Me and Daudy

“Daudy”, that is what we called my Grandfather Sam. He was my father’s father. When I came around, he was already an old man, probably 63, but not as old as I am now. But he seemed older. He and my grandmother, who we called Mommy, lived through the fields just north of us. We had a path through the crop growing there, unless it was corn or wheat. It was partly uphill, so it seemed to us youngsters. My grandmother used to be the midwife when my siblings were born. My mother would hang a white sheet on the clothes line to indicate when the time was for Mommy to come to deliver a baby. Daudy took us children home on one morning when we were there overnight. He teased us on the way in the field, “If there was a new baby, would you want a boy or a girl?” He only had to smile as he did his part in returning us that great morning when there were one more of us, probably the 8^th of us.

I used to go fishing with Daudy in the marl pits where trucks had hauled away fertile soil for farmers. In the morning we first dug worms and he would pack a lunch for us. He selected two long bamboo fishing poles which we stuck through the back curtain opening of the buggy. They stuck out back probably 8 to 10 feet, leaving no doubt to anyone we met, of where we were going. We would happily sit there on the bank with lines, "bobbers," hooks with those wiggly “fishworm” on them. We would wait for the fish to pull down the "bobbers," and we knew we had a nibble or perhaps a bite, and up we raised our poles excitedly. Proudly I always counted my fish and was happy with every one of them. Daudy would just smile at my little prized fish. I think he threw the small ones back, but I saved mine. After all, they counted up as much as his bigger ones, which were not really big after all.

On the way home, he might stop at a store and buy a bottle of pop- soft drink, which we shared. I don’t remember if he poured it out in cups for us to drink, but he had slight misgivings about raising the bottle to his lips. That reminded him too much of alcoholic drinks, which he never would have tasted, and wanted to be a good example to me by not drinking it in the manner of the drunks. I think he had an alcoholic brother-in-law, a step or half brother to Mommy although I didn’t know that connection until much later. Anyway, Daudy liked a refreshing drink, but not the “strong” drink, as they called it. Back to the fishing, when we got home he would clean them, too wise and considerate to ask me to help him clean them! Maybe he knew I was too young to learn. Anyway.

Daudy was a preacher. But I have no clear recollection of his preaching style. It seems he spoke in a rather monotone style, somewhat like my father, but I am not sure. He was discreet and respectful even when he preached on things people did not want to hear. He believed in Sunday School when it was still mostly a Mennonite thing. We were Amish but he was not afraid of other good Mennonite practices. He would take his family to Mennonite revival meetings, sometimes in cold winter evenings. Some thought Sam might just eventually join the Mennonites himself. When in his early twenties, he had moved with his father’s family about two hundred miles south so that they could have Sunday School with out disturbing the conservative fellow ministers. Of course I wasn’t around for that but that is what they tell me. I did visit that territory when I was about 16, touring with my extended family. We saw the well on a hillside that Daudy himself dug when was only about 26. It was still in good shape, perhaps 50 years later.

Daudy lived with us the last 6 years of his life. He always had his room next to our kitchen. He stayed there a lot, but came out to eat with us and took his daily walk to the mailbox a half mile down the road. He usually kept a conversation going at the supper table. Sometimes it was about stories he was reading. If it was written in German, it had more credibility even if it was fiction. He liked to raise controversial ideas sometimes which did not please our peace-loving parents, as we youth had to answer his challenges, we thought. Once he asked, “What would they (Americans) do without gasoline?” We youth had good answers, we thought. The trouble was he was just twenty-five years ahead of his day on what became a real issue for Americans in the late seventies.

He did not mind rebuking us at times, mildly, but not often. If we used an English word where he used a German word, he might ask like, “Why do you say ‘count’ instead of the German word,” which we well knew. Sometimes he saw things far from our perspective, like once when I energetically jumped on the bike and sped between the house and the barn, he remarked, “If that isn’t pride, I don’t know what is.” (He saw "pride" as a deadly sin.)  He also did not like any musical instruments, like my harmonica playing. Apparently he would complain to our parents, and I heard the rule from them: no harmonica playing. He didn’t need explanations for his convictions; he thought anyone should just know.

Daudy took his responsibilities and duties seriously, like caring for his mentally ill daughter. She stayed in a bedroom next to the living room, with the tall headboard near the door where we could listen to her but she would not know we were there. She used a comb on paper to vibrate a kind of music, sometimes for long periods of time. She also often old stories to herself of what happened to her in her sickness and earlier treatment. The time came when “friends” reported to authorities that they kept her chained to the bed. That was so she would not run out in any kind of inclement weather, or sometimes over powered her family when Daudy was gone. He went meekly to a hearing the morning after the arrest without representation or family, and pled guilty to the charge of “assault and battery”. My sympathy raises my feeling even now when I think of that almost 60 years later. He took it humbly with no malice to anyone. In prison on a six month sentence, he appreciated the kindness of the warden who called him Pop and who gave him many privileges. When he came home from prison after 3 months, being pardoned by the governor, everybody was joyful except me. I was overcome by sympathy and the sadness of the injustice done to a sincere father and grandfather. Even before he went to prison, I would spend nights at his house sometimes, and every night when we knelt to pray, he would ask God to forgive his enemies: “for they know not what they do”. Daudy did not express his feelings of affection freely, just as many in that generation and even later did not. But he cared and treated us with respect and dignity because he cared about us. His convictions were passed down for future generations, for all to be serious about the godly life as he was. I was seventeen when he went on to his reward.

[This is a third chapter in my biography, My Life Story. Other blogged so far include”Stories of my Early Childhood”, April 1; and "A Trip East When was Young,” May 1.]