Opportunities We Miss

This morning I woke up thinking about my children and grandchildren and the state of my health and that reminded me somewhat of my relationship with my own parents and grandparents.  I only had one set of grandparents, my mother's parents, as my Dad's parents had died before I was born.

All in all, I had some very interesting grandparents.  I did not realize it at the time and now they've been gone for thirty to forty-plus years I find myself wishing I had taken the opportunity of getting to know them better when they were still alive.  But, like most children, the state of affairs that existed when I was born was going to last forever and I gave no thought to life after they were gone.

My grandfather (Leo, known as Poppie) was an herb doctor.  I grew up taking all kinds of odd concoctions.  The only one I can really remember was pine resin tablets.  We'd go out to pine trees and gather pine resin (dried sap) and make little round pills out of them.  Then they would be rolled in flower and I'd have to take them.  I don't recall how many or for how long but I do remember taking them.

I also remember gathering buckeyes for Poppie to make Piles (hemorrhoids) salve out of.  I'd go out with him a lot.  Now I was probably around five or six which would have made him eighty or eighty-one at the time.  State of my health now I'm amazed he was able to get our into the woods in any form or fashion at that age.  We'd go and he'd gather plants to make different medicines out of.

One spring he even took me to a  lone sugar maple tree up the  holler from the house and we 'tapped' it for sap and Grannie made maple syrup out of it on the old coal cook stove she used.  It did not amount to much but in volume but it was assuredly tasty. 

The story I've heard (so I cannot vouch for the truthfulness of it of my own knowledge) was that Poppy was a "licensed" herb doctor.  I have not researched this to find out if there was such a thing so we'll go on the assumption that was true.  He distributed herbal remedies to people around the area until a woman came to him because she was not having her periods.  Both, (him at least) did not realize she was pregnant and gave her a potion to cause her to have a period.  Naturally enough this caused a miscarriage.  After that, so I was told, he stopped doing anything for any "outsiders" but, as a member of the family, I was not spared.

I really did not pay a lot of attention to his remedies at the time (except all of them included a liberal dose of "Old Grandad" bourbon whiskey).  What an opportunity I missed for the fifteen years he was available to me to hear stories and learn herbal lore!  I so regret that now but death is about the most absolute "water under the bridge" there is. 

My Poppie had more than one peculiarity though.  My Dad owned a good piece of the hillside in those days and my Poppie has selected some big popular trees and had them cut and sawed into boards and one of the cousins (Virgil I think) made coffins out of them for both he and my Grannie.  Lined them with a nice, cushioned lining and painted them silver with roofing pain.  I was told my grandfather even got into his to see how comfortable it would be. 

I thought that was really weird at the time but in later times, as I learned more about my family, I found it quite typical and "in character".    Still, I regret not forcing him teach me more herbal lore.

Poppie also had a banjo I liked to take down and make horrible rackets on.  I persuaded him once (and only once) to play for me and he played a short time but said the 'rumitize' in his fingers hurt him too much to play.  At that time I had no conception what it was like to be over eighty years old.  The way my fingers ache now..... amazing really. 

My Grannie outlived Poppie for a good many years.  Poppie died in 1969 when I was fifteen and he was eighty-seven.  Do the math.  That would have made him being born in around 1881 or 1882.  What a different world he had grown up in.  I think Grannie was ten years younger and would have been born in around 1891 or 1892.  She was near one hundred when she died.  I do not remember the year and my brother and I disagree on her age then.  I think she was over one hundred and he things she was only ninety-eight or ninety-nine.  I suppose that is meaningless at this time.  She was old.

Grannie Victoria (DeBoard) was a character in her own right.  She was a mid-wife.  She delivered me and most of her grandchildren and even some of her great grandchildren.  I think the last one was when she was around eighty seven herself when the wife of one of my first cousins went into labor and just could not wait.  Grannie happened to be there and took over and all ended well. 

After Grannie decided she was having no more children she embraced the only 'sure' birth control known at the time.  I'm not sure how  old they were but I now they were both quite young.  (Relatively speaking).   But, my family is notorious for having "appetites" and Poppie was no different from the stories I've been told.  In fact my family might be much larger than I realize as there were "rumors"....

Poppie. 

And another of Grannie's little nuggets of wisdom was once we were talking about a young (unmarried woman) in the neighborhood who was pregnant.  I asked who the baby's father was and she told me, "When you roll downhill through a brier patch it's hard to tell which brier sunk deepest".

I wish I had paid more attention to her as well.  Our parents and grandparents are deep funds of knowledge if we just have the desire and patience to mind them.  In a way I was blessed because I preferred the company of adults to that of my  peers.  Unless, of course, it was my own parents and I would do most anything to avoid both of them.   It was a complicated triad but that is something for a different day.

Just saying parents and grandparents don't last forever and one should take advantage of what they know while they are there.  Except, of course, when you're a teen.  Then, you already know everything there is to know anyhow and don't need anyone telling you anything.  LOL