My Grandfather

My grandfather was very intelligent but sort of difficult by the time I met him. When I was little he saved my life once when I was 4 (at least that is what I thought at the time because I was 4). I had decided to go visit my little girl friend next door.(next door is several acres away). However, on my way back after playing all or part of the day there I stirred up a hornet's nest by accident and got stung many times so I began screaming from the pain and fright. Grandpa came running and this is what he did. He found the nest and made me watch while he poured gasoline on the nest and then he set it on fire. I thought he was Superman that day. He wasn't scared of anything physical. I heard my grandpa once fought 13 men at once on a construction job and won. He was very strong willed and intense.

So, he was born in the 1880s. I knew him the most when I was born to about 12. I lived with my parents either in a Spartan 28 foot trailer or an apartment my Dad built under the Garage on a hill in Lake Forest Park, Washington(near Seattle) until I was 4 when we moved to San Diego, California.

So, he was at the very least 60 when I was little at 4 in 1952 the year we moved away.

We came back for visits to his 2 1/2 acres of fruit trees (black cherry and apple) and berries (raspberries and boysenberries and Blackberries. I could walk out my kitchen door through the laundry room and pick berries when they were in season myself (as long as I didn't get stuck by the thorns. But I soon learned to be careful picking berries because of the thorns around the bushes.

I remember coming to Seattle when I was 12 and my grandfather wanting me to rototill the land with a gas powered rototiller. I looked at it when he told me to do this. But I didn't say anything at all about not doing what he said. I had looked at this rototiller but saw it wasn't safe and I had already gotten a scar on the top of my foot from a lawnmower so wasn't happy looking at this thing and thinking about losing a toe or a foot to it at 12. So, I listened to him but didn't do what he asked.

My father came up to me and asked why I didn't do what Grandad asked me to. I told Dad this wasn't a safe rototiller. Dad said he would train me to use this unsafe thing in a safe way so I wouldn't get injured or die using it. So, I agreed if he would teach me more about it so I wouldn't get injured or die on the damn thing because I had never used one (even a safe one like this before). So, finally I rototilled the area and had some fun with it and didn't get injured because Dad showed me how to avoid injury with it as he had used it 10 or 20 years before. This would have been 1960 during the World's Fair which we went to then in Seattle. However, I never went up the Space needle then and didn't until a few years ago because the line was too long in 1960.

The two stories that might explain my Grandad when he was old would be: When he was at his mining claim of 1800 acres or more near Elk City Idaho that he went to for 6 months a year (april to october) and then he spend winters with my grandmother in Seattle at Lake Forest Park. He had a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer with a drag line set up with a winch. So, he decided to pull a stump out and got very determined to pull it out by taking a line to a big boulder and another line to the stump. Then he kept inreasing the tension on the drag line until it lifted the tractor up into the air and it turned upside down on top of him so he was trapped for several days until someone found him burned with hot radiator water and diesel oil and he had a collapsed lung.

Then he didn't want to go to the hospital but they took him anyway. Someone smuggled a pistol in and he made the people get him cigarettes to reinflate his lungs. Then he took the pistol out and anyone who tried to stop him as he walked out of the hospital he pointed the pistol at. This was my grandad.

Another time during World War II he had grown either strawberries or tomatoes in a victory garden for the war effort and he went to get his gas coupons to drive his victory crop to market. They said that season had passed and wouldn't give him his gas coupons. So, he went to his truck to get his unloaded double barrel shotgun and then he placed it unloaded on the counter and said, "I want my gas coupons." They gave him his coupons and he took his produce to market to help the war effort.




The last true story was when the mining laws changed and the forest rangers came to take him off his mining claim. He took his 30 odd 6 hunting rifle that he shot bears with until about 1925 and shot the hat off the forest ranger. They let him keep his mining claim until he died of old age.

This was my Grandad. He was an electrical contractor and trained all his boys (3 to be one too) (even though my Dad protested because he was valedictorian of his High school Class in 1934). He was born in Kansas and his father was a Captain in the northern Army during the Civil war.

But, this was the grandfather that I both loved and respected even though my Dad and he didn't usually get along. They were too much alike and even looked a lot alike and were the same height (6 feet 2 1/2 inches tall).