Grandpa and Grandma Wasson

I was up a little early this morning. The weather has changed and since last nights storm was mostly rain, we closed the horses in to keep them dry. No, I haven't made the barn doors yet. I can't even see the where the lumber piles are for all the snow. If you can't see any trace of a five foot high pile of lumber, sixteen feet long and eight feet wide because the snow is higher than that, then I am not going to dig it out.

Since I a was up, I took the time to read some of the recent blogs I have posted. I probably read eight or so and only found one incomplete sentence, a few misuses of their-there-they're, and quite a bit of questionable punctuation. The blogs themselves I thought were pretty good. Most of the offending sentence structure and punctuation problems would be avoidable if Kris could be trusted to edit them without changing the content. She has a hang up about factual accuracy. I am writing the blog so why not make myself look as good as I would like to be. Sometimes, this means a few facts are omitted and others molded and shaped to keep the story interesting. Anyway, I can't just turn her loose and go do something else. A lot of the flavor of the blog would end up edited out while some rather pesky facts would turn up.

The great thing about being older and writing is, by waiting a few days to read your own blog, it is just like reading someone else's writing. You are just as surprised by the content as everyone else. As it turns out, I really enjoyed reading it and thought it was pretty good. I agreed with myself on almost everything. I shouldn't have to buy books in the future. I'll just write something and wait awhile to read it.

Anyway, reading about interesting old people got me to thinking I should write down a few memories of my grandparents. My kids weren't born when they were alive. My favorite Grandparents were Grandma and Grandpa Wasson. I never think of them that way. They are Grandma Bernie and Grandpa Pungi to me. (Pung'-ee is the correct pronunciation)

They leased a small farm when I was very young and my fondest early memories are of those times my sisters and I spent there. By the time I was four, they had moved to Middle Town, so, these are very, very early memories. Still, I can see the farm and it's layout in my mind and can recall a lot of things with great clarity considering my age. They raised a dozen or so dairy cows, chickens and hogs, grew a garden and had a pinto horse named Tony. We had older cousins who actually rode the horse by themselves. We got to sit on him and were led around. I don't think they owned a saddle or bridle. I suspect that Tony died and was replaced by another very similar pinto, because Tony became Tonette somewhere along the way.

There were pastures and cornfields, chicken coup, hayloft, milking parlor, and a functioning windmill, the type use abandoned on all the old farms. All very farmy, and bucolic in my memory. I thought their farm was the best place on earth. It was a small. I am sure it was less than a hundred acres, maybe less than fifty. There was a large pasture for the cows out behind the barn and a smaller one next to the house where the horse was kept. There was a big tree with a tire swing tied to a large branch in the horse pasture and beyond that a field with corn in it. Grandma swung us in the tire, sat us on the horse, and made cookies etc. She was good at weaving work into play and we followed her around all day. Being a boy, I was occasionally sent off with Grandpa to do manly chores. Feeding the hogs and repairs of buildings and equipment were manly. Collecting eggs, feeding chickens, cooking, dishes, cleaning, canning food, and laundry were Grandma's. Milking and gardening were shared. I believe that at three, I could see that slopping hogs and repairing things was a better deal than cooking and cleaning. I am sure that was the beginning of my interest in construction.

Grandma and Grandpa were in their fifties at this time. I thought they were very old. Now that I am in my sixties, I have changed my opinion on that. Running a small dairy farm in the early fifty's was a lot of work. More work than I believe it is possible to imagine now. First milking was at 4:00AM. Each of them milked at least six cows. We raised two milk goats when I was in my twenties. They both put out about half gallon each milking. Milking them caused cramps in my hands every time. A cow puts out gallons at each milking. Milking six of them is an incredible feat. The discipline of doing that twice a day for years is hard to grasp. It didn't matter if you were sick or tired or just sick and tired of milking cows, you got up in the dark, cold and snow in the winter, flies and heat in the summer and went down to the barn and did the milking. If it was ten below or a hundred and ten in the shade, you milked. You can imagine how patient you would be with children that whined about doing their chores if you were doing that every morning and night.

Despite these conditions, I can never remember Grandma or Grandpa being short with us. Maybe we weren't there often enough, I don't know. Anyway this place was heaven and we used to beg to get left there.

Grandma Bernie was a great cook and famous for her fried chicken. Her recipe started with a trip to the chicken coup for a couple of unlucky candidates. Being kids, we loved to go along for the excitement. Grandma's technique was to step on chickens toes, grab it by the neck and swing the chicken rapidly in a tight circle using only her wrists. Two or three rotations and the head parted company with the body and the now headless chicken would run around squirting blood for a couple of minutes. Grandma was so good at this, that several would be running around at once. It seemed to us kids that these bloody apparitions were chasing us and we screamed and ran amongst them trying to stay a just few steps ahead. Grandma thought this was great fun too and she'd laugh while we screamed. A good time was had by all. If you did that now, DHHS would take your kids away, send you to jail and your kids to trauma counseling. We didn't think anything of it at the time. It was just part of farm life and harmless fun made from what could have been a pretty ugly task.

Summer evenings would find everyone sitting on the porch swing or steps shelling peas or snapping green beans. Everyone was in bed before dark. Baths were taken in an oblong galvanized wash tub. All three of us were scrubbed at once. Breakfast came just after first milking around 5:30 and it was always bacon and eggs. Coffee was perked on the stove top. Grandma would pour Grandpa's coffee when it was ready. Grandpa always poured some out into the saucer the cup was served on and slurped some right away. When I was young, you saw old men doing this in cafes. I believe most of the slurpers have long since passed, but among old farmers, it was the way it was done.

Grandpa wore overalls and a broad brimmed grey felt hat. The type a news paper reporter from thirties would have worn --front of the brim tipped down and to dents on either side of the peak. I believe they were called fedoras. the Grandma always wore a gingham dress. I never saw her in slacks or a pair of pants. If it were ten below, she wore a heavy flesh colored pair of nylons, a head scarf and a coat to go milk. When she got dressed up she put on a newer gingham dress, added a broach and wore a black hat that was a stiff skull cap with a bit of veil wrapped around it. Women wore them in the thirties and older women used them in the fifties when going to church or dressing up.

Grandpa smoked Kools which he kept in a plastic case in his shirt pocket. He was balding and had one snaggle tooth in front. During the depression and war years, dentistry was a luxury people couldn't afford and most older people had few or no teeth, or perhaps lucky ones had dentures. Not very many people had their on teeth. Grandma smelled of Ivory soap and grandpa smelled of Lava soap and tobacco. They were wonderful Grandparents and spent endless hours playing cards, checkers and carom with us after they gave up the farm and moved to Middletown.

Grandma had another trait that I was very grateful for during my early teen years, she was short and like most women before calcium supplements got shorter as time went by. She was the first adult in the family I grew taller than. I loved to stand next to her and feel tall. As it turned out, despite my mothers promise that I would make six feet, I topped off at five feet eight and there just weren't a lot of people around I could stand next to and get that feeling.

I am going to leave this here and pick it up tomorrow. I have to go clear the driveway of wet heavy snow before it becomes a real mess.