grandpa

Grandpa was an interesting character for sure.

His grandfather had brought the family, including sons and daughter (?) from Iowa in a covered wagon in the mid 1860’s. The big push of the Oregon Trail was over by then. They had horses that pulled the wagon but they went sore footed about Sale Lake, so they wintered there, and traded the horses for Oxen, and continued their journey the next summer.

Lest you have forgotten oxen are cows. And if you have ever followed a cow, you know they don’t move quickly. But they were strong, and fairly easy to come by. And, they made it.

My Great Great grandpa, the one who came from Iowa, was Oscar. His son that I descend from was Lew and Howard was my grandpa. It can get confusing as I tell the story!

Grandpa Lew was a civil engineer/surveyor. I think that engineering, like medicine at that time, as a skill you learned by doing, and not the results of a college some where. Both Grandpa Lew and his brother were elected to the position of county surveyor. We have their election certificates.

Uncle John, the brother, was also an Engineer / Surveyor. When grandpa was a youngster he would go in the summer with his father and crew to the foothills of Mount Rainier, outside Seattle. There were few roads and no people. They used a sun compass / level, so if the sun did not shine they could not work. That meant a lot of down time in the rainy weather.

At 9 grandpa was the head chain-man, of a crew of two or three (a chain was a linked steel device of a certain length that they used to calculate the distance). Their job was to survey a piece of property, mark 3 corners and when they returned to the first marker, their calculations had to be within a few feet of where they started, or they had to start over again. That was no small matter if it was a big hunk of land, and being quite mountainous the job was worse.

Grandpa was an only child. His mother seems to have been a very powerful woman who took no guff. She died before I was born. She wanted to have a girl, grandpa used to say, and when she got a boy she refused to have his hair cut and dressed him in dresses for a long while!

Apparently that was not unusual. In telling about it, Grandpa did not seem embarrassed, nor intimidated at all.

One day when Grandpa Howard was about 6, Grandma was gone from the house for a while and Grandpa Lew cut little Howard’s hair. The story is that grandma cried for a month! She doted over little Howard. When he moved out of state to go to another college, it wasn’t long before mom followed him. When he settled in Idaho, it wasn’t long again.

Apparently Grandpa Lew did pretty well. Grandpa tells of a girl who broke up with him in college because she had thought he was “rich,” and he was not as rich as she would have preferred.

But when Howard graduated from the local college in 1909, with a music major, he was given a baby grand piano as a gift. That had to have cost a fortune! Grandpa worked as a teacher and a book salesman and never had any money and that piano was a pain. It took up too much space, was too hard to move. Finally they had a house fire, but the piano was being “stored” at some one else’s house.

Later when grandma was sick, recovering from surgery, grandpa brought a contract to her and convinced her to sign. They had traded the baby grand for a big player piano. Grandma never totally forgave Howard for that one!

In our church, we had an old upright piano and a reed organ, which works like an accordion, and sounds much the same as well. The organist had to play with both hands and keep his/her feet moving on the two pedals that pumped air to make the sound. But this was an old organ and only one pedal worked. So the organist had to work extra hard at pumping that one good pedal.

At some time, so the story went, Grandpa had had a bout with Bells Palsy. There were no lasting affects, except that when he sang, and he had a good bass voice, his mouth would scrunch to one side, almost like he was singing for the person behind him.

Of course, Grandpa was the organist.

So you have the picture here? White haired Grandpa, sitting on the organ bench with one foot madly pumping to keep the sound up, punching the keys with both hands as he joyfully sang with his mouth to the side of his face. And, oh yes, he had his head cocked way back, as those of us who wear bi or trifocal glasses do.

He was a good man, we loved him.