We were all sitting around having lunch. The chore at hand was jacking up a house and Grandpa as usual had assembled his offspring and their offspring to do the hard labor. Grandpa, as always, was the facilitator; the man what made things happen. Two corners of the house were perilously perched on railroad jacks. Some hogs had worked their way up underneath the house and that bothered Grandpa. “You kids get under there and run them hogs out before the house falls and kills one of them.” We did and at that time I didn’t think anything about what he had said. After all, Grandpa was always worried about the stock. Looking back it seems a bit weird he was worried about the house falling on the hogs and not us. Later on Grandpa sold some property but in the deal the new owner agreed to let him tear down the building that was on the land. Grandpa knew there were a lot of good building materials there. Again, he assembled his crew and my job that summer was pulling and straightening nails. Yeah, that’s right. I took a clam hammer and pulled every nail out of every board that was used to build that building. Then, I took that same hammer and straightened every nail I had pulled. I thought it was stupid but this was at a time when a Lowes or hardware store was not on every corner or open on Sunday. And you know what? No matter the project Grandpa or my Father were engaged in, it was a long time before any of us ever paid for a nail. Growing up in hard times will teach you things like that. No, Grandpa was not a prepper, he was a realist and he also knew how to get kids to work. Our pay, most often, was a box of .22 shells. He’d hand them to us and I can never remember him saying anything like be careful or watch where you shoot. He worked us hard and back them ammo was cheap. Sometimes if the job was especially difficult he’d let us shoot his pistol when we were done. I guess you could say I learned to shoot because Grandpa worked me hard. He’d undertake any job because he knew he had the grandkids to get it done and the knowledge and motivational skills to make it happen. Grandpa was the facilitator but he was also the educator. Because of Grandpa I don’t have to call a plumber, I don’t have to call a carpenter, I can dig my own ditch and split my own firewood. I don’t miss much of what I shoot at and I don’t need no help skinning it. (I can’t cook worth a hoot but Grandpa couldn’t either.) I also don’t need any outside motivation to make me work hard because, as Grandpa taught me, if you work hard you can get ammunition and with enough ammunition you can get just about anything else you need. Now there’s a lesson that ought to be taught more often.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 20:33:13 +0000
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