Grandparents were there in summertime

Our grandparents, because they lived in a different era, have stories to tell and lessons to impart, that should be heard, remembered and sometimes treasured by whippersnappers like me. (All right, I’m not a “young” whippersnapper, but can’t whippersnappers be old, too?)

We never knew Grandfather Will Wheeler because he had died in 1935 in his 50s when we were infants. We did know Grandma Nellie Canfield, but only briefly.

But Grandfather Fred Canfield lived with us for one summer in Burrville.

And Bessie Wheeler, our mother’s mother, also lived with us over several summers, not at the same time Grandpa was with us.

Bessie was sharp. She loved the Red Sox and enjoyed watching their games on our television. She liked to watch wrestling too, insisting that ring villains like Gypsy Joe and Dick “the Bulldog” Brower were absolutely legitimate and should be jailed for their physical attacks on good guys like Chief Don Eagle.

Every few weeks, she needed a ride downtown to the Torrington beauty parlor where she had her hair done and dyed purple, as older women did at that time. She dressed in style and was so skilled with crossword puzzles that she won prizes that newspapers would run from time to time.

Mother could make Bessie laugh, which she loved to do, but she was sometimes grumpy, too. The cause of her grumpiness was brother Matt and I. We played mean tricks on her, sometimes filling in her puzzle with bad words.

And she absolutely loved Chinese checkers. Every week day, when Dad drove home from his office at noon, Bessie would say after lunch, “do you have time for a game, Owen?” He usually had the time. The two were friends but they loved to beat each other in these noon games.

Fred was quite another matter. He had endured a hard and hard-working life, from boyhood on. At the age of eight, he had been “farmed out” by his indigent parents to a farm family where he did a man’s work, age notwithstanding. When he was 12, there were no child labor laws and he worked in a factory. It was here that he lost both thumbs in a machine shop accident. He became famous, locally, for his expertise working with horses and sometimes, when someone had a problem with a horse, he’d be called in to work with the animal.

Fred was in his mid 80s when he came to us, and had only confused memories of his past life or the people, including relatives, he had known. He called Mother “El”, thinking she was his sister.

Occasionally, he would have lucid periods in the evenings and Dad would ask him questions about his experiences as a young man when he worked for the American Brass as a teamster, hauling charcoal, or when he worked in the brutal heat of the Casting Shop.

And there was a story about Fred, driving his team with a load on his way down from Canaan. He had a toothache that day but luckily, he met a dentist on the road. The dentist had his equipment with him. Fred remembered the dentist seating him on a stump and extracting the tooth then and there.

I uttered a mental ouch when I heard that story. Nothing to deaden the pain, you see. But Gramps was a tough old cuss. He still had a rock-hard body and he still had a full head of dark hair, only a few flecks of gray, when he died at 85.

Today is Mother’s Day, and it may seem odd to the reader that I should be dwelling on grandparents. But I am doing that, because Margie Canfield was the wonder-woman who took care of Bessie and Fred, saw to their every need fed them, transported them and, while it was often a trial, loved them while raising her own four children. A man can’t write about Bessie and Fred without writing about Margie.

And so I say, Happy Mother’s Day up there, Ma, and add paraphrasing the words to a beloved old song: “Margie, you were (and are) our inspiration; Margie, Margie, it’s you.”