Thinking about My Grandfather

I've been going through old pictures at my Mother's, and ran across several I don't recall ever seeing.

Of course, when you are young, you look but  you don't really see. I imagine that's the case.

One of the pictures is my grandfather in his World War I uniform. These are the things I know about him while he was in this war:

He was a sharp shooter.
He was trapped in the Argonne Forest in France with nothing to eat for quite a while.
He was also at sea when they ran out of food and ate what they could catch. (If he started into our house and smelled fish cooking or that had been cooked, he turned around without a word and left)

I barely know these facts, because he did not talk about the war to me. I think in his later years (he lived to be eighty-seven), he talked about it some with other soldiers of time past and a bit to my brothers.

What else do I know about him?

Well, he was born here in this county in 1895, and his great-grandfather owned over ten thousand acres. (My house resides on some of this land, but not because I inherited it). His great-grandfather also owned twelve slaves to help farm the land. I was embarrassed when I found this out a few years ago, but there ain't much I can do about it. He was either Irish or Scots, depending on if you are reading about the crest, the name, or where a book said he came from. His wife was Dutch. He died in this county in 1864.

When my grandfather became a young man he wanted his part of the inheritance because he did not want to farm. He bought a great deal of land in town and ran a general store, which was really a grocery store.

I've heard some really sweet stories about his childhood, some I used in "Out on a Limb of the Family Tree".

He had several brothers and sisters, he was somewhere in the middle. His mother was from a neighboring county and I've been told she was half Scots and half Cherokee.

He began courting my grandmother before he went to war, came back, courted her some more and they married. She was born in 1900. Her family came out of North Carolina down into Georgia and were from Scots/Irish decent also. Her mother was half Cherokee.

Apparently  he was a very stern father, and from what my daddy told me, would be accused of child abuse by today's standards.

But when he was my grandfather, it was quite a different story. He was gentle, loving and kind, and I truly thought he was the perfect man.

I know one of his brothers was murdered up north, where he had gone to find work. I also know my grandfather and some others went up north to dole out justice, just in case it wasn't going to be done. I understand they were successful.

I've also been told he joined the army because he had killed a man who was stealing their horses.

Trying to put those two men together in my mind to make up the man I knew as my grandfather is nigh to impossible for me. I can't imagine him being cruel to his children, or killing another man - even in war - which he obviously did.

In World War I it was  hand to hand, eye to eye, not from some far away plane or pushing a button or dropping a bomb.

But for me, he was the  man that told me stories while he picked beans, let me name the cats and puppies and "help" with the baby chicks and gather eggs and sleep late as a teenager, even though he didn't believe in it.

He's the one who took me to church and showed me a real man read the Bible and studied over it and prayed out loud.

He's the man who showed me how to love a wife, baby her, please her, cook side by side, clean side by side, worship side by side.

He suffered a lot the hours before his death. He begged God to take him, to end his suffering quickly.

And God finally took him home.

Do I believe I'll see my grandfather again?

You betcha.

Do I think he paid for wrong he had done while here? I think we all have consequences in our lives, good and bad, even when we are forgiven by those we love and by our God.

Maybe he mellowed with age to change into the man I knew. Or maybe he was convicted of some of the harshness he displayed in his early adulthood.

Or maybe he never saw anything wrong in his behavior, as he was a part of the Victorian era where children were treated quite differently than they are treated today.

I don't know.

But I still miss him, all the time. And he's been gone almost thirty-one years.

I imagine  he'll be one of the first to greet me with a grin and a big old hug.

Some days, I just can't wait.