Old Family Stories

[Second Hand Pat]

I have been very fortunate to have a dad who loved to tell stories about his youth and passed down stories from prior generations. As my dad got up in his eighties he lost his more recent memories but retold the stories from his youth. Of course we heard those stories at lot which was ok.

This story is about my great grandmother May. At the time of this story she was a window with five kids. My grandmother at the time was about two years old. At the time of my great grandfather's passing May was an at home mother with no income source. So she had to reinvent herself and she decided to make sandwiches for the local working folks and sell the sandwiches out of her house.

With word of mouth her sandwiches became quite popular and May decide to buy a car so she could sell her sandwiches out of the car. So she went and bought a model T. It took she a week to learn how to drive it. After the week was up she returned it to where she had bought it and asked them to replace all the fenders.

This story is around the 1910 or later timeframe. My dad has since passed and we miss him and his stories.

Anyone here have old family stories and wish to share?

Pat

[jwcarlson]

That's pretty funny, Pat, most modern folks basically grow up driving vehicles and really take it for granted. My great grandpa who died at 92 was born in 1905 in Nebraska. There weren't a lot of cars around and they were pretty poor farmers. He greatly enjoyed driving and towards the end of his life it was a constant battle to keep him from driving when he shouldn't have been. Though my grandpa was fairly successful in getting him to ride a tricycle instead of driving for things near the house. I think he was just really proud that he could afford a car and drive.

This isn't a particularly old story as my dad is "only" 62, but my grandpa died in 2008...
My grandpa was a millwright and general maintenance type of guy for a living and just in general a great tinkerer. My great grandpa (the driver from above) was the same way. Always making interesting stuff like go carts out of old lawn mowers... that kind of thing. My grandpa had a semi-automated black walnut processing line that he made out of an old cement mixer and corn sheller that he used to process black walnuts for decades. Anyway, that's not part of the story. When my dad (the youngest of five kids) was growing up, the family had one car and sometimes a second. But they were always... used until their last leg. In fact, even to this day, vehicles entering the family tend to circulate around the family until they finally go to the big junkyard in the sky. Grandpa was always fixing a car on the weekends and dad was typically the help because he was a captive audience. My dad hated it. So, being forced to to help Gpa, he would throw little pieces of dirt/rust/etc down at Gpa when he was under the car working on stuff. He did this all the time.
Fast forward something like 30-40 years. We're in an Iowa spring after a long winter of salt and sand on the roads. Gpa calls my dad and asks him to come over and take a look at an issue he has with his car. Dad, of course, will help. So, he gets over there and Gpa is describing the problem. Some weird clunk coming from the front wheel/wheel well. Wants dad to get down and see if he can see what's going on. My Gpa is in his 60s maybe 70s at this time. He talks my dad into place and has him looking hard at the wheel well having him focus on some imaginary problem. Gpa then kicks the fender sending a shower of salt and sand down into dad's eyes, paying him back for all the garbage dad threw at him all those years. "That's for throwing s**t in my eyes all those years!" Gpa, of course, knew dad was doing it at the time, but didn't want to lose the help so he just dealt with it and waited for payback.

[Second Hand Pat]

That's pretty funny Jacob, love your story. Sometimes I wish people were more like how we were raised. Being out and about and not so darned hooked on technology. I think we have lost something with this last generation or two.
Pat