Cool things your grandparents did

[CardiacCoug]

One of my grandfathers played trombone in the Stanford Band at the Jan 1, 1927 Rose Bowl. 7-7 tie against Alabama, but he was happy with the free trip and the experience anyway

Amazing what a different world he grew up in -- he worked his way through Stanford with odd jobs like working at a hotel and for a lumber company.

You wouldn't find too many Stanford students these days who would go out and chop down trees on weekends to pay for college.

[wuapinmon]

95% of this is true.

“Forgotten”
By Vollick Meiele


I believe in God. Yeah, the Biblical God, though I must say I prefer His New Testament incarnation to His Old Testament grumpiness. Maybe sheathing Himself in the flesh made Him realize just how hard it is to be human. Of course, that line of thinking is problematic because it might mean that God wasn’t omniscient, or that He could risk, or even learn things. Anyway, it’s germane to what I want to tell you, so here goes: I think God forgot about my grandfather.

Let that sink in for a second. I really think God forgot about my grandfather. Now, you might ask, if I believe in the Biblical God, with his lists of omnis—presence, potence, cience, how can I even consider that God forgot about grandpa....well, I can’t really just say it in a few words...it needs some explaining.

My grandpa was born on September 28, 1912 in Buncombe County, North Carolina. To rob a line from H.I. McDonnough, my great-grandmother’s womb was a lush and fertile field whereupon my great-grandfather’s seed all-too-frequently found ample purchase. In spite of his otherwise feeble body, his virility enabled him to sire a slew of sons with my great-grandmother—sons (7) that he could not maintain physically or emotionally after she died giving birth to yet another son, less than a year after my grandfather’s birth. So, John Agleston Buckner (1870-1928), did what any ailing widower did in that day and age, he put all of his sons that couldn’t work in the poor house...in this case, the Baptist Children’s Home in Weaverville, North Carolina.

I think it was sometime around this time, say late 1913, that God forgot about my grandpa; I can’t be sure exactly when it was, but that’s my best guess.

In the orphanage, my grandpa still had family with him—all of his brothers were there: John, Henry, Claude, and I can’t remember the rest...their names are unimportant to my readers, because God did not forget about them; they are all dead. When he turned sixteen in 1928, my great-grandfather came and got him out of the orphanage (no one ever adopted him), and they had a two hour conversation; John Agleston Buckner never visited his children in the home. In spite of his ailments, he did marry his dead wife’s sister (from photographs I’ve seen, she was so dog-ugly that it’s no wonder all she could get was an invalid for a lover) because he knocked her up out-of-wedlock, though I guess he was still too ill to get his boys out of the poor house (please note the bitterness of my tone). Evidently, Mother Nature compensated my great-grandfather for his weak body by giving him some of the most agile ovum-seeking sperm in the history of Western North Carolina. That very same night he came home from the poor house, when their two hour chat was over, my great-grandfather went to bed and promptly died of an aneurysm in his sleep. My grandpa only ever spoke to his biological father once, for two hours. He never knew his mother. Even though his step-mother was also his aunt, she would not let him live with her. Not wanting to return to the orphanage, he went to live with his aged grandfather. About two months later, 2nd Lieutenant Nineveh Taylor Buckner (1840-1928), 25th North Carolina Regiment, Infantry, CSA, died of a heart attack. Raymond’s elderly step-grandmother had only a widow’s Civil War pension to live off, so he decided to leave.

So, he left the only world he had ever known, the hills of Western North Carolina, hitchhiking all the way across the country to Monterrey Bay, California. Upon arrival, he lied about his age to an army recruiter, and enlisted in the regular Army in September of 1929, a couple of weeks before the Black Friday stock market crash. He was Eisenhower's driver in the Philippines, and he fought his way across Asia in the Philippines, China, and Burma. In spite of having served, in combat, under arms, during the duration of World War Two (he was in China when Japan attacked us), he was never wounded. He never had a scratch, in fact, you can’t find a scar on his body--save one. In 1952, while stationed in Germany, with my grandmother holding my mom and worrying about whether he was going to be sent to fight in Korea, the blood flow to grandpa’s heart was occluded and he suffered his first myocardial infarction. While this saved him from the horrors of Korea, it did consign an old soldier to the horrors of motorpool maintenance in Fort McPherson, Georgia. When he had another heart attack in 1954, the Army told Master Sgt. Raymond V. Buckner, USA-retired, that his services were no longer needed. Suddenly without a job, with a family to feed, and aged 42, he enrolled in a course to become a medical technician. He found employment with the Department of Agriculture, and spent the next 20 years criss-crossing the Southeastern United States taking soil samples from farms and telling people what kinds of fertilizer to apply to get better crop yields from their fields, slowed only by his third attack in 1967. In 1974, at age 62, a year after my birth, my grandfather retired from his government job and gained employment as the parking lot security guard at the Hadley’s department store in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. He worked at this sinecure until 1981, when at age 69, he finally retired, drawing the maximum Social Security amount one can earn, along with a full military pension, and a twenty year federal government pension.

As his body aged and his health declined, it appeared to anyone who saw him that most men of his size, brawn, and stature do not live long lives—especially not men whose chests had exploded in searing pain three times before. When the Saudi irhabists crashed their planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the veteran in my grandfather became enraged. He had fought an enemy once before who had attacked his country, and he had defeated them with his own sweat and tears, notice I didn't say blood. As he sat stewing that night, watching the news, his old ticker decided to breathe fire into his chest yet again, fulminating into an agony that few men survive once, let alone four times. It should come as no surprise to you, my readers, that his fifth, and most recent heart attack barely caused him any turmoil when it tried to rip him from this world in early February 2003, near the second anniversary of his wife’s death.

So, to say the same thing over again, at some point in his toddler years, God forgot about little Raymond Vines Buckner. Now, before you accuse me of blasphemy, let me state how exactly God did His forgetting. If God is truly omni-potent, then He has, conceivably, the power to do whatever He wishes, inside of the laws of Physics, and the laws that He set down when He created the world. So, I think God chose to forget about my grandpa. God saw that little Vines was getting a raw deal, and chose to grant him the gift of long life by forgetting about him. By all rights, my grandfather should be dead and buried. Five heart attacks, diabetes (after age 90), vascular disease, dropsy, repeated thrombosis, a botched circumcision (his only scar) at 85, and any other number of afflictions that Mother Nature and Father Time could throw at my grandfather have all been thwarted by the simple act that God willfully and purposefully chose to forget about him. Where other men should have and would have died, the act of God leaving off thinking of my grandfather, has allowed him to remain, to persist in this world far longer than anyone else would have. The Angel of Death hasn't been sent by God to reclaim Raymond, because he doesn't appear in the Book of Life.

He now lives in an assisted living facility near my mom’s house. He sits at a table for four people for every meal. The other three people are always the same ones—they have to have assigned seats because of all the dietary restrictions the elderly have (individually)—and in his six years living there, sitting at his table is akin to a death sentence. Scores of people have dined with him and died. I used to joke that even the staff wouldn’t dare sit down to a meal with him out of mortal fear. Now, I don’t joke, because no one will sit with him. Even though the geriatric myths can’t take much root because of the constant deaths of those who know the stories, the newcomers hear the staff’s whispers. They don’t want to sit next to the man that God forgot. The mortal don’t like the immortal—no one likes to be reminded of the temporality of their own existence, that all glory is fleeting, that the world, and Raymond will go on without them.

And yet, I think now this gift of temporary immortality has morphed from a wondrous condition to a clear burden. I no longer see the light of life in my grandfather’s eyes; I can’t actually see his eyes anymore because his back is so crooked that he can’t raise his head up from the cane crook position it now rests in. I see a very very old man who wants God to remember him, to hear his prayers, to allow him to pass into the next life and be reunited with the mother that he never knew, and with the wife that he loved dearly in spite of her onerous personality and poison tongue.

The dream of immortality has no appeal to me, at least not in the flesh, because I’ve seen its consequence acted out over the body of my grandfather, and I do not like the result. Immortality is a burden, a boring odious burden. God, if You haven’t chosen to forget about me too, please hear my prayer and remember my grandfather. He loves You so much.

Post Script, March 7, 2008: It would appear that my assumption was wrong. Thomas Aquinas theorized that God has all moments past, present, and future as simultaneous to Him. Ergo, God didn't forget about my grandfather, rather, he granted him the gift of living as long as he wished. This morning, in an act of unmatched charity, my mother had the courage to look her father in the face and tell him, "Daddy, it's okay. You don't have to stay here anymore. I'll be alright." He told her understood and then, of his own volition, he went to sleep, never to awaken. Raymond's will be done.

[marsupial]

My grandmother earned her bachelor and master degrees while raising eight children.

That is cool. What did she get her degrees in? Where did she go to school?

[venkman]

One grandpa was a steel worker at Geneva, another a cattle rancher. Not sure if they really did anything cool. One grandpa did train his dog to ride on the back of his dirtbike as he made the rounds on the ranch. Built a little widened platform for the dog to sit on. That was cool, I guess.

[Levin]

My maternal grandfather was head of the SA in Frankfurt. My grandparents' wedding picture shows him in full Nazi garb, and them walking out of the Frankfurt cathedral with a crowd of uniformed soldiers giving him the Sieg Heil salute. Family lore is that he repudiated Hitler after the Fuhrer veered away from building autobahns and factories and started to persecute Jews and build bombs, but could never leave the Party for obvious reasons.

He then ran a Luftwaffe factory during the War in north Germany along the Baltic Sea -- which is where my mom was born.

When the Russians came through from the east, his was one of the first homes they crashed through, and pulled him away from the family dinner table. It was the last time my grandma saw him; my mom was two.

My grandma was pregnant at the time. She had a boy named Detlef five months later. She put my mom and her four siblings in an orphanage while she had the baby. B/c of war conditions, the baby died a few months later of malnourishment. My grandma then took her five surviving kids and escaped the Russian occupied zone for the west. A Polish soldier showed them a passage through the forest.

Several years later my grandmother received a letter from one of my grandfather's POW companions telling her that my grandfather had died of dysentary. She didn't know what had happened to him until that letter; she had still held out hope that he had survived and would be released.

[FMCoug]

My maternal grandfather was head of the SA in Frankfurt. My grandparents' wedding picture shows him in full Nazi garb, and them walking out of the Frankfurt cathedral with a crowd of uniformed soldiers giving him the Sieg Heil salute. Family lore is that he repudiated Hitler after the Fuhrer veered away from building autobahns and factories and started to persecute Jews and build bombs, but could never leave the Party for obvious reasons.

He then ran a Luftwaffe factory during the War in north Germany along the Baltic Sea -- which is where my mom was born.

When the Russians came through from the east, his was one of the first homes they crashed through, and pulled him away from the family dinner table. It was the last time my grandma saw him; my mom was two.

My grandma was pregnant at the time. She had a boy named Detlef five months later. She put my mom and her four siblings in an orphanage while she had the baby. B/c of war conditions, the baby died a few months later of malnourishment. My grandma then took her five surviving kids and escaped the Russian occupied zone for the west. A Polish soldier showed them a passage through the forest.

Several years later my grandmother received a letter from one of my grandfather's POW companions telling her that my grandfather had died of dysentary. She didn't know what had happened to him until that letter; she had still held out hope that he had survived and would be released.

I wonder if there are any families of Nazis who don't have this version of events. Families have a way of whitewashing the past ...

Not saying it isn't true for yours ... but I doubt there are many Nazi descendants around who are proud of their jew-gassing ancestors.

[TripletDaddy]

I wonder if there are any families of Nazis who don't have this version of events. Families have a way of whitewashing the past ...

Not saying it isn't true for yours ... but I doubt there are many Nazi descendants around who are proud of their jew-gassing ancestors.

My wife's grandparents are German. Came over to the US after the war. They have the same story....they opposed Hitler and apparently didn't know about the Final Solution. amazing how powerful the Nazis were with so much internal opposition.

[Levin]

I wonder if there are any families of Nazis who don't have this version of events. Families have a way of whitewashing the past ...

Not saying it isn't true for yours ... but I doubt there are many Nazi descendants around who are proud of their jew-gassing ancestors.

Yeah, that's why I used the word "lore" . . . one of my aunts strongly pushes this version of events . . . the other siblings mostly withhold judgment.

[Mrs. Funk]

My dad posted this on Facebook today about his dad:

Almost 20 years ago to the day my father died at 56 years of age. Born in rural Tennessee, he started working moving railroad ties eight hours a day at age 14. He dropped out of high school and joined the Navy at 17. He drove trucks, worked in a dress factory as well as making shoes before that. He went to Nuclear Power School and was a reactor operator. His main submarine was the USS Snook. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he sat off the coast of Vladivostock with weapons ready to launch. He left for that voyage when I was 17 days old. He didn't see me again until I was six months old. During the same voyage the USS Snook stayed under water for 63 days, a new record. He came to Idaho Falls in 1960 to work at the submarine prototype in the desert of Arco. He worked in nuclear power the rest of his life. Raised as a Baptist he joined the LDS Church and married my Mom in the Salt Lake Temple in 1961. He loved horses, working on cars, boy scouts and in general doing things with his hands. He was very strong and was a man's man. He could work harder than anybody that I ever met. I helped him to build a house (my two brothers helped too). I think he wanted to be a grandfather and a father as much as anyone I ever met. He believed strongly in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. I could always depend on him. I watched this hulk of a man slowly die of lung cancer. I miss him so much. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him. So many times I have wished that I could ask his advice. Here's to my dad.

[LA Ute]

These are all great stories. I really do think earlier generations had more difficult or challenging lives than we do, in temporal terms at least.

My grandmother's last child was my dad. At the age of 6 months he contracted a form of meningitis. This was in 1913. Antibiotics didn't exist (along with most modern medicines and treatment modalities) and he almost died. My grandma wrote a letter to my dad while he was on his mission that is now a precious family history document. Among other things, she tells how for six weeks, while she took care of him, trying whatever remedies were available at that time, she never went to bed but simply slept in a chair for brief periods. There's much more to the story but that part has stuck with me ever since I first heard it as a small child myself. Mothers are amazing.

[Lost Student]

My grandfather fought in WWII and was among the first U.S. soldiers to arrive at Dachau (his squad was ordered to take out one of the guard towers but the prisoners beat them to it).

He saw box cars loaded with bodies and a lot of other horrible things that he never talks about. One of his squad members penned this (I can't read it without tearing up thinking about how great my grandpa is):

As we of this century
Fade into the morning mist of the next
We bequest to you who follow
A place of Freedom,
For you to protect and cherish,
As we did in the muddy trenches
And frozen foxholes in our time.
We bequeath to you
Tokens of our sacrifices,
In stone and stories,
Of our love of country,
These are for you, since
We will be beyond caring,
You, who in honoring us,
Will thus shape your own lives.
As the final fragments
Of our once invincible band of brothers,
Slip into darkness, one by one
You of the next century,
Accept our legacy,
And guard it carefully.
This gift, more precious than life itself,
Is our Bequest.

Dee R. Eberhart

[FN Phat]

My grandfather was in the Pacific campaign during the war. On the way across the pond he was challenged by a commanding officer to a marksmanship contest. Growing up on the family farm, my grandpa was a crack shot. He said it was the biggest mistake of his life as the CO made him a sniper after he was outshot by my grandpa. He never told many stories but I can still hear the screams when he would have nightmares toward the end of his life (I lived with my grandparents to help out around the farm). He would have his life sparred by having half of his jaw ripped off of his face by shrapnel from a grenade that landed in a foxhole next to my grandpa's. The only thing that saved his life was another soldier jumping on the grenade to spare the life of his fellow soldiers.

I can't watch this movie without shedding a tear thinking about what my grandpa went through...I also can't help but watch it everytime I see it on TV

[YOUTUBE]ejm0XvT3rB8[/YOUTUBE]


She had lived in a small rural town of Sweet, Idaho. Her father had died at an early age of a massive heart attack while loading hogs on a truck. Her mother remarried a piece of shit that would rape and abuse my grandmother. She was the oldest of 3 girls and would give herself to protect her sisters. In the middle of the night, my grandmother, at the age of 17, ran away with her 15 year old sister (after she dropped her 13 year old sister at an Aunt and Uncles) and jumped on a boxcar that would lead to Seattle. Her and her sister lied about their age and would become a Rosie the Riveter:



My grandmother returned home to Sweet after she heard of the death of her Step-dad and would meet my grandpa later that summer. He had moved into town to take a job as a ranch hand. My grandpa would later become a heavy equipment operator in the mines of Nevada and my grandmother would open a beauty salon and a fabric store in the small town of Yerington.

I miss them both dearly.

[BYUMizzou]

My grandfather taught me how to fish and how to dig (blast) fence post holes with dynamite. Once he taught me how to fish with dynamite.

[Commando]

I could write pages and pages of my grandparents' cool stories and legacy, but I'll spare everyone and just put a tidbit or two about the heroes of my Idahoan heritage:

My paternal grandfather was the bare knuckles boxing champion of the Snake River Valley. :rockon2:

My maternal grandfather operated the family saw mill in the mountains of the Lost River Valley, working hard his whole life scaling and felling lodge pole pines, and was 100% badass until he could no longer see and died a few months ago at age 97. My fondest memories of him are at family reunions out at my grandparents' place in Mackay, Idaho where he had set up a veritable amusement park for us kids, rigging up cable rides that traversed canyons and round swings that swooped out over sheer mountain ridges. So cool.

[LA Ute]

My grandfather (whoi died 10 years before I was born) was the manager of the Salt Lake Theater, which back in the day was the place to see live theater in SLC. We still have one of the chairs they used in that theater.