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Note: My brother Greg would always want to look at Grandpa Wilson's mouth when he had no teeth in it. It really fascinated him. Grandpa used to shake his teeth at us and make us wonder if our teeth would be like that and why we couldn't do it now. One time it scared Barbara Wilson.
Dad has told me that Grandpa Wilson got started smoking when he was 8 years old. He had asthma so bad that an old folk remedy they thought--like smoking alfalfa--helped. Then he transferred it to other tobacco smoking. The story goes that he did go out behind the barn to smoke the other tobacco.
Grandpa Wilson stopped smoking two years before he died. It was too late. He had cancer of the lungs. His lungs were "crispy critters" as Greg calls it. The lung tumor was shrunk to 1/4 it's original size. However, he couldn't pass off the poisons created by the experimental medication he was taking.
Grandpa had marvelous vegetable gardens that grew the tallest sweet corn, the best acorn squash, and peas you ever tasted.
He had done a variety of jobs over the years. Farming, logging, and at the last head custodian for the Senior High School in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. A yearbook was dedicated to him I believe the last year he worked there.
I remember going with him to the school when we would visit him in the summer. It was great fun to play the piano even if I didn't fully understand it. One disadvantage to having a custodian grandfather was the bit about chewing gum. HE DIDN'T LIKE IT! After I saw how much work it was to scrape the sticky stuff off the bottom of desks, I appreciated his problem a little more. Not entirely because I do like to chew gum. Let's say I had a healthy respect for the problem.
Another wonderful activity that took place I'm sure every time we visited was 'a fishing we would go' with a picnic. Flambeau River here we come.
Grandpa and I shared the same fear of height. My reason was due to falling off the top of a slide when I was in third grade. Actually, I was pushed off and had a hard time walking for the next three weeks. I never did hear what his reason was. On general principles I suppose. He would exclaim: "Karen, you and I are going to stand on a cigarette paper and see who jumps off first."
Talk about people having a hard life, hard times, etc. This man had his share. Losing his father when a child barely past babyhood...Watching his mother work her knuckles to the bone...Providing for a family during the great depression...Seeing his sons participating in wars. Stress was not foreign to him. Yet one of his philosophies that he passed onto to his children was: "Education can never be taken away from you."
When I started college, Grandpa Bill (I called him this because that is what I thought I heard everyone saying, when actually it was Will) would tease me that I was going for my M.R.S. degree. Then he talked about someone else in the neighborhood whom he had talked to about the fact she was going to college. She told him she sure was. His response referred to it as "that's a smart move to find an educated husband."
My father told me that he remembers Grandma and Grandpa reading books to each other in the evenings for entertainment. Books like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are ones I remember my father mentioning. Probably many others. No TV, radio, stereo, etc. were available.
He could never understand the purpose in playing solitaire because, "who would care if you cheated". He liked to put together picture puzzles however.
SOURCES used are:
Some Information regarding Gaults, Grandma Libby, Bassetts, and Wilsons came from Dayle Harris, daughter of Joyce (Aunt Lodema's daughter)
Birth Certificate from Missouri
Marriage Certificates (copies donated by Ruth Bush Wilson)
Family stories: Ray, Arla, Earl, Dorothy
Census Records for Kentucky, Wisconsin, Missouri
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