"His rows in life were lived as straight as his cotton rows
which were plowed so straight, one would
almost weep.....at their beauty......" MIL
which were plowed so straight, one would
almost weep.....at their beauty......" MIL
MY GRANDDAD..."POP"
1889-1973
My granddad "Pop" was one of the toughest men
I have every known.
Born in East Texas during hard times on a cotton
farm...all he ever knew---was work, work,work...
Sometimes you made a crop...and sometimes you
didn't. Like all folks, you needed a living.
There was no "guv'ment,," as RONALDO MAGNUS
always called it---to bail you out.
But he was never...repeat never... on food stamps.
There was always a pig or two in the sty.
He never read a book. After all he was blind in his
left eye.
Sheltering under a tree in an East Texas storm, when
a boy, he and the tree were hit by lightning...and his eye
ruined.
I have many favorite memories of him---walking miles
behind a mule and a plow, milking down at the barn
during WWII. Hanging washed milk buckets under
the grape arbor to air...carrying slop buckets full of
kitchen leftovers to "feed the pigs."
"Hog Killing Day," every December 26, when he gifted
every one of his kids with a pig.
Sharpening his Chicago Brand knives once again. When
he passed on, the blades were getting very thin...but were
almost certainly the sharpest knives in the world...fit
for a barber, butcher, surgeon...or a sharp West Texas
cotton farmer.
He never had a telephone or a TV, unless in his final
few years...he got a pickup finally, late in life.
He wouldn't have been a tweeter, or a texter, or
most definitely not a Facebooker, "spilling his guts" to
the world every day, making it easier for the
dossier-people.
He played his cards close to his vest.
He would most certainly have picked El Trumpus as
the lesser of two evils, tho' in those times he was an
old-fashioned Democrat.
It would have been risky for a couple of gov'ment
men to have pulled up in his cotton field when he
was hoeing his cotton and insinuate he was "a
White Supremacist."
Or called him an "ignorant DEPLORABLE."
For he was a kind and "practicable" man but couldn't
waste any time. Making a living in those early wonderful,
but difficult American times --was not a piece
of cake..
Across the rock fence from his back door every
summer he had the finest garden in that reddish
sandy soil of Dawson County. There were green beans,
black-eye peas, cucumbers, squash, cantaloupes,
watermelons, okra, tall corn, and I can't even
remember it all!
Every holiday, sometimes even in winter, the men
sat on buckets, saw horses, old chairs out by his
big garage and hand-cranked ice cream in an old
freezer....with farm fresh milk.
He had a ten dollar gold piece, smaller than a dime,
hidden in the back of the kitchen pantry...after
gold was called in. Kept in a pint jar of corn starch.
He never locked his doors, except maybe when
out if town. Not even at night.
He kept an old Stevens 20 gauge pump shotgun
in his closet, in one corner...empty...and his
son's old Cloverine Salve, 22 single shot rifle
over in his bedroom corner, by his trusty floor
Model Philco. The .22 was mainly for hog time.
Ammo for either was scarce and hard to find.
Anyway, perps didn't hang around those old farms.
They knew better. Grand juries knew what was right
and wrong.
He rocked in his rocker, often eating corn bread
and milk ("crumble in") and listening to staticky
radio...Fibber and Molly on Tuesday evenings and
H.V. Kalyenborn for the news, every night. Fifteen
minutes worth...
His first tractor was a Farmall, bought in circa 1940
and parked under an elm tree, on his lawn.
I heard him ask my dad, one day out by that new
tractor. "What do you think of FDR?"
He wore blue bib overalls all he time, except on
Saturdays, when all the farmers in the county went
to town at noon, to get shaves, shines, and haircuts...
and then clog the side walks, on the shady side
of town. Khakis were the Saturday clothes of choice.
His legs were black and blue and dented from a
lifetime of being kicked by mules. I saw them.
Dented.
He was never much of a hugger and those folks
of the time felt their love deep like a river but
were not demonstrative...as real rivers oft run
deep.
He did hug me once or twice and I will never
forget it...he had a kind of clean earthy outdoor
farmer smell...as befitting a real human being.
So I make this memorial piece, a tribute to a
real American.....on Father's Day, 2018
He sent two sons off to fight in WWII and I being
only a kid, noticed the worry in his face, especially
at milking time...as silence fell over the land.
----------------
BY MIL
FATHER'S DAY, 2018
***********
(His second son, my beloved and talented
uncle, a graduate of Texas A&M and a Captain
in the USAAF, was hit by lightning on a tractor,
not a hundred yards from the home place. My
Pop got him down and into the old pickup,
but he never made it to the hospital. He was 36.)
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