Remembering My Grandfather

The most significant male role model for me growing up was my maternal grandfather. He was a North Georgia farmer and lumberjack. In his youth, he was a legendary horseman and marksman. By the time I came along, he was already an old man, but he still worked all day at hard labor around the farm. I loved to hang out with him and “help” him with his projects. He would give me practical math problems to work out, like how much it would cost to put up some barbed wire fencing around a particular area.

Paw, as he was called by the grandkids, always wore denim bib overalls, a shirt and a fedora hat. I have seen a photo of my two grandfathers at my parents’ wedding in 1957, and both men were wearing overalls with jackets and ties. Paw always had a stubby little pencil in the pencil holder, and he would use it to mark lumber and to work out figures in connection with his projects. When he was at leisure in his special chair by the front door, he would use it to work the crossword puzzle.

Paw’s hats would eventually develop a little hole in the peak where he touched it to put it on or take it off, and he would have to go to town to buy a new one. When Paw went to town to the haberdasher, he would stop by the hardware store and chew the fat with some other old men loitering there. He would get into a flat footed squat that a lot of mountain folks assumed when they were resting. I never could get comfortable in that position, and I have a hard time getting up from a full squat like that.

Paw chewed tobacco and smoked cigarettes that he rolled one handed. He lost most of his right hand in an accident at a sawmill in 1910, but he developed full use of his left hand. His cigarettes came out perfect every time. He could draw with his left hand, too, and he designed a few chenille bedspread patterns that my grandmother and aunts used when they tufted bedspreads to sell to tourists along highway 41.

I never knew it when he was alive, but Paw’s mangled right hand had dashed his dreams of becoming a cavalryman. His disappointment haunted him all his days. His skills on horseback and with small arms were undiminished by his handicap, but the army would not take him. So he ended up getting married in 1914 and siring six children, five of whom lived to adulthood. At first, he was a sharecropper, then a tenant farmer, and then, in 1930 or so, he used the savings he had accumulated to buy the old Ford place, then known as Twin Oaks, which he farmed until I-75 came through and took the best part of the land. After that, he still kept a huge garden and some livestock, but he no longer farmed for profit. I grew up on Twin Oaks.

Paw managed to keep the farm going strong even when his four sons, his main source of labor, were away during World War II. I remember finding a bunch of ration books in the smoke house, and my grandmother explained that they hadn’t had to use their ration stamps at all during the war but had made do with what they could supply themselves. Neither of my grandparents ever learned to drive, and Paw used mule and horse power right up into the 1960s to plow the fields, so he didn’t even need gasoline during the war.

Paw admired folks who got up early, and my uncles used to joke that Paw would praise a man who got up early even to steal something. Paw almost never went to church, but he was deeply religious and could recite lots of Scripture from memory. He was superstitious, like a lot of mountain folks, and he lived by the “signs”. Paw’s politics consisted mainly in cussing every time anyone mentioned Franklin Roosevelt. I reckon he would have been a libertarian since he was a big believer in minding his own business. I know he favored Barry Goldwater in 1964.

I didn’t know this until after my grandparents had died, but their marriage had been tempestuous. They hated each other with a passion. This explained why Maw was so verbally abusive of Paw. When I was a kid, I just figured that was how old married folks were supposed to speak to one another. Paw would start on a story: “Back in 1928, when we farmed down by the Conasauga….” Then Maw would interrupt: “It was 1927, you old lying bastard!” Then they’d start yelling at each other and I’d never find out what happened down by the river. Paw frequently warned me to think long and hard before getting married because he had regretted his marriage from the first day. Maw often referred to Paw as “Scald Head”. Of course, she also thought “Little Shitpot” was an affectionate nickname for some of the grandkids. My sister was the “Little Heifer”, much to her chagrin. I was “Dagwood” for some reason.

I was Paw’s favorite, and he made no secret of it. No other grandchild was allowed to spend so much time with Paw. In fact, he couldn’t stand some of my cousins and would run them off if they bothered him. Dagwood could do no wrong, however, and Paw was extremely generous and solicitous to me, especially after my father had abandoned us. I wish I had been more attentive to the lore and wisdom he shared with me.