- Jan 2, 2008
- 37
- 10
You've had a glimpse at some of my relatives on Mom's side, So I'll rend the veil that covers the past just a little and give you a glimpse of a few of Dad's relatives.
My grandparents, Percy and Evelyn Marsh lived on a small farm in Rushford, New York, which is a little town (At least it was when I was a kid) about 80 miles south of Lockport where I grew up. Grandpa Percy worked as a traveling salesman most of his life and could HE ever tell a story. Until I was ten years old I thought peeing your pants from laughter was what you were supposed to do when Grandpa told a tale!
Anyway, Grandpa was a salesman for many years until his father, who owned the farm, Great Grandfather Warren became ill and Grandpa Percy had to stay home and keep the farm going. Times being what they were, in the years following the Depression food was often more important than the little money he brought home from selling and the small farm's rich black soil produced it in abundance.
Later on when I was old enough to remember, Mom & Dad and my Sis and I would ride to Rushford on Saturday morning and spend Saturday and Sunday with the grandparents, and it was seldom that we went home without a couple of bushels of beautiful produce in the trunk of Dad's car - Apparently Percy was a much better farmer than he was a salesman. As long ago as that was I can still taste with astonishing clarity the huge, ripe tomatoes, still warm from their daily sunbath, pulled from the vine and wolfed down on the spot, salt and pepper was not only unneeded, but somehow would have been insulting on fruit of that nature.
Sweet yellow corn ripened around July and we were somehow, always on hand to help Grandpa pick it and Grandma process it so that in the dead of winter you could open a jar and have a bowl of summer when you wished.
And in the fall there was a special treat - Grandpa had three Sweet Chestnut trees on his land - Years before there had been a blight in the United States which was supposed to have wiped out all the European Chestnut trees in the country, yet here, impossibly were three trees that yielded their treasure every late summer and one of our greatest treats was for Dad to roast some chestnuts ( or as Mom called them " Castagne") in Grandma's ancient oven - My Sister and I had the job of sticking a knife or fork into each nut so that the steam could escape while they roasted, but somehow, whether by accident, or design, one or two were almost always missed and after they'd been in the oven for half hour Dad would check them and shuffle them around on the cookie sheet - The minute he opened the oven door and the cold air hit the ones that weren't pierced they'd go off like hand grenades! Dad would turn from the oven covered in chestnut funk and just give us one of his looks - My late Dad was not only one of the smartest men I ever met, but also one of the most patient.
Grandpa had a huge oak standing in his front yard - the tree had died many years before I came along and to while away some time Grandpa trimmed all the dead branches from the tree, cut a door into the trunk using the actual trunk cut-out as the door and hollowed out the interior of the trunk. He cut windows in a couple places and even put a piece of old linoleum on the roughly leveled floor - All the children in the family loved to play in the tree house and everybody had their own fantasy about it - Mine was being one of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan living in the forests of Never-Never Land, My sister Val used to pretend she was going to visit Winnie the Pooh, but in her fantasy she was Christina Robin.
Ever since he could remember Grandpa Percy loved Model T Fords and he must of had a dozen of them out behind the barn - He always had one or two that would "Run" after a fashion and the others he kept around as cadavers who would donate their aging innards so that Grandpa's favorite Frankenstein could continue to lurch around the surrounding countryside terrifying man and beast alike (Grandpa was always more fond of the past than the present...sound like anybody you know?)
Sunday morning Grandma Evelyn would go to Sunday mass and usually Percy would drive her in his old Buick but when we came to visit Percy would seize the opportunity to miss mass, which he privately confided was a ritual he looked upon with some degree of indifference, by insisting that we children had begged him to go to Cuba Lake Pavilion and feed the Catfish. Eventually Grandma would cave and Mom would drive Grandma to church in our car - I'd of loved to been a fly on the dashboard during those rides - Grandma looked upon Mom with her stylish clothes and shoes, and make-up, with somewhat of a dim view. Not that she was a spiteful woman, or didn't like Mom, but grandma was not only one of the plainest women I ever knew, she was one of the toughest. (My wife holds the current title) - Evelyn was tougher than a nickel steak! She'd work most younger men to death and then cook dinner, and somehow my Mom looked to be...well...a little soft.
Cuba Lake was about twenty miles further south of Rushford and at the speed the Model T would travel it would be about a three hour ride - First we would stop and see Aunt Pauline who lived in Rushford proper and have a glass of cider while Grandpa sipped his coffee. Aunt Pauline was a widow and lived alone in a huge old house on Cottage St. For many years her next-door neighbor was the daughter of Secretary of State William Seward, who, under the administration of President Andrew Johnson purchased Alaska for the United States in the 1800's.
Family legend has it that Aunt Pauline's mom who lived in the house before her was good friends with Seward and when he moved to Washington to take office he asked to store some articles in her attic because he was renting the house out during his tenure. Among the items was a set of china dishes, a silverware service with his monogram engraved on them, a cedar chest and a wonderful inlaid poker table. Time went on and a few years later Seward died without calling for his goods. His relatives took the house back from the renters and soon after that Aunt Pauline's mom passed away, but Seward's goods were still in the attic and years afterwards in a fit of "I'm going to clean out the attic" Aunt Pauline distributed the forgotten items among her relatives.
Uncle Warren (Named for Great Grandpa) got the dishes, somebody else got the silverware (Who I don't know) the cedar chest went to Grandma Evelyn and Percy got the Poker Table. Years later when Grandma & Grandpa passed guess who got the Poker table? and guess once again who came to possess said article of furniture when sadly my father went to his rest?
True or not? who knows? As the saying goes "The price of rice in China grows in the telling and shrinks in the selling" I've never had the table looked at or appraised, probably because if somebody offered me a good price I'd be tempted to sell it, and that would be to ignore family tradition. At any rate it's a beautiful antique and an amusing story that when my grandchildren are old enough to understand I'll pass on to them.
After the coffee and cider Aunt Pauline would send us on our way with a basket of Apples and maybe a fresh pie she had baked. Now, Model T fords had some curious design features, one of which was the way fuel reached the tiny carburetor - The Gas tank on T was right in front of the passenger compartment where a modern car's firewall would be - There was no fuel pump - the gas just fed by gravity to the carb, which was ingenious and economical, but if you were low of fuel and had to go up a hill the fuel would run to the back of the tank and the motor would starve for gas. One way of circumventing this catastrophe would have been to turn the car around and back up the hill - This didn't do much for Percy, so he figured out a fix - He soldered the guts from a valve stem from an old bicycle inner tube into the gas cap and if he were low on fuel (Almost always a forgone conclusion) he'd pull off to the siding, pull an ancient bicycle pump from underneath his seat and give the gas tank a few strokes, thus creating a crude, but effective pressurized fuel system - So up the hill he'd go.
We were making fairly good time, veritably flying along the North Shore road at an incredible speed of about 10 miles an hour. The sun was warm, the soda from the gas station was cold, the apple Aunt Pauline had given me was a Winesap - and the crispest, tartest, most delicious apple I had ever eaten. It was right about then that the entire Model T began to shudder and vibrate horribly and with one unbelievably loud crash the engine fell right out in the road...just like that!
Continued in part 2
My grandparents, Percy and Evelyn Marsh lived on a small farm in Rushford, New York, which is a little town (At least it was when I was a kid) about 80 miles south of Lockport where I grew up. Grandpa Percy worked as a traveling salesman most of his life and could HE ever tell a story. Until I was ten years old I thought peeing your pants from laughter was what you were supposed to do when Grandpa told a tale!
Anyway, Grandpa was a salesman for many years until his father, who owned the farm, Great Grandfather Warren became ill and Grandpa Percy had to stay home and keep the farm going. Times being what they were, in the years following the Depression food was often more important than the little money he brought home from selling and the small farm's rich black soil produced it in abundance.
Later on when I was old enough to remember, Mom & Dad and my Sis and I would ride to Rushford on Saturday morning and spend Saturday and Sunday with the grandparents, and it was seldom that we went home without a couple of bushels of beautiful produce in the trunk of Dad's car - Apparently Percy was a much better farmer than he was a salesman. As long ago as that was I can still taste with astonishing clarity the huge, ripe tomatoes, still warm from their daily sunbath, pulled from the vine and wolfed down on the spot, salt and pepper was not only unneeded, but somehow would have been insulting on fruit of that nature.
Sweet yellow corn ripened around July and we were somehow, always on hand to help Grandpa pick it and Grandma process it so that in the dead of winter you could open a jar and have a bowl of summer when you wished.
And in the fall there was a special treat - Grandpa had three Sweet Chestnut trees on his land - Years before there had been a blight in the United States which was supposed to have wiped out all the European Chestnut trees in the country, yet here, impossibly were three trees that yielded their treasure every late summer and one of our greatest treats was for Dad to roast some chestnuts ( or as Mom called them " Castagne") in Grandma's ancient oven - My Sister and I had the job of sticking a knife or fork into each nut so that the steam could escape while they roasted, but somehow, whether by accident, or design, one or two were almost always missed and after they'd been in the oven for half hour Dad would check them and shuffle them around on the cookie sheet - The minute he opened the oven door and the cold air hit the ones that weren't pierced they'd go off like hand grenades! Dad would turn from the oven covered in chestnut funk and just give us one of his looks - My late Dad was not only one of the smartest men I ever met, but also one of the most patient.
Grandpa had a huge oak standing in his front yard - the tree had died many years before I came along and to while away some time Grandpa trimmed all the dead branches from the tree, cut a door into the trunk using the actual trunk cut-out as the door and hollowed out the interior of the trunk. He cut windows in a couple places and even put a piece of old linoleum on the roughly leveled floor - All the children in the family loved to play in the tree house and everybody had their own fantasy about it - Mine was being one of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan living in the forests of Never-Never Land, My sister Val used to pretend she was going to visit Winnie the Pooh, but in her fantasy she was Christina Robin.
Ever since he could remember Grandpa Percy loved Model T Fords and he must of had a dozen of them out behind the barn - He always had one or two that would "Run" after a fashion and the others he kept around as cadavers who would donate their aging innards so that Grandpa's favorite Frankenstein could continue to lurch around the surrounding countryside terrifying man and beast alike (Grandpa was always more fond of the past than the present...sound like anybody you know?)
Sunday morning Grandma Evelyn would go to Sunday mass and usually Percy would drive her in his old Buick but when we came to visit Percy would seize the opportunity to miss mass, which he privately confided was a ritual he looked upon with some degree of indifference, by insisting that we children had begged him to go to Cuba Lake Pavilion and feed the Catfish. Eventually Grandma would cave and Mom would drive Grandma to church in our car - I'd of loved to been a fly on the dashboard during those rides - Grandma looked upon Mom with her stylish clothes and shoes, and make-up, with somewhat of a dim view. Not that she was a spiteful woman, or didn't like Mom, but grandma was not only one of the plainest women I ever knew, she was one of the toughest. (My wife holds the current title) - Evelyn was tougher than a nickel steak! She'd work most younger men to death and then cook dinner, and somehow my Mom looked to be...well...a little soft.
Cuba Lake was about twenty miles further south of Rushford and at the speed the Model T would travel it would be about a three hour ride - First we would stop and see Aunt Pauline who lived in Rushford proper and have a glass of cider while Grandpa sipped his coffee. Aunt Pauline was a widow and lived alone in a huge old house on Cottage St. For many years her next-door neighbor was the daughter of Secretary of State William Seward, who, under the administration of President Andrew Johnson purchased Alaska for the United States in the 1800's.
Family legend has it that Aunt Pauline's mom who lived in the house before her was good friends with Seward and when he moved to Washington to take office he asked to store some articles in her attic because he was renting the house out during his tenure. Among the items was a set of china dishes, a silverware service with his monogram engraved on them, a cedar chest and a wonderful inlaid poker table. Time went on and a few years later Seward died without calling for his goods. His relatives took the house back from the renters and soon after that Aunt Pauline's mom passed away, but Seward's goods were still in the attic and years afterwards in a fit of "I'm going to clean out the attic" Aunt Pauline distributed the forgotten items among her relatives.
Uncle Warren (Named for Great Grandpa) got the dishes, somebody else got the silverware (Who I don't know) the cedar chest went to Grandma Evelyn and Percy got the Poker Table. Years later when Grandma & Grandpa passed guess who got the Poker table? and guess once again who came to possess said article of furniture when sadly my father went to his rest?
True or not? who knows? As the saying goes "The price of rice in China grows in the telling and shrinks in the selling" I've never had the table looked at or appraised, probably because if somebody offered me a good price I'd be tempted to sell it, and that would be to ignore family tradition. At any rate it's a beautiful antique and an amusing story that when my grandchildren are old enough to understand I'll pass on to them.
After the coffee and cider Aunt Pauline would send us on our way with a basket of Apples and maybe a fresh pie she had baked. Now, Model T fords had some curious design features, one of which was the way fuel reached the tiny carburetor - The Gas tank on T was right in front of the passenger compartment where a modern car's firewall would be - There was no fuel pump - the gas just fed by gravity to the carb, which was ingenious and economical, but if you were low of fuel and had to go up a hill the fuel would run to the back of the tank and the motor would starve for gas. One way of circumventing this catastrophe would have been to turn the car around and back up the hill - This didn't do much for Percy, so he figured out a fix - He soldered the guts from a valve stem from an old bicycle inner tube into the gas cap and if he were low on fuel (Almost always a forgone conclusion) he'd pull off to the siding, pull an ancient bicycle pump from underneath his seat and give the gas tank a few strokes, thus creating a crude, but effective pressurized fuel system - So up the hill he'd go.
We were making fairly good time, veritably flying along the North Shore road at an incredible speed of about 10 miles an hour. The sun was warm, the soda from the gas station was cold, the apple Aunt Pauline had given me was a Winesap - and the crispest, tartest, most delicious apple I had ever eaten. It was right about then that the entire Model T began to shudder and vibrate horribly and with one unbelievably loud crash the engine fell right out in the road...just like that!
Continued in part 2
