Faithful Nest

Looking past Grampa Webb’s  hermitage in the basement at his workbench (with a side of bumper pool and shots of whisky), I wouldn’t trade him for any other. Loyalty and creativity were second only to his family. I learned as much about being myself from him as he taught me about respect. Sometimes that is the same thing.

My earliest memory of Grampa is at their house. It was a tidy little two story with three bedrooms. Two huddled close to the bathroom just off of the living room. The third was accessed up the narrow staircase, with a hairpin turn. Take the door on the left, because the one straight ahead leads into the attic. He was taking a nap on the living room couch. I wanted him to play, so I took the wooden Fisher-Price pull toy – and gave it to him. PLOP! Right on his stomach as he lay sleeping. I still remember the ‘oof’ and Grampa rocketing off the couch!

My cousin Suzie helped Grampa teach us about respect. We were allowed to watch the dads and Grampa shoot pool on that day. I don’t remember what he said, but she called him an ‘old fart.’ He gave her quite a tongue lashing reminder to respect her elders and sent her back upstairs. Banishment from the rare privilege of hanging around in the basement was a terrible punishment.

Please don’t jump to any conclusions. Grampa Webb was a fountain of one-liners. “Did you hear the one about the midget barber? He was just a little shaver!” He had a propensity for jokes second only to his inventiveness. On his basement walls were heads of perch he had cauth with the label “shrunken head – coho – 22.5 pounds.”

Randolph Webb turned 18 just about the time the Great Depression took hold of our country and changed the lives of everyone in it. I never thought to ask him about it. Yet, the scars were all over his lifestyle. Cash stored in mason jars in the ceiling joist over his workbench and under the workbench and up in the attic, everyplace but the bank. It probably explains his propensity for cold coffee and warm beer (wouldn’t the energy necessary to warm the coffee and cool the beer cost money?)

I’ve tried reusing tea bags. Sometimes that works fine. Other times the tea becomes so bitter that even the second cup is a tough sell. I do, however, wash and reuse zip loc bags. My money is safely kept in banks and mutual funds. These are places Grampa couldn’t bring himself to use, though he asked my opinion on investing in ‘microwave tv’ once.

His pride in frugal expenditures was offset by his interest in ‘new’ things. Hence the microwave tv commercial he heard on the radio seemed like a good idea. I couldn’t talk him out of it fast enough. The world still doesn’t have ‘microwave tv’ – though we do use an awful lot of satellite! Before there were infomercials, the ‘Popiel’ people brought many a device into Grandma & Grampa’s living room. However much he talked about them, most of them never made it physically into his house.  One that was quickly adopted was the microwave oven!

We lived less than a mile apart that spanned the generations. Children were to be seen and not heard, though I didn’t live by that very much. Most of my childhood nicknames related to my inability to harness my tongue. Big Mouth. Chatty Cathy. One of my family’s favorite stories involves a clerk at Montgomery Wards. I suspect she was trying to sell my mom on a cute little girl’s dress (my closet already full enough, thank you, for a tomboy).  I told her, “You look like a witch!” Old and wrinkly and – well, I was just being honest! I don’t remember Grampa Webb ever calling me anything besides my name, though I certainly gave him occasion. Unless, of course, you count the endless little catch phrases. They permeate the family to a point that I’m not sure where they came from! ‘Time for bed, Fred.’ ‘Time to go, Joe.’

Part good-time Charlie, part Doc Brown, he invented a butter dish, a tally whacker to tell you when the mail-a-man had been to the mail box, and tied more fishing flies than anyone else in Kenosha County! The butter dish was more exciting than you think – compiled of just two pieces, the butter was inside until you opened it up. Then it rose up on its own little pedestal. Voila! No butter on the cover! Of course, as a child those were far more important that the hospital bed he helped develop. Yes, he was either the designer of – or part of the team to design – the first adjustable hospital bed!

The Simmons Company of the Beautyrest fame started right here in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Eventually, they moved to Indiana, taking Grampa away from us Monday through Friday. He continued to impress our little psyches by taking all the grandkids to church on Sunday. He returned later to pick us up and take us home. Rumor has it the time in between was spent at Chris’s where the first drink of the day was free if you were there when the doors opened.

I am certain that Grampa’s creativity gene lives on in me. I love to make things. Painting, drawing, or compiling words, I play with new designs. Mixed with my dad’s ability to use duct tape and shoestring to fix anything, I will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to resurrect something you can buy for $2.95. My penchant for reality extends to mechanical devices. Give me a key-wind clock over quartz any day. Maybe it is because I like to understand how my things work. Although, I do have a tier 3 cell phone in my pocket. I don’t necessarily understand HOW IT works, though I do know HOW TO work it.

I abhor cheap plastic imitation as well as processed foods. If any of the ingredients are hard to pronounce, I’d rather pass, thank you. There cannot be anything healthy in a six+ syllable ingredient.  Along with this natural ideology, home remedies hold a certain enchantment. Grampa’s mother passed along a recipe for salve that worked wonders. Any wound infection or unidentifiable physical bump was cured with ‘Grandma’s salve.’ Placebo effect or not – it healed most of my childhood boo-boos.

Remember those ‘flies’ my Grampa tied? He spent more time fishing than anyone I know. From Lake Michigan to the Fox River to the waterways of Onalaska, he knew the fish and the rod and fly to catch them with. Blue gills and perch were so plentiful in my childhood; one could have taken them for granted. However, the respect that colored our bloodlines did not allow waste or taking gifts for granted. Besides, Grampa’s famous fish fileting kept them mouth-watering good!

History will tell you that Grampa used to be a huntsman as well as a fisherman. He had a dog go down (I believe it was hit by a train) and had to shoot it himself. You know, ‘put it out of its misery.’ He put his hunting rifle away and never hunted again. There you have it. Spending much of my teen years outside, my mother would have loved for me to have a cell phone. She never knew where I was or when I’d be home. Perhaps I was out shooting skeet with uncles, playing baseball with the neighborhood kids, riding my horse, or backpacking to Elkhorn with the Girl Scouts. I think she knew where to find me for that last one. I only hope my heart for others and animals is half as big as Grampa’s was.

Still today I bike and run and watch birds. Really, if there is anything I can do to be outside, I will be there. Unless it’s raining, more precisely, if it’s storming, I will be in the house – in the basement. That’s just me. I could tell you about the time my Grandma stood in the picture window watching a storm. But that is – really – another story.