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- BIOGRAPHY: Most of the grandkids knew him as Grampa Jim. What we didn't realize till we got older was that he was Gramma's second husband...Even though all the kids but Arthur were his step children, he was the best grandfather a person could ever want to have. He always had time to listen to us, and have a good time with us even though much of the time that I had with him he was stricken with cancer.
BIOGRAPHY: I remember him blowing smoke rings on his pipe and riding around on the tractor...he used to throw a rug over the top of it so I could ride on top of it...He had an old japanese silky hen that we always called "Ticky" mostly because when I was little I couldn't say "Chicky" Gramma and Grampa Jim lived in an old house down in the bottom and the smell of firewood filled the kitchen and the room that most of us would call a mudroom. I can't remember what it was they called it...nothing smelled better than a wood fire on a cold day...I can remember Gramma stretching the dog food by cooking up some surplus squash or pumpkin...adding some dog food and a bit of bacon grease and dishing it up to the dogs (and sometimes the cats) while it was still warm...
BIOGRAPHY: I didn't mind helping pluck chickens, on account of they clucked when you plucked them...even though the head is gone before that point...But I still remember that old hen that would flog you if you tried to catch her chicks...we called them "biddies"
BIOGRAPHY: I remember that you never knew who was going to drop in, and if dinner was on the table a stranger would have been more than welcome, in fact I think Gramma would have been offended if they didn't come in and at least eat a bit before heading out on the road again. Everyone came in the back door...the front door may have been closer to the road, but the back door was closer to the kitchen...right through the laundry room and in the kitchen...The cellar was across the road and I will always remember that faintly musty smell...and Grampa Jim's wine jug bubbling in the corner...I can attest to the fact that he made some pretty good stuff...There was just a little around when I got older and I got to try it...I like to make a bit of homemade wine occasionally myself...I think I got that from him...I am past due because my mother was telling me not to long ago that she wished I would make another batch of that honey mead...with the honey and cider and spices...I think it would technically be called a spiced cyser but who is counting...I certainly wish now that I could go back all those years, before Grammpa died in 79 and Gramma moved up the hill into the nice shiny new trailer...but the house was cold and damp and I kinda get the feeling that there was just to many memories after nursing Grampa all that time when he was ill...
BIOGRAPHY: Gramma still baked her bread and cooked, still loved doing most of her own yardwork...and still had flowers, but it was never the same...We didn't have Grampa driving us down to the old country store over in Germantown (on Washington County road 15, in Ohio) to buy us RC cola and peppermint patties, and Gramma never smoked so there was no smoke rings...but Gramma had a bit more fire with the livestock...I remember her chasing a bull down the old dirt road with a 2x4...a bull that had just shoved me along the road a few feet while I was sitting in the car weeks earlier...I remember being amazed that the bull never charged at her, but I think that might have had something to do with all the swings she took with that chunk of wood that she held in her sweet grandmotherly hands...It was never the same after they took out the party line and put in a line where you couldn't listen in on the neighbors conversations...I remember being hushed a time or two while my dear sweet grandmother listened in on the local gossip...and we knew better than to mention it in that little country church the next Sunday...Sadly the church isn't even in use anymore...the books sit gathering dust and the last I looked the sign still said offering this week $15 and attendance 12, or something real close to that. It's been many years since we had weiner roasts in the churchyard just outside of the rows of monuments...That old cemetary is where alot of my roots are...My grandparents and there parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins...They now slumber on that old green hillside with the little white church...I even remember Grampa going to church with us...when he was still able...and then later people coming over to take Gramma to church. I still wish that we could all go back to that time when things were so much simpler...
BIOGRAPHY: I will always Grampa laughing when my father called me a little democrat...(my family is a bit on the conservative side...)In those days it was an insult. I still consider myself a republican, but much more moderate than I was then...Ironic that at one time they would sit and talk about the family bootleggers and shine runners and how one of Gramma's relation "didn't make shine, he made corn whiskey". I gather it was good stuff by all accounts...These days I joke about how they should bring back prohibition and then I would put a still in the basement...but back then, I listened wide eyed to all those stories, oh how I wish now that they had been recorded in the voices I heard them from back then, but sadly no one ever thought of it, of course back then we never thought about the days those folks would be gone...but I hope that someday I will get to see them again, and I hope to get a shot of that good corn whiskey when I get to those pearly gates...
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1912 - 1979 (67 years)
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