My Grandpa

This is my grandpa on my dad's side. He is a storyteller by nature. His slow deep drawl gives away his Southern roots. The three oldest children got to visit with Pa in Texas last November, and still, about once every month I hear the five year old's squeaky voice pipe, "Mommy! Did you know that when Pa went hunting..."

Yes, Alynna. I know the story. Pa went hunting one day with a rifle, ammunition, and a peach. After using up all the ammunition he began eating his peach while slowly walking home through the forest when what should he see, but a strong young deer in clear sight. Now out of ammunition he finishes off the peach, sticks the peach pit into the rifle and fires! However, the deer darted off through the woods. Several years later, while searching through the same hunting grounds he sees a dear skull. What should happen to be growing out of it but a young peach tree!

Brad and I ate breakfast with Pa every morning of our recent trip to Texas. We laughed and marveled to his stories as we ate our scrambled eggs with hash browns. His father was a tenant farmer until that failed to bring enough income to support his growing family. He eventually earned a living coal mining, a dangerous job and one without benefits. Grandpa says his dad had just about every bone broken while working in the mines. He also had the unfortunate experience of getting kicked in the head by a mule thus by spending several weeks in the hospital.

Pa met my late grandmother in the mountains of Georgia. She was fourteen and he was nineteen when they met. They married two year later. Several months after they wed Pa was drafted for the Korean army.

Once in Korea he was confronted with two options. Either find a place in the kitchen and do what he had been originally trained to do, or join the team of young men carefully cleaning out mine fields. Being the shrewd young man that he was he joined the kitchen staff.

One day his job was to make dinner rolls for the company, which was no small job as one batch required 25 pounds of flour! Once the dough was made, the rolls were portioned out, and placed on baking sheets to rise. For an unknown reason the batch did not rise this time around. He moved the sheets to the top of the stove-top hoping the oven's heat would help the process along. He nearly burned the bottoms, but they did not rise. Finally he threw the batch of failed dough into an outside metal trash can and made a fresh batch just in time for dinner that night. 

The next morning they found the metal trash can overflowing with 25 pounds of risen bread dough.