Don

 

I haven’t written much about my father’s family. He died before I retired, and I didn't get to spend as much time with him as I did my mother. But even if he had lived I don’t think we would have spent our time talking about his life or his family like my mother and I did. We would probably have worked in the garden or watched a football game. My dad used to tell me stories abut his life, but it wasn't to preserve his legacy. He just did it to entertain me.

In order to avoid confusion, I need to tell you that I always called my parents by their first names, Don and Jim. It wasn’t from any lack of respect. I just called them what they called each other, and they never corrected me. My mother’s first name was James so everyone called her Jim - my dad actually called her Jimmy. It was only after I had grown up and left home that she started going by her more feminine middle name of Wenonah.  

Jim was a talker; she was outgoing; she was emotional and opinionated, but Don was just the opposite. He was always calm and reasonable. I never saw him angry, and I never heard him say anything that he would have wanted to take back later. Not many people can say that. Jim never apologized for anything she said either, although she probably should have. 
 

I drove my mother nuts because I wouldn’t confide in her. When I was a teenager she used to say, “When you were little you used to tell me everything, and now you won’t tell me anything.” Of course the reason that I didn’t confide in her was because I didn’t dare. If I told her what I was thinking, she would start to imagine the trouble my thoughts might get me into, and pretty soon she would talk herself into a frenzy. It didn’t take many frenzies to cure me of confiding in my mother. Jim considered it her duty to mold my character, and my normal teenage questioning of conventional wisdom scared her to death. 

On the other hand, I could tell Don anything, and I did. I used to tell him my problems, my hopes, my feelings. He once even warned me that maybe I shouldn’t tell him so much, because he wasn’t going to lie to my mother if she asked him what I said. That was a big disappointment to me because I liked talking to my dad. He wasn’t critical, even if he disagreed with me. He’d listen to what I had to say, and sometimes he’d tell me what he thought. I don’t ever remember him arguing with me though. He was willing to let me work things out for myself.  

I think Jim said it best. After Don died she said, “he was always on my side,” and that’s exactly the way I felt. He always made me feel like he was on my side too.  

Don came from a nice family. By that I mean that they were nice to each other. They didn’t fight like my mother’s family. I used to stay for a week or two with my dad’s parents in the summers. They were quiet and practical and easy going. My grandmother showed me how to make dill pickles, how to grow strawberries, and she showed me how to mend an electrical cord after I accidentally cut hers in two with the lawn mower.  

                                              Jesse Boyd Gunning 

Don told me a story once about his mother. He said she was riding with someone in a car – they didn’t have a car of their own at the time – and the car broke down. The men got out, looked under the hood, and decided that they could fix it, but they couldn’t find a pair of pliers. They looked under the seat and they looked in the trunk, but no pliers. Then my grandmother asked them what was the matter. When they told her they they were looking for some pliers she said: “ Well, why didn’t you say so before,” and she reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of pliers.  

I think what impressed me most about Grandmother was seeing her kill a chicken. One day she told me she was going to fix chicken for supper. I followed her as she went out to the chicken coop and grabbed a chicken. I watcherd her as she pinned the chicken to the ground by laying a board across its neck, and then, while she stood on both ends of the board, she grabbed the chicken’s feet and yanked it’s head off. That’s when I learned the meaning of the old saying, to “run around like a chicken with its head cut off.” The chicken’s body really did run around in circles, and its beak kept opening and closing like it was trying to crow. Then Grandmother boiled some water, scalded the chicken and pulled out its feathers. My uncle Jay told me that she used make extra money by killing and plucking chickens for the grocery store.   

My grandparents had a car when I visited them, and Grandmother did drive, but it made her nervous. Before we went anywhere she would tell me not to talk to her while she was driving, so she could concentrate. I was a jabberbox. 

                                          Robert Benjamin Gunning 

Grandfather was a barber, and he had a shop down town, just off the square. Enid, where my grandparents lived, had a town square, and on it was a little band stand. My grandfather played the trumpet in the Masonic band, and they performed there from time to time, but I never got to hear him. Some days I’d go down town and spend the day with my grandfather. I’d sit in his shop and read funny books. If the barbers weren’t busy they’d talk to me. I can remember them trying to explain to me how their razor strops worked. Grandfather’s partner made me a rocking chair out of a tin can. I still have it. It’s amazing.  

                                                Tin Can Rocker

Grandfather had fought in WWI, and he still had his helmet, you know the kind that looked kind of like an upside down cereal bowl, and he also had brought home an artillery shell. It was about a foot long and I’m sure it was live. I guess back in his day they weren’t particular about what soldiers brought home with them. Grandfather had been shot in the leg and you could still feel the buckshot under his skin. He was shot in a hunting accident, not in the War, but it was still impressive to me.  

My grandparents took me fishing once when I was little, and Grandmother told me to go to sleep early the night before because we would have to get up real early the next morning. I was so excited that I woke up before daylight. I went into my grandparents’ bedroom, woke up Grandmother and asked her if it was time to go yet. She told me not to worry, that we had time to sleep another couple of hours.

To be continued:

 PS: Sorry there are no pictures in this post, but Blogger won't allow me to upload pictures from my computer at this time. I'll fill in the pictures when they fix the problem.