Grandpa and Grandma Wasson, part II

Yesterday, I painted the memories of my early childhood experiences at the farm Grandma and Grandpa Wasson rented and worked up until just before I started school. It really was a Currier and Ives moment in my life. I don't believe it was for them. They had to come to grips with declining physical ability and leaving farming. Grandpa was just played out at sixty. Grandma worked like the Ever Ready bunny, but there just was not enough hours in the day. Farming had changed too. It took more acreage, more equipment and more money to make a living. They had none of these, so it just wasn't possible for them to farm any more.

They ended up moving to the Middletown. Someone had turned an old farm in the middle of Middletown into a business. They used the barn to hold auctions. Friday night, livestock was auctioned and Saturday morning, everything else auctioned.
One of the equipment sheds had been converted into a lunch counter.

Grandma and Grandpa moved into the rambling old house that went with the farm. Grandma ran the the lunch counter during the auctions and grandpa probably kept an eye on things and helped with the livestock. They could use some of the empty buildings and for a while Grandpa raised pigs in one of them. They were there about five years and it was another fun place for me and my sisters.

Grandma baked pies for the lunch counter and made big batches of made-rites (kind of a drier sloppy joe) in her kitchen and sold them along with candy, chips and soda during the auctions. Everything was made ahead of time since there was no kitchen in the converted shed. My sisters were eight and nine when this started and were pressed into service. They took money and handed out food under Grandma's watchful eye. Most customers that actually sat down and ate at the counter were regulars attracted by the pies and a comfortable, good natured teasing of their young waitresses by the old men was part of the deal. Child labor was considered good in those days and both my sisters were quite proud of being able to help. I envied them and wanted to help too. If there was something I could have done, I am sure I would have been put to work, but I was too young to make change and couldn't reach anything on the counters. I was just tall enough to get a bottle of strawberry pop (soda to those living in New England)out of the cooler. It was a chest type Pepsi cooler that used ice instead of electricity. The bottles were held in neat rows by metal rails that fit around the bottle necks. Blocks of ice on one end provided the refrigeration. They were allowed to melt to cover the bottom half of the bottle. The result was ice cold pop. I have had soda out of every type of mechanically refrigerated soda cooler you can imagine and none are the equal to the ones cooled by ice. On a hot day, that first long drink of ice cold soda right out of dripping sweat covered bottle is something that I still treasure. Now there are so many health and labor laws that none of this would be permitted.

So my job during the auctions was to stay out of the way and out of trouble. I was five and that was old enough to be allowed to wander around then. I was expected to stay out of the driveway and livestock pens and entertain myself for the few hours during the auction. I liked listening to the auctioneer, who seemed to speak in a different language. Grandpa only went to the Friday night livestock auction. He had no interest in watching Saturdays collection stuff being sold and usually spent the day under the big shade tree between the house and the shed where the lunch counter was housed. I'd spend some of my time there watching people and listening to grandpa talk to some of the old farmers he knew. People arrived by eight Saturday morning and were gone by three or four Saturday afternoon.

Only part of the year actually had auctions. There was no heat in any of the buildings so they happened during the temperate part of the year. During the off season, when we got to stay over night, we played cards a lot. I learned to play rummy and we would play for hours. Grandpa played a lot more than Grandma who cooked and had to keep house. He called Sandy- Buelah, Shirley- Red and me-Parm. When he lost he would hollar to Grandma out in the kitchen that we were cheating again and made a theatrical fuss to make it more fun. At noon, he listened to Paul Harvey and then the livestock and grain prices on the radio. He had an old wicker rocker with cushions and when he came in from outside you got up and moved. He gave me my first pocket knife when I was six or seven and I promptly cut myself checking the blade to see if it was sharp.

At the time I thought that was all there was to Grandma and Grandpa, two wonderful Grandparents. Grandma made great pies, jams and fried chicken. Grandpa loved teasing us and they were the only adults who would spend the time to play cards with us. As I got older, I discovered a lot more. To start with, they hadn't always been grand parents. At one time they had been parents and before that they had even been young adults. The natural progression is to assume they had also been children. Maybe, but that's more stretch than my imagination has.

What I did learn in dribs and drabs was that these people were very human and had not been the paragons of virtue I supposed. The first hint at this was the way Dad interacted with them. When Dad was in the room with either, he was in charge and all though civil, he was not happy with them. I grew up with it like this and I never thought about it. Dad was an imposing personality and until I was in my teens, the oddity of their relationship never seemed odd. No one crossed Dad, it was unthinkable. I just figured this was an extension of that particular personality trait.

Maybe, but I think it was more likely a result of the way things were when dad was a kid. It was the heart of the depression. Grandma and Grandpa were small farmers then too. To call it a hard life is a gross understatement. It was just survival. Prohibition was in and Grandpa took to bootlegging. He had a small still and at first I am sure he did it to make money. He got to drinking his own wares and would spend a couple of weeks at a time out at the still drunk. I gather he was abusive too although it wasn't directly mentioned.

Dad had two older sisters, Pat and Edith, and an older brother, Buford. Buford was quite a bit older and I think he must have got out before dad reached his teens. Buford was not Pung's son. I don't believe grandma was married before Grandpa so he took the Wasson name. Anyway it fell to Grandma and the kids to run the farm.
Times were very tough and when Dad reached the eighth grade he dropped out of school and worked at the farm. He took a job when he was thirteen as a teamster, driving work horses, building the runways at the future Burlington airport. He grew up quick and tough.

Anyway, at some point Dad lost respect for both Grandpa and Grandma and you could feel it when everyone was around.

Grandma, as it turns out had been a flapper in Chicago during the roaring twenties. Well, that would explain all the jewelry we played with as kids and perhaps Buford. To say that Wassons were a tight lipped bunch might lead you to believe they talked more than they actually did. When mom found out that Buford had different father than Pung. She naturally asked who Buford's father was. Dad said he didn't know. Mom asked, why not? He replied, he never asked. Years later, Mom was talking to Bufords first wife, Evelyn. "Didn't you just die when you found out who Bufords father was?" Mom didn't want to admit she didn't know and just said yes, hoping Evelyn might elaborate. She didn't and Mom never did find out, but clearly she would have known whoever it was.

Well, the grandparents I knew had survived all this and evolved into something less interesting and a lot more lovable. I have one more story about Grandpa. As his health deteriorated, he became unable to drive. He decided to sell me his car. It was a 1946 Chevy Coupe, a classic by the late sixties. He asked me if I wanted to buy it for twenty five dollars and began describing some of its better qualities. I couldn't believe it and blurted I'll take it. "God damn it, keep still, I ain't done sellin' it to you yet." For Grandpa this was the bluster he used to avoid a mushier type of love, but to me it was unmistakable. I miss him.