Grandpa Jesse. A short story

         My earliest recollection of Grandpa Jesse, I was about seven years old. My grandfather was an old man probably in his mid to late seventies. He was a slight man and due to either an injury or spinal stenosis he was bent over standing no more than five feet six inches tall.
In addition to that, he was crippled. He walked with two canes at a very slow pace.

         Grandpa Jesse was not your typical "gushing over the grandkids" type of grandfather. He was very reserved and except for Sunday church and the annual extended family reunion and Christmas, there was little interaction with our family.

         As the story goes, he had to drop out of the "third reader" which meant he left school at a very early age in order to help support his mother and siblings after his father had abandoned the family.
Needless to say he learned the meaning of hard work at a very early age. He also learned entrepreneurial skills at an early age.

         At fourteen years of age Grandpa Jesse purchased a team of horses and a wagon and went into the business of removing cow and horses manure from farmers property and then sold the manure to people who wanted it for fertilizer. I guess you could say he was profiting from both ends.

         When my father was two years old his mother,Grandpa Jesse's wife, passed away from a heart attack. Grandpa was left with three young boys and a young daughter.
Compounding all of these issues the "Great Depression" had the nation on it's knees.

         As fate would have it, shortly after Grandpa Jesse's wife passed away, the husband of Jesse's sister-in-law passed away and left her with two young boys.
Her name was Martha and my father and his siblings called her Aunt Martha. Grandpa Jesse and Martha Pexton soon married and combined the families.

         In his mid thirties Grandpa Jesse purchased a steam powered threshing machine and with his crew he would contract with farmers to harvest their grain.
At about this time he purchased a steam powered water well drill and again with his crew he would drill water wells throughout the valley. I have a photograph of him and his crew standing next to the threshing machine and the water well drill.

         We lived next to Grandpa Jesse and our backyard connected to his backyard allowing for a quarter acre size garden. And this was my introduction to work and the satisfaction of growing things.

         When school ended for summer break I was assigned to work with grandpa in the garden. A quarter acre garden is a pretty big garden and required almost constant work of one sort or the other.
I don't know how many years he had been gardening however it was well laid out and was very productive.

         There was a broad range of vegetables including corn, peas, tomatoes, green beans, onions, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, radishes, parsnips, rutabaga as well as raspberries and three cherry trees.
It was enough to keep an old crippled man and a young boy busy all summer and into the fall harvest.

         Grandpa Jesse would hang his canes in his pockets while he was using the hoe or shovel or whatever. It was slow going and in addition, he could not hear very well so if I needed something I would have to walk to where he was in order to communicate with him.
I remember times when I would get frustrated due to his slow going. If he would hurray up maybe we could finish in time for me to play with my friends.
One particular day my friends wanted me to play baseball with them, so I asked them to help me so I could finish my work quicker. I asked Grandpa if my friends could help me and he said,"one boy is a boy, two boys is half a boy and three boys isn't a boy at all." That was the last time I asked for help.

         We would start at eight in the morning and work until four in the afternoon with a one hour lunch break. Years later I was amazed that Grandpa Jesse at his advanced age and physical ailments would work those hours virtually everyday except Sunday.
I never questioned my lot in life. It was a number of years later that I realized Grandpa Jesse never thanked me for my help or praised whatever I did. It was understood that I was there to help him and that was that.

         Grandpa Jesse was a religious man and would never swear. Or at least he would never use common swear words. He had his own vocabulary to accommodate those needs. Words such as,"Shaw, Dagnavit, Gosh Darn, Son of a Gun, Darn it, Crap". There were other words I can't remember.

         We had a chicken coop and a number of egg laying hens. Stacked up behind the chicken coop werex odd pieces of lumber wood crates and miscellaneous items too good to throw away.

         One day working with grandpa I happened to walk by the back of the chicken coop and I saw something furry very quickly drop down into the wood pile. I told grandpa about it and he asked if I saw what it was. He went on to say if it was a weasel it will kill the chickens. However if it was a squirrel then we don't need to worry about it. In need of something new and exciting I told him I wasn't share but it could have been a weasel.

         Grandpa sent me into the house to retrieve his rifle from the closet and a box of shells sitting on the floor next to the gun.
I was told by someone I don't remember who, that the gun was an elephant gun. I believe the gun belonged to my uncle who was at one time an avid hunter.
I just remember it was big and heavy.

         Oh boy, this is going to be exciting. Grandpa sat down on the ground and loaded the gun and using a piece of lumber he made a support for the gun and we waited. After a few minutes I remember grandpa saying,"if it's a dagnavit weasel it will pop it's head up out of the wood pile pretty quickly. However if it is a squirrel it will not come up". I was wishing for a weasel. I even suggested that I go over to the wood pile and move things around in order to scare the chicken eater out in the open so grandpa can shoot it.

         I can remember the sight as if it was last week. Grandpa sitting on the ground with his legs spread out and the huge rifle supported by a piece of wood like a tripod and the huge rifle pressed against his shoulder ready for action. In retrospect, if he had shot the gun the bullet would have gone through the animal, the chicken coop possibly killing a chicken or two and who knows where it would stop.
To my dismay the, I am sure squirrel, did not appear and I had to help grandpa stand up and haul the gun back to the house.

         One of my early pleasant memories working with grandpa took place when he had to run an errand. He would invite me to slide over close to him and he would let me steer the car. Back then most automobiles had bench seats and no seat belts so you could do that sort of thing.
I thought it was cool and my friends were envious. Now that I think about it, if I made a mistake steering the car I doubt he would have had fast enough reflexes to save us.

         Grandpa Jesse dressed like a typical farmer. Other than his "Sunday go to meeting cloths", he wore a tan long sleeve cotton shirt and a pair of denim bib overalls. To look at him you would not think he had much however as I was to learn later in life, he owned quite a bit of land.

         Years earlier Grandpa Jesse had purchased a substantial amount of land in Big Cottonwood Canyon. He had actually helped establish a small town named Silver Fork. The property was located in the Wasatch Mountains and along with the community there were two ski resorts. The ski resorts and buildings around the resorts did not belong to grandpa.

         Grandpa subdivided his property into cabin lots. Most of the lots were sold and had cabins built on them however his property went all the way up the side of a mountain to a beautiful meadow.
He decided to build a road to the top of the mountain and develop cabin lots in the meadow and he had just the right person to help with the project.

         Grandpa Jesse hired a man who owned a large caterpillar dozer to do the cutting in along the side of the mountain. Grandpa and I worked behind the dozer using our shovels and rakes in order to clear away smaller rocks and make a small ditch to divert the never ending water coming out of the side of the mountain.

         Although the dozer had worked it's way out of sight I could still hear it working. But when I heard the engine shutoff and it was too early to quite for the day I was about to receive my bonus for all of my hard work.

         The dozer operator would walk back to where we were working to tell us that he needed to dynamite a large boulder. Again WOW. This is exciting. I had never been this close to an explosion. Grandpa and I were far enough away that we were out of danger however the excitement level was palatable. And then after the explosion it was back to work.

         Grandpa Jesse was much more than meets the eye. He was unpretentious in word and deed. If you did not know him you would think he was a very humble, simple man. Although he was humble he was not simple.
He was very respected in the community and held in esteem in our church. I thought of him as the wise old sage, the elder everyone looked up to. I took pride in being his grandson.