Farmer’s Fate Grandpa’s Ivy League education
Published 2:20 pm Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Nearly everyone in this country is concerned with getting a good education. Going to the right schools, taking the right classes and getting high grades. Hours are spent sending out applications, studying for SATs and visiting campuses trying to decide what school, college or university will provide you or your child the best education possible.
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But some of the best lessons I ever learned had nothing to do with scholastics, and everything to do with Grandpa Johnny.
Grandpa loved teaching small children about hygiene. He taught me, all my cousins, my children, their children, and I’m sure many, many others. I think I was probably 4 or 5 when he traumatized — er, I mean taught me my first lesson. He called me over real close, and then suddenly took out his teeth! I was traumatized, Grandpa was amused and I don’t think my parents had to encourage me too hard to brush my teeth after that. Hygiene lessons learned.
Grandpa taught us about sleeping habits. This was one lesson I wasn’t so keen on learning. He thought nothing of getting up before the crack of dawn to start on chores — and if truth be told, I didn’t think much of it either! He and I both agreed the morning was the best part of the day; we just disagreed on where we should spend it. He and my sister would rise bright eyed and bushy tailed, and I would drag myself out of bed, minutes before school started, and that’s when I learned that in the Rayl house there are no such things as Sleeping Beauties. In the Rayl house, they are Lay-a-bed-Uglies.
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Grandpa was a clock watcher. Lunch was at noon, along with Luke and Laura and later Perry Mason, quitting time was 4. Chores at 5, and bedtime was at 9 p.m. Sharp. “It’s 9 o’clock, you’ll turn into a pumpkin,” he’d say, shutting off the TV or lights, or whatever switch he was close to as he quickly headed to bed. My grandma would wait until the bedroom door shut, and on went both the TV and lights. That’s when I learned another, albeit more subtle lesson: The rooster may rule the roost, but who rules the rooster?
Grandpa also taught the days of the week. This was another lesson that didn’t fall on receptive ears. Those ears belonging to my dad’s mom, Grandma Edith. I am not sure how the original discussion came about, but what resulted was a decade long dispute over the Lord’s Day. Grandpa Edith believing it to be Saturday, and Grandpa Johnny doing as much as he could to convince her it was on Sunday. The more flustered she became, the more Grandpa Johnny would tease her. He would get her so riled up, she could only swat at him. If there was ever a lull in the conversation and Grandma Edith was within hearing distance, you can be sure that Grandpa would ask about the Lord’s Day.
But Grandpa wasn’t always a giant tease, sometimes he was extraordinarily polite — sometimes too much. Grandpa taught us that exaggeration, even at its finest, can really choke a person. Grandpa, during some of his earlier years, ate dinner at a potluck after church. After one bite of a piece of pie he took, he was trying to figure out how to get it swallowed. It was about that time the baker of the pie asked him how he was enjoying it. And Grandpa laid it on thick. Grandma Betty recalled “he just wouldn’t shut up” and he told her many times in many ways just how great a pie she had made. A few weeks later, the lady baker presented him with a whole pie to take home — because he had loved hers so much. Grandma Betty seemed to gleefully recall serving it to him, feeling his exaggeration had earned him his “just desserts.”
Grandpa also taught his daughters about frugality. The old 8-mm video panned across a field of dead sheep, before quickly stopping with a close up of a ewe. I had heard the story years before, of how my Grandpa had bought a herd of sheep, just to have them die shortly after of liver flukes. Times were hard, and the wool was worth quite a bit of money, so everyone (kids included) went out and plucked the wool off the dead animals — farm families don’t let assets go to waste, regardless of the smell. Like family stories so often are, I had assumed that it had been exaggerated with the passing years. But here it was, the spinning, splotchedy film documenting their family outing. It was all true. Their girls, the youngest looking about 6, were all participating in plucking wool off the dead sheep. That’s a lesson best learned without the experience.
I thank God for dead sheep, dentures and the many lessons learned from Grandpa. Those quirky memories will provide a way to hold on to the things we love, the things we are, the things we never want to lose, without quite so much pain.
Brianna Walker occasionally writes about the Farmer’s Fate for the Blue Mountain Eagle.