Grandpa Bill

Grandma Iona and Grandpa Bill just after I was born in 1955

I asked Carol to talk about her father today. “He was a wonderful man. A good Christian. He planned ahead so he always had things he needed. He was also generous.

A story she recalls is that Grandpa had was running out of fuses so he went to town and stocked up. He put them in the machine shed where he kept such things. A couple of days later he needed a fuse. When he went to get one, there were none. Now I know his brother Herman liked to play jokes on Grandpa so I thought the story was going to go that direction. Not so.

There apparently was still a fuse so he could replace what he needed but he had not idea what happened to the new ones. A couple of days later he found twice as many new fuses in the machine shed as he had bought in the first place. Apparently it was well known that Grandpa didn’t mind neighbors borrowing things. And on this occasion whomever borrowed replaced twice as many as he borrowed.

“He was well liked and had a good sense of humor.” He and his brother played tricks on each other. Carol couldn’t recall anything specific pranks except one that Uncle Herman played on city slicker, Bob was raised outside of Detroit and he married my Aunt Norma.

Bob liked to help with farm work. One day the asked him to run the weed mower but explained that the way to go slower was to squeeze the handle bar harder which of course was the opposite of what he needed to do. They had great fun watching Bob running after the weed mower.

Grandpa Bill liked to quote Bible verses and was often a sounding board for the student preachers that were rotating through the small rural churches. Carol recalls more than one who decided preaching was not for them

“He was very understanding. He would give shirt off his back.” (or the fuses out of the machine shed

He was the affectionate parent – always free with hugs. He was thrilled to have grandson’s after having 4 daughters. Carol reassured me he was proud of his granddaughters as well.

While he was a good farmer, and kind to his animals, he had wanted to be a doctor but hid father would not allow him to stay in school past 8th grade. I remember hearing this. I suppose he must have said it to me directly as some point but I do not have a specific memory of it. I do remember that he always had a home remedy for almost every ailment and we rarely needed to go to physicians. We put silk ribbons around our necks for croup; used Vick’s vapor rub and hot flannel on our chests for coughs. We rubbed butter on bumps and vanilla on burns (and this really works). We used peppermint fr upset stomachs. We went to chiropractors and did reflexology (although we called it having our feet worked on). We rolled our feet on the old glass Pepsi bottles that had curved ridges on them. If you know what I am talking about, you are dating yourself.

When I went to medical school I was conditioned to NOT thinking that Western medicine had all of the answers. This was before I was aware of the terminology alternative medicine – now termed complementary.

My Grandpa’s medical skills were best demonstrated when I sat in a bucket of boiling water while were were dressing chickens when I was 5 or so. Just to be clear, the was not because of my own clumsiness. I recall my Grandpa had be out of the water and my short stripped off of me with seconds. I don’t know what all was applied to my backside over the next week but I remember I got to lay on my stomach in his bed for a week and I had no scarring. My teenage cousin who was taunting me with a dead chicken got in a fair amount of trouble for being the instigator of that.

When I went to medical school I was conditioned to NOT thinking that Western medicine had all of the answers. This was before I was aware of the terminology alternative medicine – now termed complementary. My pragmatic approach was that if we needed modern medicine to survive, we would have been extinct as a species a long time ago.