Living the LIfe of an Adventurer?

I was listening to my wife describe the men in my father's family to someone and saying, "There just aren't many people like Fred's family is. It took me some time to get used to how he and his family are."

It made me think about this. The best way to explain this might be to say that, "My father and grandfather were sort of like meeting someone like a real life "John Wayne" from the movies. They were both larger than life and very strong, determined and very intelligent men. My Grandfather was born in either the late 1870s or early 1880s in Kansas and he was a person who believed in "dying with your boots on".

What this means is he wasn't going to die in a hospital (even though he eventually did because he was too weak to fight it anymore because he had been in a van accident a few days before and had driven off a cliff in his van, (he and they called it a panel truck then) around 1970 in Idaho. So, this incident likely happened when my Grandfather was either in his late 80s or early 90s. He was trying to get to his mining claim in Idaho from his home that he shared with his wife in Seattle in Lake Forest park since the late 1920s when his kids were growing up into High School and college. He was an Electrical Contractor who took contracts in different states (until the kids were in Junior High) and traveled with his family until he bought this house in Seattle throughout Texas, Arizona, California, Oregon, Idaho and Washington. During the 1920s they strapped their hunting dogs on the running boards outside their Dodge touring car and drove to new Electrical Contracts from State to state periodically. One winter when the kids were young he decided to go out and create a trap line in sawtooth mountains of Idaho to spend the winter without having to listen to the kids that winter. Sounds like someone out of another century doesn't it?

Another incident during world war II was when he grew his victory garden of either strawberries or tomatoes east of the Mountains in I believe Wenatchee

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So, he went to get his gas ration coupons and they told him no because the season was over. (Remember this was an old Cowboy type of person from Kansas). So, he just went back to his panel truck (van) and got his double barreled shotgun and unloaded it and brought it in and set it on the counter and said, "I want my gas coupons." Because he was an old timer likely in his 50s or 60s already they gave him his gas coupons because people were still like this from the cowboy days and this kind of behavior though eccentric wasn't completely unusual. HE was just demanding his rights with an unloaded shotgun present to back up his demands.

So, the last few days of his life this is what happened. He was driving on a dirt road on the side of a drop off past a river where men were in wet suits vacuuming for gold in the river. His wheel bearing froze in one of his wheels which threw him off the embankment down into the river. He would have died right then except the guys in wet suits fished him out of the river and wanted to take him to the hospital. He told them, "No. Take me to my cabin on my mining claim so they did." He was messed up there a few days until my aunt cussed out her older brother and told him if he didn't go rescue "The old man" that she was going to come up and kill her brother." Bob knew his sister Eloise was serious so he then went to Idaho to check on the old man. He found him in his cabin about 3 to 4 days after the accident in pretty bad shape. He had sat in one of his old fashioned wooden chairs with three staves going into a loop of wood. Well, he must have stiffened up suddenly and broken the chair and the staves were stuck into his back somehow from his injuries. So, he was cold and was slowly dying of exposure at this point. Bob drove him to the nearest hospital where he died from injuries, exposure and exhaustion and being too cold to build a fire and to feed or care for himself. But still, his choice was always to die with his boots on. He almost did.

My grandmother, his wife, who was in a rest home at the time said when she learned of his demise said, "The old Bastard finally left me" and was devastated and didn't live too much longer after that.

They were a very tumultuous couple that loved each other dearly and yet likely hated each other just as much. It was a very intense relationship always. They likely were together from sometime around the early 1900s (their oldest child was born in 1912 and my father 1916) (there were 3 boys 'the oldest' and two girls born around 1919 to 1923) so five children total from their marriage. So, they lived together as man and wife from the early 1900s to 1970 when grandpa's van went off the cliff. So they were together up to 70 years and for sure over 60. He had bought the van from the Forest Service used and likely hadn't noticed that the wheel bearing either needed to be greased or replaced or both. So then, Grandpa moved out into legend where he lives now in our hearts of all the grand kids like me and our kids and so on.