‘good enough’ for my Aunt Hazel (who I never ever heard complain).

In reality Howard had an illness called narcolepsy and tended to occasionally drowse off.

But to us kids he was the greatest. In fact, he was one of the only two uncles that ever took me (and my cousins fishing) and showed us how to really catch fish. When I think about it, not even my own father took me fishing although he spent a great deal of time fishing.

So with our tin cans full of squirming grubs and our homemade twelve foot long bamboo fishing poles, we climbed in the boat and Howard slowly rowed out to 'his favorite fishing spot’ repeatedly warning us 'not to tell anyone about this secret location'.

Photo: Looking north from our Dock about 1952. The white boat in the foreground is parked about where Howard found all the fish.

Sure enough, as fast as we adjusted the corks and splashed the grub baited hooks into the lake we had a perch or rock bass hooked and flying into the boat. We happily threw lines and yanked those poles for hours.

I don’t know if there was a limit on fish caught by kids in those days, but if there was, I bet we were over it. But then, ours was a large family, and the fish would be gone in one meal.

Howard entertained us by teasing us and telling humorous stories as we pulled in more and more and more fish. Then he helped us clean them on Granddad’s old fish cleaning log next to the chicken coop in the apple orchard.

Never had so much fun fishing in my life as those days with Uncle Howard. An incredibly kind and patient man with us kids, languishing in a not yet understood illness, condemned by his sisters in law's as the 'laziest man on earth' but very much loved and appreciated by us kids.

Howard had married Hazel, my Grandfather's oldest daughter (of five daughters) in 1930, but they rarely came to the lake after the war ended. But when he did we'd run to meet him and his old black La Salle which he bought used from Granddad in 1947.

Uncle Howard & Aunt Hazel with 2 of their children Tom & Andy about 1936

Hazel and Howard had a somewhat hard time but they did a really great job raising three fine kids.

Combined, on both sides of my family, I had eleven uncles, not including great uncles. Howard was one of my favorites.

The fallen willow trees are completely gone now but I'll always remember Uncle Howard with a special fondness .

His warmth, kindness and patience with all of us kids stands

very strong and has a special place in my memories.

After Fifty Seven Years

2006-03-01T18:04:00.000-05:00

During many of my early grade school years I was privileged to stay part of the summer with Granddad and Grandma Anderson at their cottage overlooking Conneaut Lake in northwestern Pennsylvania.

It was a large older house with two front porches, one screened in, extending 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 a large enclosed sun porch in the front of the house. It 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”.

“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.”

I noticed that he said live, not learn.

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 was 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.

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 all the way home.

A few years later, about a month or so after Granddad’s death, I found a handwritten poem between the pages of one of his bibles.

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 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 young 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.

The Childhood Awakening: Courage, Joy And Tragedy

2006-02-15T17:35:00.001-05:00

Her name was... Well maybe its better that for now I skip her real name and just call her Memphis.

Memphis was maybe 14 years old, about my own age way back then. It was the birth of the 1950's when music was soft and sweet and so were the girls.

She was from Memphis and my uncle Chris's niece - but not related to me. So I felt I should at least try to get the courage to speak to her and maybe even try to hold her hand. I had just met her and somehow I was emotionally in a twirl, in a world of feelings I had never known. A world of very vivid senses that somehow I had never really experienced. A warm type a caring that was strangely different.

When I walked onto my Granddad's screened in porch, she was sitting there quietly. Sitting on the porch across from my Grandma's rocker. Sitting on the big white wicker chair looking out over the lake. She seemed intense, focusing on the view of the dock, the boathouse, willow trees and the lake.... But she didn't seem to want to look at me.

I was not so bad looking or so I was told or perhaps imagined. I sure was looking at her. Then she spoke very very softly to me. Almost in a whisper. Her eyes were bluer than blue. Her hair was golden and my heart was fluttering and pounding so much I couldn't really hear what she was saying very well.

Something about wanting to see all she could see while she could and touch everything she could. She was saying that she was leaving in a few hours that she and her dad had come to visit my uncle who was living in Granddad's 'little cottage' next door that summer.

I was a shy kid, at least when it came to girls I didn't know. Girls seemed a bit strange and yet incredibly special and this one was more than special. Right there, sitting on the wicker chair, but not touchable, not by me, not in my lifetime.

It was the early 1950's and a kid like me could look and dream but dared not touch.

Then she said she'd like to walk to the dock and feel how cold the water was. I jumped up and offered to walk down to the dock with her. It was hard to believe. She actually smiled at me and said it would be her pleasure!

We crossed the railroad track and down the steps to the dock we went, not too fast, not too quick. In fact she walked very slowly. I wanted to stop the clock and stop time and just enjoy this incredibly beautiful and pleasant young woman. I wanted to touch her hair and hold her in my arms, but I was just fantasizing, that couldn't really be an option. Wow, would my friends be impressed with the charm and beauty of this pretty southern belle!

She paused on the steps, stooped and carefully picked some mint leaves and then reached out to share some with me. "Smell them" she said. "Life is wonderful, its so great to be in such a lovely place". I can't put her southern accent into words here but if ever a young man was instantly in love it was me and this was the time and the place. This young woman was more than attractive, she was magic. She had instantly stolen my heart and maybe even my soul.

We walked very slowly past the boat house and then out onto the dock. First we sat on the bench under the willow tree Granddad had transplanted there the year I was born, then we moved to sit on a blanket that my cousin had left near the middle of my Granddad's grass covered dock.

She carefully spread the blanket out as if it hurt her to reach her arms. Then she asked if I'd hang on to her while she reached over the side to feel the water.... And I did. And she did. When she stood back up I wanted to pull her into my arms, but I dared not.

No one had ever acted this way, said these things, been so pretty and reached out to me like this and now I knew this was a living angel and even looked like one.

There was more small talk and then she reached and took my hand as she got up. She held my hand tightly as we walked very slowly back to the little house, the cottage where her uncle lived. No girl had ever held my hand so firmly. It was as if she were afraid I'd let go.

Somehow I found the courage to ask for her address. Suddenly she turned and looked at me very sadly with those vibrant blue eyes and softly said, "My address is Heaven". That's what she said. Then she said "I have to go now, cause my dad and I have to visit everyone before I leave". There seemed to be tears in her eyes and and its for sure there were tears in my heart. Somehow I got the courage to tell her I didn't want her to leave. "Couldn't she stay a few days?" There was no answer. She just looked at me, then turned away.

A little later, she, my uncle and her dad climbed in my uncles old car and she was gone. I waved and she waved back, smiling brightly. The next day my uncle returned and I asked him for her address.

In in that slow deep southern drawl of his he said that she and her dad were visiting all their relatives before she was gone forever, that she had incurable cancer. He told me she had only a few weeks to live, that her kind of cancer was fatal and that her family had chosen not to put her though the pain of some of the more outrageous cancer treatments which in those days were even worse than treatment is today.

I didn't want my uncle to see my tears. I turned and walked away. I walked and walked and walked some more. I felt a terrible burden of pain and mixed up emotions I had never experienced before and rarely felt since.

Over the decades since then, every time I visited our family dock, and it was many thousands of times, I remembered. I remembered this especially beautiful human being and her intense beauty and her quiet dignity.

I remember today also, this very special and very brave and very courageous young woman from Memphis.
Today I too have cancer and the clock is ticking. And while I'd like to believe I have a little courage, its not a fraction of that shown by the incredible smile and will of that beautiful young woman from Memphis.

Tonsils And Wild Bill

2006-01-10T15:50:00.000-05:00

Photo 2008: Uncle Bills House In Yuma

I was about 13 or so and found myself not in the smoky city in Pennsylvania, but far far away. I had gone out west for the first time in my life.

I saw real cactus and a clear blue sky like I never knew existed! I was in Yuma Arizona, and I had come to get my tonsils out. Free. The Dr was my uncle, better known by the local townsfolk as "Wild Bill".

Wild Bill didn't really look much like a surgeon or a Doctor. He drove a dusty old Jeep, wore clothes covered with the same desert dust, even had built a log cabin way out in the desert near Ferguson lake. And yes, he did have a house in town.

Day before the surgery Uncle Bill took me to see an autopsy, saying it would toughen me up yes but it would also help teach me compassion and appreciation for the miracle of life. And at that time, I thought I too wanted to be a Doctor.

The autopsy was of a young black woman who had died needlessly Bill said. "Cause she didn't want to go to a Dr.", he paused. "Maybe she thought she couldn't afford a Dr". Then he gave me a long lecture about how many young MD's applying to work in his clinic sometimes cared more about money first and maybe helping folks second. It really bothered Bill that they had it the wrong way around cause in Bill's words "a doctor shouldn't worry about how much he'd make. He should worry about his patients and how best to help them".

And he said, "If they ask me about how much they will make before they ask about what medicine they will practice, I won't hire them".
Alas, tonsil day came.

We went in the back door of the hospital, I don't remember which. I lay down on the table.

An anesthesiologist was there and the drug of the day was ether. "Boy, you need to count backwards from a hundred".

Ninety nine, ninety eight, ninety seven, … I didn't get far. I was out like a light.

Photo 2008: Carport Behind House

Bill's carport was behind the house. Somehow he and goodness knows who carried me in from the carport (picture as it looked in 2008).

I woke up laying on a bed in the back bedroom of wild Bill's house with a heck of a sore throat. When I tried to complain about the pain, Bill's comment always was "A little pain won't hurt you boy. Its time to be tough. Its time to be a man."

A dinner we'd have something he didn't buy in any grocery store. Words I would hear would be "Be sure to spit out the buckshot".

Ducks, geese, deer, fish and more graced Bills table. And my Aunt Helen was a great cook and incredibly kind and tolerant person. She met Bill when she was a nurse and still took his calls at home, telling more than one caller how to handle their problem until Bill got home and could call them.

And yes, many of his patients had his home number, which after all was in the phone book. That's the way Bill wanted it.

A few days after my tonsils came out I found myself hanging on for dear life, bouncing up and down like a tennis ball, On across the desert went Wild Bill clutching the shaking steering wheel with a white knuckled grip.

He somehow pushed that old jeep at what seemed like a hellish speed across the rocks, ditches, ravines and faint trails in the rocks and sand. There has no road to where we were headed.

We were on our way to a cabin he had built "upriver". He said the 40 foot logs he built the cabin with had been shipped down from Oregon. Later I found myself fishing on incredibly beautiful backwaters of the Colorado and later jumping in an old wooden barrel the stood outside Bill's cabin that was full of rainwater (for a quick soggy and a bit smelly bath). I note that Bill let that water out and refilled the barrel with well water for his bath. From then on I took my bath in those backwaters, rattlers, water moccasins and all. In those days when you fished upriver, you caught all the bass you could legally carry.

The air was clean, the stars were brilliant and I knew I was in God's country. A few years later I lived in Arizona and attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, where my Uncle John (another MD) lived.

Over the years I went back to see Wild Bill many times. But not enough times.

Sometimes we'd make a rough journey with Bill's friends down into Mexico to fish in the Gulf of California where seals and whales frolicked and wildlife in the water was like it was a thousand years before pollution. Sometimes to Bill's log cabin on the backwaters of the Colorado, but on every trip, my ears were graced with Wild Bill's tales of hunting and fishing trips and his scorn for some of the younger generation of MD's that cared far more about money than their practice of medicine and their patients.

Photo: Wild Bill (Wm A Phillips) Copyright Yuma Sun

In 2009 at age 96, Wild Bill earned the President's Distinguished Service Award from the Arizona Medical Association. Bill passed away in December 2009, still living in the same home where I had been as a boy.

They don't make many men today like Wild Bill Phillips.

Sailing To Heaven On A Comet

2006-01-06T18:04:00.000-05:00

Somewhere, not so very far away, living in the shadows of my soul is a haunting of the finest of worlds, the best of hopes, the greatest of dreams.

It was America. It was not that long after World War II had ended and America and Americans stood both proud and tall.
Once or twice every summer we would venture to Chautauqua Lake in southwest New York state.

There, hidden under huge towering trees right next to the lake was my Uncle John Dearing’s summer house. John was an electronics expert for RCA. John’s immediate family spent the winters in New Jersey, but my cousins and their mom, my aunt Katherine, spent most of the summers at Chautauqua near the home of Uncle John’s own family.

When I was 10 or so, Uncle John was in charge of putting the TV antennas on top of the Empire State building and he actually let me climb the steel ladder going to the small square lid in the dome on top of the Empire State building and stick my head out to see first hand the growing antenna tower touching the sky. But he was holding my feet, cause the wind could suck you right out! My memories of Uncle John are few but very fine. But the story of Uncle John Dearing is another story…

A few summers after John let me climb that ladder, when I was about 13 or 14, we piled in the old Dodge and made what seemed like a long journey of about 90 miles on winding two lane roads from Conneaut to Chautauqua.

We bounced off the paved road past a little cottage behind my Uncle’s cottage and on down to the house.

Wow, first thing I noticed was that there was a red sailboat tied up at the dock and an old old beat up black car behind the house.

Cousin Jack, slightly older than me, was a bright kid, like his parents and always exploring new things. He loved Stan Kenton’s music and would sit at the piano making the keys bounce to the rhythm of Slaughter On Tenth Avenue.

“What’s the story with the sailboat”, I said. Jack’s eyes came alive with words describing the 2 girls that lived behind him who owned the boat, excitedly emphasizing that they even let him use it. And of course that they were pretty!

But the mention of pretty came second, that he and we could use the boat were the first words. Girls were important, but so were boats. And this boat was a bright red 15 foot Snipe class sailboat.

There’s noting to describe the feeling of the spay of water, the rush of the wind, the sounds & tenor of the sails. It was my first sailboat ride ever, and to me this was joy. This was the greatest feeling of freedom I had ever experienced.

Jack was a good sailor and a great teacher. I don’t think we even turned the boat over that day. He taught me all the buzzwords, not to do downwind turns, don’t let the sails luff, what a halyard and tiller were and all the rest.

We journeyed for miles, down past Bemus Point and on and on. And that was the beginning. The beginning of a lifelong love of sailing. The beginning of a special kind of experience, a journey.

Photo: Chautauqua July 2010. View of the Interstate bridge visible behind the trees.

I just had to find a way to experience the joy, excitement and freedom I felt during that visit to see Jack and family. Kids today don’t need drugs to feel high, they just need to turn off the computer and TV and hop on a sailboat and head for open water.

Back to the story…

One sunny day in late spring the very next year after I had experienced the thrill of sailing in that bright red Snipe, there was a boat for sale sign down the street. In the backyard of a neighbor's yard. Just sitting there was my lifelong fantasy.

But this fantasy was very real, and for the stunning sum of $200 (a lot of money in those times), I haggled more than a bit and managed to actually buy this sailboat.
And yes it really was in need of a fair amount of work. It was called a 'Comet', and had a main sail (torn a bit) and a jib. The number 2762 was sewn in 8 inch high letters on the giant nylon sail and engraved in the centerboard housing. A small brass plaque said ‘Made In Skaneateles, N.Y.’.

Above the numbers on the sail was a five pointed star with 3 lines trailing behind.
An emblem. Of a Comet. My Comet. My Comet to freedom, to heaven. Well almost, at least to heaven on earth.

The double planked Skaneateles built mahogany hull hadn't been painted in years. The wooden mast was more than a bit warped and most of the ropes and some of the halyards and fittings were missing.

So I scurried off to Ralston’s local hardware store and bought a scrapper, some brushes, sandpaper, some varnish, some mahogany stain and some white marine paint for the sides. Also light blue paint for the decks, silver paint for the centerboard and a smidgen of bright red marine paint for the bottom. And a hundred fifty feet of manila hemp rope.

Broke, happy, perspiration in my eyes, my arms growing more than a bit weary, I scraped and sanded and sanded and scraped and scraped. For days and days and maybe even weeks. Bees buzzed in the apple tree branches partially shading my head. Sweat running down my face, mosquitoes buzzing, nipping, biting.

In the shade of granddad's favorite Grimes Golden apple tree, I carefully sanded and painted the outside of the hull and decks. Then I varnished the inside of the hull, then the mast and boom, tiller and rudder.

Thank goodness, things didn't cost much in those days and the sweat was absolutely free. I worked for my 82 year old granddad and he offered me not only an income but a needle, some thread and a quiet voice imbued with a quiet, very subtle encouragement. A man of great fortitude, granddad spoke few words, his heart and smile did the speaking.

Then one happy day the paint was dry, the varnish pretty hard and with my excitement floating about as high as pure joy can soar, my cousins and I lifted this double planked dream onto one of granddad's fishing boat trailers. Then pushed and shoved and pulled and strained to capture the dream. Past the grape arbors, down the long dirt driveway, across 2nd street and railroad tracks, down the hill behind Rockwell’s house. With a final shove accompanied by a great and loud splash, my Comet slid and slipped not so gracefully into the water.

I would be sailing in a little while, or so I thought, as my boyhood fantasy now became my very own, albeit tiny, yacht. Merrily it floated, wobbled and bobbed for the first time in years.

Seconds later, the water rushed in between the double planking and in minutes, my trust failed, my heart sank and my fine yacht settled very low in the water, barely afloat.
I knew better, I had helped granddad paint his rowboats for years, but had hoped the great job I imagined I had done had sealed the planking and that this great sailing ship wouldn't leak too much.

I attached a rope to a concrete anchor I had made by pouring concrete into an empty paint can, tied the other end to the boat and sat on the edge of the dock for what may have been hours just admiring my half sunken Comet. Slowly, the water did its job. The wood swelled for a few days, and with an old wooden handled tin bucket, I bailed and bailed. And bailed some more.

Then one very windy and sunny summer day, I put the mast on and attached the boom then lowered the centerboard and attached the large mahogany rudder. Then feeding and sliding the rumpled main sail along the slot in the boom and feeding the brass cleats to the track on the mast. Then I attached the jib, hoisted my paint bucket anchor, then raised the jib as the boat began tacking outward between Rockwell’s dock and our dock.

The wind caught the jib and boat and in seconds I was out past the end of the dock.

Heading into the wind, now drifting backwards, I raised the whipping main sail. Shoving the tiller, old 2762 tipped to its side and took off like a rocket. Struggling to hang onto the tiller and deck, I sailed away ...

I sailed away with friends, cousins, and fine looking girls for nearly 20 years with that old boat. When I got weary of sewing and patching the original nylon sails, I spent a little more and had Charles Thomas, Sailmaker in Chicago, whip up some new dacron sails.

Many times my dream boat nearly tipped over as it plunged ahead of high winds, sudden thunderstorms and hot summer days. Many times I and a girl friend would sail in the moonlight caught in the gentle night breezes, gliding silently toward the moon on this shooting star embossed Comet.

We counted real shooting stars and admired dancing northern lights often visible in those days. High in the brilliant clear starlit sky anddarkness of those late August nights.

I married one of those friends who claimed to share that fine dream. In later years my kids, nephews and others enjoyed the thrill of the wind, spray and water riding that Comet caught in the sounds and echoes of cold waves and fresh water slapping the double planked wooden hull.

My pictures of that boat and those wonderful times, like all physical things, have faded. The few friends still alive who remember those times remind me most every day that we’re growing older and somewhat frail but our fine memories are alive and well.
That very special Comet's long gone too, and so are my wife and kids who somehow vanished as silently into the night as old Comet #2762.

One of these days, I guess maybe I'll vanish too, but till then, I sometimes think I still feel the wind and water in my face.

I’ll remember always that the beginning of my ride to heaven was on my very own Comet.

Footnote:

After retiring to Florida I found myself sailing in the Gulf of Mexico, enjoying 70’, 40 ton solid teak and other large sailboats, which I certainly found to be a lot of fun and quite a challenge.

But somehow my best rides and finest sailing memories and moments were in the Snipe with Cousin Jack on Chautauqua Lake, and my Comet on Conneaut Lake.

Life’s Lessons – The Warning

2006-01-05T22:48:00.000-05:00

During the winter of 1954, I found some freedom at last. I got my driver’s license. My dad was a car dealer in Clairton, Pa., so there were plenty of old cars for me to practice on, but I wasn’t allowed to own one. In reality I had learned to drive some years before by driving Granddad A’s old 1947 Dodge around his summer home at Conneaut long before I was able to get a license.

I didn’t have a car of my own but my family had a 1952 Plymouth Belvedere hard top which, once in a while and for special occasions, I was allowed to drive. Bright green with a black roof. Pretty wild colors, but great for a kid who by then, was chasing girls. On foot, by car, by boat and more!

Like most teens in the 50’s, I really didn’t know too much about girls. About as naive as anyone could be, I thought everyone thought like me and had similar values. In those quiet and relaxed days of the early 1950’s I assumed that most folks were honorable and good. In other words I was super naive.

That was a world and time where even swearing wasn’t allowed on TV. When music was romantic. Soft and smooth. Rock and roll and loud mindless vocals and blaring noise masquerading as music hadn’t been invented. It was before the time when hype and exaggerated TV & films brainwashed young minds with whatever was most profitable to promote. A time when romance and love may include, but were not synonymous with sex.

Photo: G Laughlin and friends in her Chris Craft Rivera in front of her house near Shady Avenue about 1955.

I took many of these young ladies for sailboat rides, speedboat rides, water skiing, to the park, the movies, and whatever young kids of my generation did.

But like most young guys, I had a knack for liking the girls the best that had the most physical appeal. Like Don Quixote de la Mancha, every Aldonza that came along I perceived and saw as the beautiful and wonderful Dulcinea.

Instead of wiser and smarter regarding my love of the day, week or month, I got progressively dumber. For a kid who got really good grades in school, I knew next to nothing about love and girls and hormones and pheromones and all that stuff.

Then one day in late August, I introduced my favorite young lady to Granddad who by then was living in the ‘little house’ next to his former cottage. She was a local girl. Very bright. Very much alert and alive. Very talented. Very pretty. Very sexy.

Granddad had just eaten, the aroma of his carefully bred homegrown Great Northern beans and slowly simmered ham filled the air even out on the back porch. His always present cup of strong black coffee with just a touch of cream was chattering, dancing and spilling more than ever on the saucer clutched in his forever trembling hand.

Granddad never said much, but I could sense from his growing frown that hot and humid dog day of August that this was not someone he approved of. Later that evening he cautioned me in that soft spoken, very brief but concerned way of his, that this wasn’t the best kind of girl, it was the wrong kind of girl.

I really liked her and was quite upset and slightly angry with this well meant, quiet but firm rebuke.

After all to me, as the young fellow that made Don Quixote look wise, this was my dream girl. My favorite. The girl I may someday want to marry and be the mother of my children.

Like many kids then and now, I listened, but didn’t listen very well.

Especially to words or even ideas that conflicted with what I thought was right or what I wanted. I was hurt. I was defensive. I was incredibly naive.

One weekend that Fall after I was back in high school, I hitch hiked across town to Granddad’s winter house. Then hitched a ride to Conneaut with Granddad.

A dreary gray day, it was wet, windy and rainy. More than a bit chilly, it felt and looked like it might even snow. The sounds and musty scents of Fall were in the air, somewhat blurred as Granddad puffed away on his Thompson cigar. He chain smoked cigars which he loved and bought by the box. We climbed into his car. With Granddad driving, we headed north on old Route 19 which narrowly wound its way over the steep western Pennsylvania hills.

Granddad was about 82 or so, had arthritis, Parkinson's plus, from the way he walked and moved, ever growing stiffness, aches and pains. The windows in his 1947 Dodge sedan were closed tight. After all he didn’t want to catch a chill or get an another ‘rheumatis’ in his joints.

If I tried to crack open a vent (most old cars had a small window in front of the side window called a vent) Granddad would notice, scow a bit, and say “a little cigar smoke won’t hurt you”.

He had always warned all his grandkids against cigarettes, calling them coffin nails, but thought cigars made of pure tobacco (which he called stogies) were fine, maybe even good for what ails you.

I don’t know how anyone could see out the front windows. How could he see past the ever billowing clouds of smoke? Past the ever spreading fog on the windows, past the bleating scraping windshield wipers, and splattering rain mixed with mud.

Somehow after 4 somewhat scary hours or so, we made it to the lake.

Granddad suggested we stop at a little restaurant on the edge of town for a piece of pie. Inside a young, pleasant looking waitress welcomed us with a warm smile. This must have made Granddad think of my girl friend.

In the silence of the nearly empty restaurant, and in a very soft, carefully stern but non threatening voice, he said “that friend of yours comes from a very troubled family who do inappropriate things to support themselves. You should think carefully about that”.

That’s about all he said about my favorite young lady.
For a man who rarely put forth a negative thought, this 2nd warning seemed strangely out of character. Respect for others was one of Granddads commandments. Why would he say these things? How could he know about her family? Why did he think that because her family might not be the best, that might make her bad too?

I was perplexed. I defended the young lady, at least in my mind, because I didn’t have the heart or desire to contradict or argue with Granddad. No one argued with Granddad. A discussion was one thing which he often welcomed, to argue was simply unthinkable. And this wasn’t the time and the place as we both were tired from a long drive. Or was it the cigar smoke?

That weekend, I slept in the back bedroom of the little house smothered in slightly moldy old wool blankets. There was no heat back there, and little heat in the house except that from an old western style wood stove slowly growing cold in the living room.

Thoughts of the warning made me toss and turn all night and morning came but not too soon. The only negative thing I could recollect about my favorite was that at times she would stare off into space like she was ‘somewhere else’. That could hardly be a fault!

Maybe to clear my mind and emotions, I chopped wood much of that weekend so Granddad would have a good supply. The previous fall when he was chopping wood, the axe had glanced off the log and sunk into his leg. Somehow he had made it alone down to Doc Martins. But he still limped and I didn’t want that kind of accident to happen again.

I didn’t know it, but far worse was about to happen.

A month or so later, Granddad, driving alone on wet slippery roads, chain smoking those old stogies he loved so much, skidded his trusty maroon colored 1947 Dodge off the snow and slush covered road.

He and his car slid then plunged right through the cable fed wooden guard posts. Then finally tumbling down a very steep hill near Zelienople, about 30 miles or so north of Pittsburgh.

The car had tumbled and then rolled over and over for about 400 feet. They had to pry the door off the demolished car to get him out.

That was the end of the road for that faithful old Dodge, and tragically the beginning of the end for Granddad.

In the hospital in Pittsburgh, he noted “its only a few broken bones” and was very concerned that they might revoke his drivers license.

Earlier that fall, he had sold his family home of nearly 50 years, located on Church Avenue in Ben Avon. Now he lived, all alone, in an easier to manage first floor apartment a few miles from his home.

He had tried to give his beautiful furniture (mostly hand made and hand carved) from the house to his kids but apparently they didn’t want much of it. So most ended up in his garage at the lake and in his old Martin Hardsocg warehouse on Shore Avenue next to his factory.

I had pleaded with my mother when he sold his house to let him live with us, but she wanted no part of it even though we had an empty bedroom.

I never could comprehend his younger daughters attitude toward their father. He had given those children so much, both materially and the discipline and lessons from life.

Yes he was strict. Yes he was stern, but he was always warm loving and caring with his family. I never saw or heard him express anger or even swear.

But now with all his sons but the youngest, Bob, and 2nd youngest Wes, dead, and his other daughters living far away I begged my mother to give him a home. After all he was in his 80’s and frail. But my mother angrily said no. No. NO! And now that he was hurt, more crippled than ever, she said no once again.

I was scolded and reminded harshly that it wasn’t my concern.

Picture of Uncle Bob (Clarence Robert Anderson).
Fortunately my uncle Bob said yes he would help and moved into Granddad’s apartment to do as best he could for his failing and now somewhat crippled by casts, crutches and arthritis, dad.
Bob was a relatively quiet and kind fellow who had had a pretty hard life. Like most of us Bob had made some mistakes. But I really liked uncle Bob and he was always warm and nice with me.

Unlike his three older brothers who had all gone to work for their father with assured good paying jobs and total security, Bob had a lot of pride and chose to make his own way.

I didn’t get to see too much of Uncle Bob when I was growing up, but I heard a lot. A lot of mindless criticism from his younger sisters and in laws, who always seemed to side with Bob’s first wife.

These sisters ranted and railed against their own brother. But then a couple of them ranted and railed against just about everyone when the someone was not present.

It had seemed strange to me, I had never heard my Grandfather or Grandmother criticize anyone for any reason other than Granddad’s words of caution about the girl I liked, but my mother complained and criticized 24 hours a day. In her world, nothing was ever right. And for much of my youth, I had the black and blue marks to prove it.

Uncle Bob had married young, had 3 kids by his first wife, worked assorted jobs, but somehow, someway that first marriage was on the rocks for years. Finally the marriage ended in an angry divorce, with his younger kids bitter, living afterword with their mom, and forever and endlessly blaming their dad for all their troubles.

Granddad had always said blame was for those who couldn’t accept responsibility.

In the midst of all this, ignoring the constant holier than thou criticism from more than one of his relatives, Bob had the guts to listen to his conscience and tried hard to do what was right.

So now he was helping care for Granddad cause frankly no one else seemed to care, or have the room, or whatever the excuse of the day. And I heard all too many excuses. Somehow they all seemed hollow, at least to me.

That December, I was sleeping and the phone was ringing and ringing. Half awake, I stumbled down the stairs and picked up the only phone in our house, which was on my mothers desk in our dining room. It was Uncle Bob.

It was very early in the morning and he wanted to speak to my mother.

My mother spoke briefly to Bob, hung up the phone and didn’t seem upset. In her usual harsh tone, all I heard were the words, “Go back to bed”.

Later that morning I learned that Granddad had passed away.
Apparently a stroke. He had cried out, then died suddenly in his sleep.

For a man with such a large family, who had done so incredibly much for that family, only Uncle Bob was there with him. There for his dad and alone there with his dad.

Granddad’s death was more than a shock to me, it was devastating. I thought I was a pretty tough kid, but I cried and cried. I just couldn’t believe he was gone.

The part of my life as a grandson had been a blessing. Granddad had taught me just about everything he could – hunting, fishing, gardening, appreciation, self reliance, self respect, dignity, the meaning of religion and a thousand and one other things.

My grandparents had given me and all of their family their heart and soul and an exceptional quality and meaning to and for life.

Sadly, some of Granddad’s family really seemed to have hated him when he was alive. They seemed to want his money and what he could give them in material things, not his love. Not his wisdom. Only the money and what it could buy. And his younger girls seemed to hate and resent him because he was strict and expected the very best from them. I never heard or experienced such behavior from my older aunts who, in contrast, seemed to love and cherish their father.

After witnessing the greed of some of his children after Grandma’s death in 1949, Granddad had attached some reasonable and protective strings to property deeds and the terms of a trust he had created for his family. When they found out part of their inheritance was restricted, my mother and some others wailed and whined daily. Not for the loss of their father, not that he was gone forever, but in anger and even furry.

Almost every day and for months and even years, I heard the claims that Granddad was controlling his children from the grave.

Somehow these moaners and groaners overlooked the substantial funds and securities they did receive for he had been successful in life. And I guess they never saw or appreciated the love and kindness that he and Grandma offered each of them every day of his life.

I just couldn’t and still can’t comprehend such selfish cold blooded people. And they were my own family.

My grandfather and grandmother are a special part of me and always will be. Without their kindness, love and understanding to and for me as a child and young man, I could not have made it though the many difficulties I would experience in the years to come.

If a man was ever blessed by his grandparents and the heritage and quiet wisdom they so willingly gave, it was me.

Footnote: A few months after Granddad’s death Uncle Bob took a 2nd job to earn the money to send his one son to Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). Then one day Bob met a woman he fell in love with and they married soon after. They had 3 children and were very happy. Unlike his brothers who died very young (early 50’s) Uncle Bob lived into his mid 60’s which was pretty good in those days.

Some years later I went on to marry the young woman Granddad had cautioned me against. The one I saw as Dulcinea. But that’s another story, a haunting tale of beauty, sex, love, sadism, deceit, betrayal and a lot more. The story of a woman who somewhat like the woman in ‘Three Faces Of Eve’ quite literally led two lives. One as a mother, wife and teacher, the other as a detached and very troubled woman … well you’ll just have to read the story. That story is published elsewhere and carefully documented.

My grandfather had recognized something that I could not see. And like most kids, I simply did not listen.

Winter Adventures

2006-01-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

Summer would end and we’d head back to the city, and for us kids, that meant back to school.

School back in the 40’s and 50’s was an adventure, albeit an entirely different kind of adventure than summertime at the lake.

Photo: Clairton High School, Clairton Pa.

I guess I was really lucky in some ways. The schools I attended were, compared to today’s schools, really really good.

My teachers were more than dedicated, they were the very best. They seemed to love what they were doing and somehow impart that love to a special joy, the joy of learning, of knowing, of understanding, of a challenge, a quest to know more about everything and anything.

I went to high school in Clairton, Pennsylvania, one of America’s ‘steel cities’.

Fellow students were children of folks who worked very hard and were incredibly proud of their heritage, their jobs, their lives and especially their family.

Granddad had always said that pride was something that was real, it was earned by your effort and if you felt pride and hadn’t made the effort it could be something very bad called false pride.
World war II had ended. The sun was starting to shine again as the steel mills went back to fewer shifts. Folks had a few dollars in their pocket. You could buy a new car for less than $3000, and no one locked their doors.

And most folks had great dreams for their children.

My school friends were bred in that world of hard work and respect. You could trust them with your life or anything else. We did things together and inspired each other to do it better, whatever it was, work hard and do it better.

In that frame of reference, two of my buddies and I decided to join together and build a special project for the annual science fair.

Our project to be was a engineering project. A working model of a solar powered power plant, in miniature, that would capture sunlight, focus it on a boiler to make steam that would be used to turn a turbine and generate electricity.

(Last names removed from the picture to protect the privacy of living people. Click photo to read the original article.). The guy in the middle is me. The fellow on the left became a successful Oral Surgeon and is now semi retired, The fellow on the right got 2 Phd’s and became President of several mid sized companies and a Professor.

I wrote a letter to Charles Greely Abbot, then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

We also sought the help of a local nuclear physicist and also of our chemistry and other teachers. We received a hand written reply from Dr Abbot explaining in great detail his experiences and ideas. He even took the time to include a hand drawing of one of his solar engine projects.

We also got hours of ideas from a local Westinghouse physicist, Dr Witzig with lots of encouragement from him and everyone else.

We even sought the help of Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America cause their corporate offices were nearby and we needed some special high reflectivity aluminum. Alcoa donated the special aluminum for our parabolic mirror and for the turbine.

There were no conditions to the help or materials we got. Life back then had few contracts. Folks wanted to help and a man’s word really was his bond.

People cared back then. Most cared deeply.

The exhibit was indoors, so we added some heat lamps to simulate the sun. Our brains weren’t muddled by booze, drugs, mindless TV, violent games and goodness knows what else.

I don’t remember ever hearing my friends talk about how much they could make when they grew up, what I heard was what great things can they do.

There was a passion in the air.

Education was a key to the door of the universe.

How the world and our country has changed.

Footnote:

Can you imagine today, the head of the Smithsonian, personally responding with a hand written letter, to an inquiry from a kid?

I hear the tales of schools today with little discipline, poor SAT scores and seemingly lost kids. My heart cries for the kids.

For some years I was a teacher, first high school, then college. What I saw then (in the 1960’s and 70’s) saddened me beyond belief. The students were wonderful, but many were lost, but not as lost as some of my fellow teachers who seemed to be misplaced flower children or Alvin Toffner’s “plastic people”.

Today the U.S. ranks 27th from the top in Science and Math in part because our ‘politically correct’ schools have little student discipline and many of the teachers have a diploma but little education and less motivation.

I had one very challenged high school student who was bright but always in some kind of trouble. One night at a PTA meeting, I told his parents that the trouble was standing right in front of me (them).

Instead of complaining or filing a lawsuit against the school, they listened.

The student had apparently never received discipline, something sorely missing from many of today’s youth. He was given everything.

Consequently he had never succeeded on his own and never knew the feelings of pride or success or accomplishment.

With co operative parents and some special effort on everyone’s part, he became one of my best students and went on to a very successful career and life, and is retired today with a wonderful family of his own.

Granddad Phillips And The Bunk Bed

2005-01-01T20:07:00.000-05:00

Fortunately I spent a lot of time with my Grandfather Anderson.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to spend near as much time with my paternal Grandfather, Charles Albert Phillips, who also was quite an interesting character. He had experienced first hand the American dream, including the hardships of the late 1800’s and early to mid 1900’s in the coal mines, farms and the heart of the Appalachian mountains.

Granddad Phillips lived in the town of Meyersdale, hidden deep in the forests, farmlands and mountains of southern Pennsylvania, about a ninety miles or so south east of Pittsburgh.

Photo: Uncle Bruce (standing) and Granddad Phillips, 1947

When I was a young boy and later as a young man, my father took us to Meyersdale about two or three times a year. To visit Granddad and also to visit my Uncle Bruce Phillips, Bruce’s wife Peggy and their three sons, Bruce, Joe & Ed.

Then once or twice a year or so, granddad came to visit. To get his rusting old Packard fixed, see someone on business or visit a doctor. Rarely, but sometimes, he would stay at our house overnight. Fate would have it that I didn’t get to visit with him all that much during the ‘growing up’ years of my own youth.

But in the years to come I would pleasantly get to experience a taste of his character, personality, values and perhaps most importantly his incredibly interesting and wonderful stories of work, life and country living in the horse, mule and wagon days
Granddad was born in about 1876 in Frostburg, Maryland. He had four brothers, his twin brother Harry, Walter, Milton, Howard and two sisters, Fannie and Olive.

When just a boy, when he was about 10, Granddad took a job in the coal mines and worked there till about 14. That first job was to lead the mules that pulled the coal carts along the rails down in those dark, wet and very dangerous coal mines of southern Pa and Northern W.V. in the 1880’s. In the 1890’s he worked in the Shaw mines, as a farm hand, clerking in Truxall's store and as a delivery person hauling groceries and supplies. He also started several business ventures, some of which succeeded and some that didn’t.

Photo: Bill Habel And C.A.Phillips in front of their Grocery Store, Meyersdale, Pa. – Early 1900’s

By the early 1900’s Granddad Phillips hard work was paying off. He had a business partner named Wm. Habel, a general store and grocery business (the largest in Somerset County) , a feed mill, a house in Meyersdale, and two farms in the Meyersdale and Somerset county areas (Sand Patch and Brush Creek).

He married my grandmother, Nevada C Dickens, about 1906, and they had 4 boys, James, John, Bruce, & Bill.

Granddad sometimes took his boys and Grandma by mule across the mountain trails to visit relatives in West Virginia. Trudging rugged dirt paths that could hardly be called roads. Even in deep snow in the winter.

My father told me that they hung a side of beef and a pig in the attic of their home in the winter and when they needed meat, they went upstairs and cut off a piece. This was long before electric refrigerators and because of the harsh winters and heavy snow in the mountains in those times, it wasn’t always easy to go out.

Unfortunately Grandma Phillips died of breast cancer in December of 1929, so I never had the opportunity of meeting her.

I was fortunate enough to meet and even visit with, most of my great aunts and uncles (including Grandma’s brothers and two of her sisters) on both the Dickens and the Phillips side of the family. I also got to meet my Great Grandma Lucy Jenkins Phillips when I was a small child and she was in her 90’s. So I knew or at least met many of granddad’s and grandma’s extended families.

Granddad taught his four boys the value of hard work by having them work on his farms and feed mill. Like their dad, they all did well in life. My father had grown up carrying 100 pound sacks of feed at Granddad’s mill and store and he also had to work very long hours on the family farm. When my dad got in a bit of trouble in high school, Granddad promptly sent him off to Staunton Military Academy to learn some discipline.

Granddad was raised back when children were expected to work at an early age and you didn’t spare the rod and spoil the child, you used the rod sparingly and never ever spoiled the child.

By the time I first got to visit Granddad he was getting older and in his late 60’s. By then he was partially retired and lived in a moderate sized apartment building, which he owned, in the heart of the town.

He still had some farms and acreage, but we rarely journeyed there. Instead we’d timidly tiptoe past his ever growling, seemingly angry, bulldog and share a country home cooked dinner with Granddad at his apartment.

The meals were very nicely prepared by his 2nd wife, Gertrude Lintz. Gertrude was a quiet soft spoken and reserved person, always with a smile in her bright blue grey eyes, and always with a lot of patience for us kids.

Other times we’d just visit Granddad and Gertrude at their apartment for an hour or so then have our meal at Uncle Bruce’s place graciously prepared by Peggy, Bruce’s first wife. Aunt Peggy was of German American descent and could really cook up a meal in the Pennsylvania Dutch fashion. Her meals were fit for kings and she showed it. Bruce and Peggy were warm, welcoming, smiling and happy people.

Food back then, especially in smaller towns, was generally home raised and home grown. And of course there was real maple syrup, real butter, real buttermilk, the beef or pork or lamb was fresh from the local farms and Sunday dinner lasted for 2 hours or so. I can’t explain in words the wonderful flavor, subtle tastes, aromas and scents from the kitchen and on the dinner table.

In fact most everything was fresh as few folks had freezers in the 1940’s. Supermarkets as we know them hadn’t been invented and would not have been in a small town then even if they did exist. There were no pre prepared foods like pancake mix or pre packaged dinners.

The women knew how to cook, loved to cook, and took a great deal of pride in cooking. And cook they did! Meal time was family time.

Like my other granddad and many men of his generation, granddad was in pretty good health but not very tall. He stood at about 5’ 6”. Thin, with a smaller frame, he didn’t have to worry too much about how much he ate, and like my other Granddad Anderson, he seemed to eat quite a bit!

Photo: Granddad lived in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains near Mt Davis, the highest peak in Pennsylvania.

After visiting both Granddad and Bruce and family we’d pack the trunk, always including some Somerset County maple syrup in 1 gallon cans, and head for home.

It was a long drive back on winding two lane roads across the mountains. Often the roads were snow and ice covered or slippery from the rain and slush. Sometimes we had to stop and put chains on the tires.

After they built the Pennsylvania turnpike and cut the tunnels through the mountains, we went to see Granddad and Bruce a little more often.

Like my other granddad, granddad Phillips was a self educated, very hard working, highly disciplined, self made man.
To survive, to educate and to support himself and his family granddad told of working 12 to 15 hours a day or more, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with an hour or two off for church on Sundays.

It wasn’t so easy in those days. Although he became fairly well off, granddad never showed it. He never lived high or fancy or flaunted his success in any way.

Just a plain hard working church going Methodist dressed in plain clothes, driving a plain car and living an ordinary life.

For a man whose childhood was spent working in coal mines instead of an elementary school, he sent his four sons to the best colleges (and two of them on to medical school), was well read and accomplished quite a bit in his home spun but extraordinary life of nearly 100 years.

When about 80 years old or so he started complaining that the cold air was making his bones creak and joints ache. His solution was to buy an airline ticket to Tucson, park his old Packard in our driveway and climb on a DC3.

He was off to Arizona. In one of those new fangled airplane things no less.

There two of his sons, my Uncles, John and Bill, both MD’s, and their families lived. His twin brother Harry, my great aunt Florence and her two daughters, Gladys and Florence also lived there. Later granddad bought a 2nd home in Arizona and from then until his mid 90’s spent part of each winter in Arizona.

When Granddad was about 87 and when my youngest child was an infant, I was pleasantly surprised to hear he was coming to visit us. To see his latest great grand children, our newborn and her almost 2 year old sister. We lived near Conneaut Lake so his journey would be nearly 200 miles each way.

Then one warm spring day, there he was. Banging on our door with his cane, then leaning on that old wooden cane. Shirt sticking out very slightly from under his faded and patched unevenly buttoned sweater, fingers grasping tightly on to the pipe in his free hand. A wrinkled shirt and not so carefully creased slightly baggy well worn wool pants. Shoes polished and shining. A gold colored watch chain draped to his pocket.

He had given up smoking that pipe, noting the Dr’s (who he didn’t think much of) claimed he wouldn’t live to be 100 if he smoked. But he’d put the pipe in his mouth and chew on it a bit, as if he might smoke it.

There were happy grins, bright smiles, hugs and handshakes all around. My oldest daughter, not even two yet, stepped forward and hugged his leg. He couldn’t reach and pick her up because without his cane, he might fall. Tough as granddad was, I think he had tears in his eyes. I know I did.

Growing ever shorter with each year, now about 5’6”, by then Granddad was beginning to look more than a bit frail. Like a character out of an old Charlie Chaplin movie.

But that image and the fading clothing was just an illusion, kind of a mirage. It didn’t reflect the real man at all.

In reality, as I would soon find out, he was about as spunky and as alive as anyone, of any age, could be.

We lived in a smaller house at the time, with no guest bedrooms. I told Granddad he’d have to sleep in the bottom bunk, noting my oldest daughter who normally slept there, could share my and my wife’s bed for a few nights.

“No, No!” He said.

You didn’t argue with Granddad who at nearly 90 years was about as stubborn as the mules he had led through the coal mines as a child.

“I’ll sleep in the top bunk. I won’t hear of anything more about it”. And no more was said.

Our bunk bed had been built in the bed room. It was too large and much too high to go through any door. The room had a ceiling about 12 feet high and the top bunk was just feet from the ceiling. The ladder to get up there had to be about 7 or 8 feet long.

That first evening of his visit, my wife and children already in bed, we chatted long into the night in the living room of that wonderful little house.

Granddad railing with stories and tales of his early life in the mountains of Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. At the time, I wished I had a recorder to capture the tone, the excitement and his unfading memories of an age and time long before my own. An age and time I had little knowledge of.

Late on that evening so long ago. The night of granddad’s visit, when the stories of life in the mountains faded, I was suddenly filled with anxiety and apprehension. I fearfully watched as granddad climbed, ever so slowly, fumbling a bit, a step at a time, up that wooden bunk bed ladder.

Then he seemed to struggle some and somehow climbed over the top of the ladder and plopped onto the mattress. Grinning from ear to ear, the only words I heard were

“Goodnight Son”.

I kissed my daughter, sleeping in the bottom bunk, and my other daughter sleeping in her baby bed, goodnight, and went to bed.

I couldn’t sleep. What would I do if he fell? Not just on or getting off the ladder in the middle of the night, but what if he fell right out of bed? It was a long drop to the yellow pine floor. Fretful and fearing the worst, I tossed and turned all night.

Early the next morning, when I got up and peeked into the bedroom, granddad was gone, there was no one in the bunk!
It was quite a relief to find him already dressed and outside, poking the trunk of the apple tree with his cane, then carefully inspecting the apple buds. Soon he was giving me some advice on how to better care for the apple trees and how to better plant my garden.

After lunch, he took me aside saying he needed to speak to me “alone”.

Away from my family’s ears, he emphasized that even though I seemed to be doing fairly well, that I should consider going back and continuing my ‘schooling’. He noted that I had a growing family to support and that in this ‘modern and changing world’, ‘schooling was one of the keys to success’. He carefully reminded me that he didn’t have that kind of opportunity as a young man.

A few days, many stories and much advice later, I gently put my arm around his shoulder and hugged him goodbye.

My older daughter in tow, we walked over to the pine tree I planted when she was born to show it to him. Then on up the driveway and to the car.
My daughter and I waved goodbye to her great granddad.
Something not too many great grandchildren and not enough Grandson’s get to do.

Partly on his advice, I decided to return to school. Later that same year, I moved my family to Texas and enrolled in a University there to continue the schooling Granddad felt was so important.

As a young adult, I appreciated getting to visit with and to know Granddad Phillips in a totally different way than I had as a child and as a boy.

Granddad passed away some ten years later at age 96+. His twin brother Harry lived 6 more years to 101 or 102.

Working two jobs and attending school a thousand miles away, I’d hadn’t had the opportunity to see Granddad again during those intervening years.

But if I close my eyes I can still see him in my mind as I remember him and recall his tales of that almost forgotten world of so long ago.

I see him climbing the ladder to the top bunk, and looking at me with the wry grin of success reflecting brightly in his eyes and on his brow.

And sometimes, when drifting off to sleep, I imagine I faintly hear his voice and a tapping sound, like sound of a cane knocking softly on my door.

Footnote: In later years after tape recorders became available, my father told me that he did tape Granddad telling his stories.

But somehow after my fathers death in 1983, the tapes Dad so carefully recorded seemed to have become lost. And Granddad’s stories were lost forever. Or were they?

More Info: OleDave’s Family Tree on Ancestry.com, Obituaries: Great Grandma Lucy Jenkins Phillips, Granddad Phillips, Uncle Bruce's, Uncle John’s, Uncle Bills, Great Aunt Ollie, My Fathers.