Lazy Summer Days Spent Lolling On Custom Lawn Furniture

Posted on 22/01/2011 by Grumpa Joe

This post is excerpted from “Jun-e-or” a book of my “Recollections of Life in the 1940’s and 50’s,” available from Amazon.com

=================================================================================

There is something about winter that sets me into recalling times from the past. In early 2010 I posted several stories about my Grampa Jim.  This year, I will do the same. Here is the first of a series.

************************************************************************************************************

Lazy Summer Days Spent Lolling On Custom Lawn Furniture

Every summer, Dad packed us up and took us to the farm in Michigan to live with Mom’s dad Grampa. That twenty-acre spread like seemed a vast wilderness at the time. Gramps’s house was set back from the road and trees lined each side of the drive giving the feel of going through a tunnel. Three tall cedar trees stood in a row with two pear trees next to the ditch. They hid the house from the road.

The front door faced the road, and served to let a breeze flow through the house. Gramps never did finish building the front steps. The main entrance was from the side door facing the yard at the end of the drive. A huge willow tree, opposite the living room window, filled the side yard with shade. The weeping boughs nearly touched the ground, and my arms reached less than half way around its trunk. A few feet away stood a very mature mulberry tree that appeared tiny next to the willow

In early summer, the birds came to eat mulberries.  I climbed the low branches and sat in the tree with them. Mom knew what I was doing because my lips and hands were purple. The low branches were easy to climb, not like the tall willow whose first branch was many feet above my head. Dad used a ladder to climb up to that branch to make us a swing from a recycled tire from his 1929 Buick

The outhouse stood across the yard from the mulberry. Grampa Jim didn’t have running water, nor a bathtub or toilet. The outhouse was the third point on a trapezoidal yard formed by the side door, and the two trees.

Grampa Jim had a unique set of lawn furniture sliced from the trunk of a huge tree.  The Table was twenty-four inches in diameter, and just as tall.  The chairs were slightly smaller in diameter and were cut to form a seat with a backrest. The set was old, and gray with no signs of bark on the wood.

I spent endless hours playing on, and around that furniture. Sometimes, I sat on a chair and watched the big black ants run crazy patterns all over the table. Often, I tried counting the rings, but got lost in the weathered and worn grooves of the cut surface.

On the very hot listless days of summer, Grampa Jim, and his buddy Mr. Toth sat on the tree furniture in the shade drinking a beer. They chatted and smoked; Grampa dragged a hand rolled cigarette of Bull Durham while his friend puffed a corncob pipe filled with Prince Albert. Often, I sat with them and listened. They spoke in Hungarian, and I did not recognize many of their words, but I understood the gist of their thoughts.

I wondered then, and I still do now, if the table and chairs all came from one tree.  If they did, the tree had to be magnificent. I asked myself, how tall was that tree? How old was it? Why was it cut down? Did it fall down, or did it die of natural causes? All I know is that I loved sitting and playing on that furniture.

Filed under: Biography, Cartoons, Characters I knew, family, Grampa Jim, Jun-e-or, Memories, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

One Vice In Life

Posted on 21/02/2010 by Grumpa Joe

     If Grampa Jim had one vice in life, it was smoking.  I never saw him without his cigarettes.  He carried stick matches to light up.  Occasionally he asked me to find him a match, but he was never without his cigarettes.  He smoked Camels.  I never saw him with any other brand.

     When Gramps did not have enough money to buy Camels, his second choice was a sack of Bull Durham tobacco with papers. When he wanted a smoke, he made one. He was an artist when rolling a cigarette. First, he opened the sack, and pulled a single sheet of paper from the packet. He curled the paper to form a trough, and carefully shook tobacco onto it. Next, he clenched the drawstring of the bag in his teeth and pulled the bag closed. I watched in amazement as he closed the bag while balancing the open paper without ever losing a single flake of tobacco. Once the bag was back in his shirt, he held the cigarette with both hands. Carefully, he rolled the paper into a cylinder. When he finished, the paper surrounded the tobacco except for a short edge. He carefully lifted it to his lips, and swiftly gave a lick against the exposed paper. He folded the moist edge over the cylinder, and welded it shut. He was ready to light up.

      Gramps grew tobacco on the farm. His friends grew tobacco, so he grew it too.  He did not grow much. I never saw more than four plants. The plant grew as tall as corn, and had large green leaves.  When the leaves were ready, he picked them, and strung them on a pole to dry in the attic.

     The leaves turned from green to golden brown during drying.  He crumbled the dry brittle leaves by hand into millions of little pieces. He stored the shredded tobacco in a bag until he was ready to make cigarettes.

     He had a second way to make cigarettes that utilized a little machine made of wood. It worked by turning a hand crank. First, he placed a sheet of cigarette paper into the machine, and sprinkled some tobacco onto the paper.  A single turn of the handle wrapped the paper around the tobacco.  Finally, he moistened the overlapping paper to make it stick together. This method enabled him to make several smokes at one time.

Filed under: Biography, Characters I knew, Conservative, family, Jun-e-or, Memories, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »