MY GRANDPAW

My Grandpaw, Joe Thomas Chapman, was born in 1892.  I do not have a memory of him being healthy.  My oldest memory is mom and dad picking him up at the bus station in Jemison, Alabama.  He had been to a hospital for some procedure or operation.  I don’t have anyone to ask about it because they are all gone.  But I think it was Memphis, Tennessee.  It was around 1955 before we moved to Illinois, The procedure was on his legs because I remember getting off the bus, legs bandaged, and using a cane.

After spending several years in Illinois, we moved back to Jemison.  It was there that Grandpaw sat on the front porch of the place he bought and farmed for years. 

He purchased the property from the Augustus Walker family sometime in the 19930’s.  The Walker family received the land as a grant from the United States government on April 1, 1876.  I have the original deed hanging in my library.  I just looked at it.  It was part of the Reconstruction following the War of Northern Aggression.  Black people, as were the Augustus Walker family, were given land grants.  President US Grant issued the grant through the land office in Montgomery, Alabama as part of the Congressional Act of May 20, 1862.  This was thirty years before Grandpaw was born.

My fondest memories are Grandpaw sitting in a rocker on the front porch.  His health was deteriorating due to all the hard work of trying to farm.  On that front porch, I heard tales of yesteryear.  He served in WWI and worked in the ammunition factory in Childersburg, Alabama during WWII.  He worked in a sawmill for one dollar a week.  It was there he developed a crooked right index finger.  The finger was offset and was weird when he pointed it at something.  There was scar between the middle and top joint.  He said the scar is where he cut the finger off, took pine rosin, glued the finger together, and wrapped it in an old rag and continued to work.

Sitting on the porch with him, he taught to take broken glass to scrape hickory sticks and smooth them to make rams for peashooters.  The polished rams worked well when shooting each other.  He taught us to shoot chinaberries in a slingshot.  He taught us a command of Southern vernacular although our parents prohibited us from using them.

One prime example is when my cousin, whom Grandpaw despised, done something to set Grandpaw off.  He used that vulgar Chiltonian vernacular in a way I will never forget.  He ran my cousin under a 1950 Plymouth by throwing rocks in between cussing and damnation.

This same cousin, younger than I, would bully me.  Dad warned that If I came home crying one more time from the bullying that he would give me something to cry.  Well, the next time my cousin bullied me; I took his right arm and put it in his mouth.  Thinking it my arm, he clamped down, drew blood from his arm, and went screaming to Grandmoe.  I never will forget the big laugh Grandpaw did nor the prime things he called my cousin.

When I was twelve, dad had me break a field to plant corn.  Using an International Cub tractor, I broke the ground, disced the ground, planted the corn, and cultivated it.  It was a beautiful field.  Grandpaw used mules his whole life.  He bragged on me and we had a bumper crop.

Using mules, Grandpaw cleared the land of trees, stumps, and rocks.  The WPA helped him develop terrace banks on the property to divert water to the woods.  Every time I build things with rocks I would say, “Grandpaw worked hard taking them out and I’m working hard putting back in.”

I own the 1950 Plymouth Special Deluxe that Grandpaw owned.  He got it from my uncle, a body repairman.  I have precious memories of the old Plymouth coming to our house.  Dad was on layoff and food and money were scarce.  Grandpaw would have sacks of groceries in the old Plymouth.  I was sick at school and Grandpaw and Momma came to get me.  I remember lying in the back seat and going home. 

When Grandpaw got very disabled, dad bought it from him for a work car.  Dad drove it until a rod started knocking in the motor.  Dad asked if I wanted a car.  Being 12 years old, I jumped at the possibility.  He said the old Plymouth is yours.  It was straight shift, three on a tree, and mama taught me how to drive.  I can honestly say that although prohibited from using Grandpaw’s vernacular, momma had learned it perfectly from her dad.  I know she used them when teaching me to drive.

I had the Plymouth restored and will pass it down from uncle, to Grandpaw, to dad, to me, and which child wants it.

Grandpaw worked hard and died poor. Two cousins and I are the only descendants to live on the property.  Looking over the land reminds of the hard work Grandpaw put into life.  A friend that I wrote about a couple of articles back told me that when he was a boy he saw the most extraordinary from Grandpaw.  JB was walking home from the old country school that was adjacent to Grandpaw’s field, the one I would plant corn years later.  Plowing the field with one of his mules, Grandpaw’s patience, if he had any, wore thin with the mule.  JB said the mule balked and sat down.  Grandpaw used that Chiltonian vernacular to no avail.  Since the verbal did not work, Grandpaw used his mouth differently.  He bit the mule on the nose!  JB said the mule lifted Grandpaw into the air several times until the mule stood up and slung Grandpaw off his nose.  Grandpaw had mule nose meat between his teeth.  It is a good thing that the mule did not retain the words of Grandpaw and talk, as did the Balaam’s ass

 

And when the ass saw he angel of the LORD, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff.  And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me these three times? Numbers 22:26-28 KJV

 

Grandpaw Chapman became a Christian while on his deathbed.  I wonder if he met Balaam on the streets of gold.

 

PS: Family tradition- Grandpaw’s great, great, great granddaughter was playing with a dog that snapped at her.  Little Jessica grabbed the dog and bit its nose.

Thanks Dad

In one of my favorite pictures of my dad, he is leaning against a two by four board holding up the front porch.  Dad did not like to have his picture taken.  On this occasion, his brother was down from Illinois.  Dad had been hauling logs that day and had the smell of pine rosin and sweat mingled with the aroma of Camel cigarette smoke and grease on him.

In this picture, dad is tanned and muscled.  He was very strong from working with pulpwood and logs most of his life.  I, along with my brothers and sister, could not wait for dad to come home in the evenings.  We would spend many evenings lying on an old quit in the front yard just talking about life and looking at the heavens.

I remember that I could not wait to get old enough to go to work in the woods with him.  Back then, pulpwood was measured.  I carried a measuring stick and marked the fallen pine timber as dad cut.  He had a large, and heavy, McCulloch chainsaw.  As a ten-year-old, the chainsaw was very heavy.  It was all I could do to crank it.  When I could not, daddy would give the cord a yank and fire it up.  Ever once in a while, he let me run the chainsaw.  Most dads won’t let a ten-year-old run a chainsaw!  I had the best dad.

When hauling logs, dad allowed me guide the mule that pulled the logs back to the truck.  I was not sure I could do it, but dad said the mule knew what to do once I hooked the tongs to the log.  It was fascinating that the mule could find his way back to the truck.  I would jump on the log and balance myself as the log rolled, twisted, and turned going up and down the hills and hollers back to the truck.  It was even more fun to watch the side loading arms of the log truck throw the logs on the truck.  I don’t think momma would have let me go with daddy if she had known how dangerous it was.

I remember helping dad fall a giant oak.  He bated the tree and I helped to push.  Suddenly as the giant tree started to fall, a gush of wind caught the oak and pushed it back toward us.  Daddy yelled, “Run son!”

As a boy, I wanted to spend as much time with dad as I could.  Dad was what folks back home call a “jackleg mechanic.”  When you are poor and have nothing but junk, you spend a lot of time repairing.  Most of my time was spent under the hood or underneath cars, tractors, and trucks.  This is something I enjoy doing today.  It is therapeutic and nostalgic.

For some reason, dad went most places by himself.  On particular day, he was going to Montevallo to pick up his check.  Momma asked if I wanted to go.  I think she wanted me to spy on dad and see what he was doing.  I knew I had to keep my lips sealed if there was to be another expedition with dad.  I was so excited and could not wait to ride in our log truck with him.

As I went out the door, I closed the door on my fingers.  Doing the natural thing, I pulled them from the closed door, leaving one of my fingernails in the door.  Blood was flying and the finger was throbbing.  I was not going to miss an opportunity to spend time with dad.  I dare not cried.  He would have made me stay home.  I remember sitting alone for what seemed an eternity with my finger throbbing with the beating of my heart.  Dad wanted me to be tough.

Momma taught me how to drive, but daddy let me drive.  Dad went from logging to working in a rock plant.  Our family car became his work vehicle.  As usual, it needed repair another rear axle.  As we started to Bessemer to find a replacement, dad said, “You drive.”  I was twelve. 

On a long hill near Montevallo, I remember being scared to death as we descended.  I looked at dad and he seemed to have confidence in me.  That was until I kept riding too close to the outside of the highway.  Dad told me that there was more room to the inside and stop driving like momma. He said that we would have to have new tires and the front end realigned if I kept running off the road.  Driving in Bessemer was scary and exciting.  I had the time of my life, me driving my daddy.

In her book, Catching Fireflies, Patsy Clairmont says that she read somewhere that we get our role models from our same-sex parent and our sense of safety and security from our opposite same-sex parent.  I don’t know about all that, but I do know that I am glad I had a daddy that loved me and taught me much about life.  I know there are thousands of children that do not have a dad in their lives.  Society is paying a tremendous price for this.  This creates a negative view of God as our Father.  Those that have a nurturing and tender interaction with their dad helps in bonding with our heavenly Father.  Clairmont says that Deuteronomy 32:4, 9-10 gives us a glimpse God’s father-heart.

 

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

 

November is the time for Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving.  Thanks dad!