It was always fun visiting my maternal grandparents' home. Instead of saying "Grandpa", I called my grandfather "Pop Pop". That's us (I was born with blonde hair, before it became brown).
I called my grandmother "Nana". She died when I was young.
My grandfather lived his married/widowed life in the Incorporated Village of Floral Park. It was founded in 1874. At that time, Long Island's Nassau County didn't exist; the land was part of Queens County (named for the Queen of England in 1683). When New York City craved more revenue, it looked at Queens County as a prime source and decided to absorb it as a borough.
But half of the citizens objected to the city's notorious embezzlement of money (which is unchanged from the Boss Tweed/Tammany Hall era to now), so they revolted and formed Nassau County in 1899.
That saved the village because other ones in Queens lost their independence and forcibly ceased to be municipalities. If you look now at Flushing, Far Rockaway, or Jamaica, they are all decrepit, as their revenue gets syphoned by NYC.
Floral Park was created by John Lewis Childs, who was born in 1856 in Maine. As a teenager, he apprenticed at a flower farm in the area. Quickly starting his own enterprise, he bought land to produce flowers and seeds for sale. He created the first floral catalogs in America. His business was successful, so he purchased more land and named the streets after flowers. At age 38, he was elected to the Senate of the New York legislature. The village was formally incorporated in 1908, and residents voted Childs as its president of the trustees. His name lives on in the area; my grandfather used a local insurance company named Childs & Murphy. Mr. John Murphy occasionally dined at my grandparent's home.
My grandparents resided on Lexington Street. Named after the 1775 Battle of Lexington, it is alongside Concord Street (honoring the 1775 Battle of Concord) and Nassau Street (named after the Dutch noble House of Nassau, who first settled the land in the 1630s). It intersects with Tulip Avenue and Magnolia Avenue. Floral Park, is a "planned garden community" (like the nearby Garden City, which you can see here: https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2016/03/historic-village-of-garden-city-city.html).
When you think of a village in Bhutan or Peru, you might think of peasantry. When you think of a village in Europe, you might think of a small rural community. However, in America, communities incorporated themselves into villages as protection against the American "steamroller" of corruption and overdevelopment. Incorporated Villages protect their acreage zoning to avoid sub-dividing plots and prevent skyscrapers blocking the sunlight. Not trusting the county/state/federal governments to provide adequate services, they fund their own police, sanitation, road maintenance, civil servants, and fire departments. They are like municipal corporations, and residents pay extra taxes for them, in addition to local, state, and federal taxes. My grandfather was a homeowner in one, and it instilled a sense of civic order in me. Coming from the congested sameness of Long Island's suburbia, I treasured each visit to my grandparents' area as an oasis. If you look at my hometown of Levittown, the cookie-cutter uniformity looks "Soviet"... but Americans prefer to ignore that.
Built purely to make industries rich, it lacks any type of Community Center, and it has no retail district. Barely anything is within walking distance, so owning costly cars is necessary.
Floral Park features tree-lined streets (named after flowers and historic Americana), homes with porches, corner parks, and Victorian and Art Deco municipal buildings & railroad
stations. Residents often walked from their homes to the nearest grocery store or pharmacy. It's currently rated "the 17th safest town in America".
My grandfather served his community as a policeman.
His team included 24 patrolmen, 6 sergeants, 2 detectives, 6 crossing guards, and several dispatchers. Even in retirement, he always knew all the Village policemen, the police commissioner, the old ladies at the Town Hall & Post Office, the guys at the “always immaculate” Sanitation Department, as well as the boys at the local delicatessen and liquor store... even the dowdy librarians. Due to his urbane and upfront attitude, his lifelong nickname in the village was "Duke". I heard people say things like "Hello, Duke, how's your day?" or "The Duke is hosting a cocktail party on Saturday" or "It's good to see you, Duke".
He lived in a hand-built, 3-story, pre-war
house, with solid construction, thick plaster walls, solid-core doors that clunked
closed, high ceilings, wood floors, and lots of big windows. Nowadays, builders cheaply use (fragile) sheetrock for walls. Back then, they used sturdy lath/plaster methods, which blocked noise and gave insulation.
Before track-housing, people built their own homes, with the help of professional masons, chimney builders, plumbers and an architect. Often, as a town developed, individual houses would appear, sometimes the only one on the street, until another family arrived and built one. Old photographs show my grandfather's house being one of the first houses erected on the block—long before he lived there. The adjoining streets, Magnolia and Tulip Avenues, resemble this one...
You approached the house from the sidewalk, via a curving cement path against azalea bushes. A neat (always swept) front stoop (with heavy-lidded cast iron mailbox) greeted you. An illuminated doorbell gained access to the enclosed porch. It was furnished with a sofa, two chairs, rows of flowering houseplants, and an old-time, wooden dome radio (with an illuminated dial).
In the 1940s, they used a wooden, streamlined floor-radio like this (seen with my Nana's brother, my great-uncle Robert).
Ahead was the hall, featuring a hat rack and a row of coat hooks by the staircase banister (similar to this)...
On the right was the living room. An antique “gingerbread” pendulum clock ticked gently on a corresponding Victorian-era arched-leg
table. My grandfather wound it daily and kept its gears oiled; previously it belonged to his mother. Made of walnut wood, it was constructed in 1884 at the Ansonia Clock Company in Brooklyn, NY. The company made many timepieces, and his looked like a mix of these two.
After my grandfather passed away in the early 1990s, I treasured that clock and wound it weekly. However, my "tightly wound" aggressive father overwound its mechanism twice and destroyed it. The hapless repair shops on Long Island were unskilled to fix it.
*New Yorkers might know the name because its founder, Anson Phelps, built the Ansonia Building on the Upper West Side.
Another historical element was a silver candleholder (with finger loop), made in 1926.
The room contained a 1930s frosted-glass torchierre lamp...
...wooden-case TV, and a 1960s phonograph/stereo. The music of Louis Armstrong, Lester Lanin, Frankie Carle, and Sammy Davis, Jr. usually emanated from it.
"Conversation clusters" of furniture: matching love seat and armchair also had matching armrest covers.
Two rocking swiveling armchairs and a leather recliner were grouped on the other side of the room. A brass floor-lamp had a translucent lampshade made of capiz (oyster) shells.
It was fascinating. Making it more unique, a circular shelf at
mid-height held a porcelain candy jar (for my sister and I).
The dining room was next, and it overlooked the backyard.
My grandfather, in younger years (because men of that generation did
their own handiwork and mechanics), built two sideboards (with cupboards underneath). They had latticed doors and
“faux marble” Formica tops. He constructed the wooden cover-pieces that hid the curtain rods—and the room’s recessed lights… which gave soft illumination and didn't compete with my grandmother's silver candelabra on the table.
The wide dining table sat eight guests. My grandmother had a partiality for lace tablecloths.
Since the 1930s, they had family-style meals gathered together around the table, and it was an era when people adorned their tables with silver accoutrement to look spiffy.
A tall glass-door Secretary stood in a corner. My grandfather used it to write correspondence and checks for payments.
Through a sliding door was the kitchen, with a 1940s-era Art Moderne chrome table and four chairs.
His favorite breakfast food was grapefruit, which he ate with a specialized grapefruit knife to dislodge each segment of fruit without squirting anybody. I learned the technique.
The kitchen radio was always tuned to 1010 WINS news. A typical old-but-trustworthy stove, lots of counter space, and two bright windows completed the room. In it, my grandfather taught me to cook my first recipe: French Toast. We always used an antique bowl that his Russian mother bought for 5-cents, while in the Kingdom of the Netherlands during her steamship voyage to America from the Russian Empire.
Sailing past the Statue of Liberty, my great-grandmother arrived in 1904. That was the year of the Russo-Japanese War and the founding of the Marxist Union of Liberation in Russia. After being a citizen of Czar Nicholas II, she was exhilarated to belong to the republic of the USA, which falsely promised less corruption than the imperial system. (The USA had only 45 states at that time). She sailed aboard a Cunard steamship, the Ultonia: an 1898 British vessel that added second-class accommodations in 1903. At that time, Cunard was known for the fastest transatlantic voyages.
She immigrated through NYC's Ellis Island Immigration Processing Center.
There, she lost the freedom to have her surname, when American authorities altered it to make it easier for them to pronounce. This photo shows her and her husband; I never met my great-grandfather, and I don't know anything about him.
As a boy, I needed a step-stool to reach the wall-mounted can opener!
The Fridgedaire was always stocked with
Rediwhip and Jell-O (he loved vintage Jell-O commercials from his tape-cassette
collection of “Jack Benny” radio shows). Also inside were Mason jars of his homegrown/handmade pickles,
which he fermented in the cellar.
Lets go there next.
The basement (he called it the cellar)
was always cool in temperature. According to my grandfather, it formerly had a coal shoot for home delivery... before an oil-burning furnace was installed.
In fact, the house was erected during the era of "home delivery": milkmen, dry cleaning, ice, meat, flowers, et cetera.
My
grandfather furnished his cellar with an upright piano from the 1930s. As a child, my mother was given piano lessons on it.
He installed a bar with 3 rattan barstools (similar style to this)...
...and a novelty lamp depicting a drunkard.
My grandfather offered me my first taste of beer. It was a pilsner. He always drank beer in stemmed glasses.
Photographs on the walls told me the tales of his past that he never discussed with me. Black-and-white pictures of him during World War Two indicate that he rose to the rank of sergeant. My great-uncle Bob became a Technician Corporal Fifth-class. My grandfather belonged to a tank crew. This picture was signed when he mailed it to his sweetheart: my Nana.
He fought in Nazi-occupied France and Nazi-controlled Germany. Seen below is a photograph of his squadron at Versailles Palace in Paris! (He took the picture). At that time, most Americans had never gone to Europe.
It seems to be commonplace that people from my grandparents' generation never discussed their life-and-death war tales... nor did my great-grandmother describe her life in Imperial Russia (whether it was comfortable or austere) or her voyage to this country and her assimilation. I would've loved to hear those stories because they were great successes.
These two images show my grandpa triumphantly holding Luger
pistols, which were only carried by German army officers. To possess them proved that you overpowered a Nazi officer... not a mere infantryman.
For context, it's helpful to understand the world that he was born into. My grandfather was born in 1917, when World War One was happening. At that time, only 8% of American homes had telephones, and only 6% graduated high school. It took 5 days to get from New York to London on the fastest steam-powered ocean liner! That year, hungry women initiated the Russian Revolution (but credit was chauvinistically given to the male Bolsheviks who weren't there), and that civil war forced the Czar (Emperor)—one of the richest men in the world—to abdicate his throne. Simultaneously, the Mexican Revolution ended. The British Empire battled with the waning Ottoman Empire. An attempted Manchu Restoration failed to reinstate the Last Emperor of China to his throne, so he remained a powerless captive in the Forbidden City. Imperial German zeppelins dropped bombs on London. In response to hatred of the German Empire, the King of England changed the royal surname from Saxe-Coburg & Gotha to Windsor. The American robber-baron John D. Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire, due to oil sales and gangster methods. NYC's Fifth Avenue irrevocably changed from mansions to office buildings, as Robert Plant sold his mansion to become a Cartier boutique. America issued citizenship to Puerto Ricans (after it took their country nine years earlier). The USA bought the Danish West Indies and renamed them the US Virgin Islands. (It still owns the land with a population of 105,000 inhabitants). After having protests, women finally won the right to vote in New York State (but didn't get the nationwide right until 1920). Yet, retaliation occurred: women got arrested and were beaten by NY prison guards during a "Night of Terror". A "racial riot" in St. Louis, Illinois, killed 250 people... and race riots continued in prejudiced America throughout my grandfather's life.
Older photos include Prohibition Era “bootleg bathtub gin" and "gin joints” (speakeasies) in
the countryside of Long Island.
One photo represented his time working for a dairy pasteurization company. He told me stories of how the health/safety inspectors were bribed via getting their cars loaded with the best dairy products. During his boyhood and adolescence, cars, telephones, phonographs, and other devices had to be activated with a hand-crank. One of his favorite expressions remained, "Crank it up, and lets go!"
Another image showed him in a jaunty
pose, wearing canvas spectator shoes and a summery Panama fedora, leaning on the tall swooping fender of a 1940s cabriolet. Here is another car photo from the 1930s, with my grandparents as a dating couple.
I never learned how my grandparents met, but my grandmother's lineage is old in America. She belonged to the Titus family, which is a very old English family. Allegedly, the surname began because they were related to the ancient Roman clan that produced Emperor Titus. In the 1550s, the family gained prominence in England. Born in 1600, Robert Titus relocated from Hertfordshire to The Colonies in 1635 and settled near Boston, Massachusetts, which was founded in 1630. In 1648, he became Commissioner for the Court of Plymouth. Unlike other colonists, he did not detest Quakers, and he got in trouble from Puritans for defending a Quaker family due to their "evil fame". He moved to Long Island. In the 1650s, other branches of Tituses became Quakers and settled in Flushing (which was founded by the Dutch in 1645). They lived there for centuries. Most were landowners, and some were squires and gentry. When Floral Park was founded, they were some of the first residents. Descendants spread to Duchess County, and others founded Titusville in New Jersey. In 1840, Henry Titus was Overseer of Highways in Hempstead. In 1907, Epenetus Titus moved from Floral Park to Orange County as Secretary of the Newburgh Vegetable Growers Association and Chairman of the County Agricultural Bureau. He lived in a community named Little Britain. Alas, the Tituses did not associate with my father's crude/dominating family, and I only met my Uncle Robert and his relatives a few times. One thing was certain: my Nana had good taste in the finer things in life.
Occasionally, my grandfather repeated tales about his childhood. Before the Great Depression, his affluent father was warned of the upcoming financial disaster and slowly withdrew all of their money from the bank. He hid it in a metal box in their cellar. Throughout the Depression, they lived modestly, waited in queues to buy food, and occasionally visited a Soup Kitchen for free meals. To avoid robbery/suspicion, they acted like everyone else and didn't brag that they had rescued their savings beforehand. Thus, my grandfather was taught to never waste food, recycle things instead of discarding them, repair things instead of buying new, and being humble. From boyhood, he always upheld those values.
In the back of the cellar, his huge pickle barrel occupied the darkest corner. He pickled garden-grown cucumbers and tomatoes. I love pickles, and he took me to small-batch pickling businesses to see how they do things. NYC's Jewish community still makes some of the best ones!
The other corner had a washer, dryer, and a clothes-drying rack. One side of the cellar contained the 10’ x 5’ model train set that we built and designed together. It looked similar to this.
Together, we laid the tracks, installed the electric switches, designed railroad crossings, added a tunnel, built a bridge over a lake, and planned several streets.
Working side-by-side, he and I assembled the miniature buildings, glued trees into positions, affixed road signs, and went shopping at the Model Railroad store to buy vehicles, locomotives, boxcars, cabooses, figurines, and railway structures.
Reminiscent of the streetcars that existed in New York until the 1940s, my grandpa insisted that we give our "community" a true sense of convenient infrastructure: a tram. It looked like this.
With our sense of cleanliness and civic pride, he and I also agreed that our town needed a street sweeper! :-)
Influenced by my grandpa's sense of "law and order", our miniature community included a fire station and a police station—with two police cars—to protect merely six houses! Ha ha!
We also wore matching Engineer hats.
Almost every Saturday, we enjoyed countless hours playing with the trains. Alas, my father soon commandeered it, and his perfectionism dismantled it into an unfinished mess... which I eventually discarded.
My grandfather's musty, well-worn workbench and toolboxes were also in the cellar. He owned every kind of oil can and tool imaginable. Those trusty tools serviced cars, machines, gadgets, and clocks from the 1930s until his death.
It was a part of
the character of men of that generation to have a tool collection worthy of a hardware store to tinker with. I remember his hammers and screwdrivers with old wooden handles. My hometown neighbor, Frank, was another old gent with a wooden workbench
in the corner of his garage (where he built meticulous model
airplanes).
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The stairway to the cellar had a landing, which
let out to the side of the house. A key ring dangled there, with old-fashioned keys to the "summer house". Lets go there next.
Outside, my grandfather built a shed with hinged wooden doors to hide his garbage pails. The villagers considered it unsightly to keep trash cans visible in front of homes. During "trash removal days", he put the garbage pails by the curb, and the Incorporated Village's Sanitation Department returned them to the shed.
When his mother was still alive and living in the home, she made
a morning ritual of sweeping the cement patio and walkways, which went along beds of pachysandra that were neatly
enclosed with ironwork borders—just like a city park.
The patio was shaded under a canopy of flowering dogwood trees. An offshoot of cement path led to the garden hose and a cement sink for filling watering cans, washing garden tools, and rinsing barbecue accoutrement. My sister and
I used the hose to fill our kiddie pool or Slip n' Slide. He also used it to wash his
cement birdbath... nestled amongst holly trees. His prized rose bushes and flower gardens were under the home's window. His impressive vegetable garden was behind the 2-car garage. Similar to my paternal great-uncle Louis, my grandfather grew amazing vegetables: sizable, succulent, and great-tasting. Both men used organic methods for tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans, peppers, eggplants, zucchinis, herbs, carrots, and lettuce.
He taught my mother how to tend rosebushes, and he taught me when she didn't. Here is a photo of her by their roses.
Another similarity between my grandfather and Uncle Louie was that they both had
streamlined 1950s refrigerators in their garages—always a comforting
mainstay for all types of beverages. My preference was root beer.
From the garden, you enter the back of the garage. A steel "fire door" connected it to the
house via a small vestibule. A freestanding closet held my grandfather’s coats and fedoras.
When my grandparents entertained
outside, they hung Chinese lanterns from the low-hanging dogwood branches.
Folding patio chairs and small metal tables (like café
tables) were mishmoshed in clusters. Beyond the patio was the home's original “detached” garage. It was big enough to fit a Model-T Ford but nothing newer than that.
They removed the vehicular door and installed windows and a normal doorway. They called it the Summer House.
The structure served as garden
“potting” shed and a second attic. A wooden canoe was stored there. An old raccoon-tail, from a
1930s roadster, hung on the wall. Walls were decorated with school pendants, old license plates, and an original deck chair from an ocean liner. I sat in it, and it was very comfy.
There was an antique oil lantern—the type used by engineers on old-fashioned railways.
My sister and I played with their wooden croquet set, on a wheeled caddy.
As a girl, my mother posed for many photos in that backyard.
Dangling in the Summer House, there were equestrian awards and ribbons that my mother won for horseback riding. As a young adult, she rode very well. She always had a fondness for horses, and I do, too.
On the exterior of the Summer House, a thickly knurled wisteria bush grew and offered beauty.
*To read my grandfather's amusing anecdote about that, please click this link:
Back inside the house, entering the attic was a forbidden adventure
on the third-floor.
Accessed by a drop-down
folding ladder, its treasures were hidden under old sheets and dust-covers. Usually, my sister and I were only allowed to go up there to fetch our grandfather's Christmas decorations.
We only explored that space after he died. We uncovered an old chest, made of wood, designed for oceangoing voyages or cross-country railroad trips. Since the 1600s, travel-chests had curved tops to prevent rain water from gathering on the lids and leaking inside. We suspect that the antique trunk belonged to my great-grandmother.
I discovered my grandmother’s sterling silver: Grand Baroque made by Wallace Silversmiths. It had utensils for 12 people!
There was a silver coffee urn with a burner, from an uncle (his name now lost to history) who had been the chef at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Family lore said that he purloined it.
We also unwrapped a set of forlorn candelabra and a 5-branch candelabrum that had beautifully wavy arms. I polished them, inserted candles, and started putting them to use.
I rediscovered a set of silver salt & pepper shakers (for individual use). For festive meals, I polished them, filled them, and put them to use.
People always admired them, just as they loved the crystal knife-rests that belonged to my grandmother. Resembling tiny dumbbells, they kept dirty knives off the table.
We unearthed an English porcelain cocoa pot... with my grandmother’s handwritten note inside, describing her favorite recipe.
My grandmother was proud of her British ancestry and enjoyed using English china for meals. Amongst her friends, she served tea elegantly. We inherited her silver tea set...
...and her Enoch Wedgwood china, with enough porcelain for a cozy soirée.
There were three other sets of china that were beautifully patterned and painted with gold. When I started using those heirlooms with élan, my college friends and suburban coworkers felt as if they were dining with Prince Charles of the United Kingdom. It delighted them.
That reminds me of an amusing anecdote. My grandfather did not like to be disturbed during mealtimes, which were intended to be enjoyed as a family. In the 1980s, when American society became plagued with invasive telemarketing calls, he used a clever tactic to scare them away. Speaking with an official-sounding voice, he acted like a Desk Sergeant at a police station. Answering the phone, he said, "Hello, this Sergeant McGinty at New York City Police Department: 105th Precinct. Are you calling to report a crime?" Inevitably, the telemarketer removed my grandfather's telephone number from their list and never called again.
From the attic, my mother rediscovered her birdcage, from when she was a girl. As the story goes, my grandfather was gardening, and a stray parakeet landed near him. Sensing him to be a good man, it perched on his shoulder and came indoors with him. He named it Lucky, and it became the family's amusing pet. My mother took care of it and bought the cage.
My sister used that cage to buy herself a pet parakeet, which she neglected until it died.
The second floor had a pink-tiled bathroom—which was popular in the 1940s—and vintage fixtures. All of the bedrooms shared it.
The soap in the bathtub hung by a rope (it came that way).
A glass tumbler stood by the toothpaste. Being environmentally-friendly, my grandfather did not use disposable paper cups. (He also quit smoking "cold turkey" in the 1970s, when the always-increasing price of cigarettes exceeded a certain limit).
All of the doors on the second floor had glass
doorknobs.
The floorboards creaked in a quaint way. The light switches made a
loud “snap” that could be heard all the way downstairs (my grandfather—watching
late night TV—could hear if my sister or I got up in the middle of the night to walk to the bathroom).
The master bedroom had heavy oak
and walnut furniture from the 1940s.
Its closet held my grandfather’s alligator shoes, suits,
Brooks Brothers shirts, and old hatboxes containing a silk top hat...
and a straw
boater...
...which were stylish in his youth.
I inherited his gold pocket watch, manufactured by Waltham Watchmakers in Massachusetts (in existence from 1850 to 1957). After orating his Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln was presented with one.
According to the serial number, it was handmade in 1908! Presumably, it might've belonged to his father: my great-grandfather. It is equipped with a spring-action front cover, and a rear cover (to use as a photograph locket). A third door exists behind that, and it reveals a surprise. Uniquely, the timepiece has a skeletal "exhibition" back, to admire the inner-working gears! They look as good as new, and the watch ticks perfectly.
My mother grew up in a
small bedroom adjoining her parents’ room.
My great-grandmother had the other bedroom... until she needed to live in a nursing home. While she lived in the house, her nightly ritual was
a shot of vodka—and she lived to be 96.
In her old (and immensely heavy) mahogany dresser, we found a stash of unmarked photographs, depicting life in Manhattan in the 1910s.
Before she spent her final years in a nursing home, she had a daily ritual of going to the market for fresh ingredients. When my sister and I visited, she put us in a "borrowed" shopping cart
(that she permanently kept in the garage) and pushed us to the grocery
store—and back.
It was a delightful ride along the tree-lined avenues. We admired pretty homes, with trimmed bushes and hedges. There were no plastic flamingoes or inflated
Easter decorations on the lawns, and no tireless cars on cinder blocks.
It was like the Town of Mayberry in the Andy
Griffith TV Show: everyone knew everyone. My grandfather was chummy with most of the villagers: neighbors, postal workers, repairmen, restauranteurs, small-business owners, and the liquor store proprietor.
Dolly was an older lady who lived diagonally across the street. We suspected that
she had a crush on my debonair grandfather. Walter lived miserly in the house next door. My grandfather's lesson about him was that Walter had worked for a big company, which was moving out-of-state. They offered to pay for Walter's moving expenses and new home, if he came with them. But because his wife was fearful of moving, he rejected their generous offer and he lost his job. Soon after, his wife died. Life Lesson: don't be afraid when opportunity knocks.
Mrs. Christman was
the neighbor across the street who let us stay with her when
the paramedics (whom I summoned) came to take my grandfather away… when his health began to deteriorate.
I have a fond boyhood memory of being taken by my grandfather to visit the Village Sanitation Department. Formerly, he was its Superintendent, as part of the larger Public Works Department. For pedestrians, it was accessed via a tunneled walkway under the railroad tracks. On the other side, a footpath connected to Tunnel Street.
A public park, swimming pool, and playground were there. They were accessible to villagers who possessed a Leisure Pass.
My grandfather needed his Leisure Pass to drive through the 930-acre Eisenhower Park at night and on weekends. It was a scenic shortcut to get to my neighborhood. Without the Pass, the park rangers would not let cars in.
My grandfather knew all the Sanitation guys, who came over to greet him, calling out "Hey, Duke, how are ya!" It smelled like a garage (oil and rubber tires) but the whole place was pristinely clean! Even the floor. All of the trucks and equipment were clean, washed, and well-painted. That's the way a place should look!
They seemed huge to a boy of my age. I was thrilled to sit in the cabs of the big garbage trucks and dump trucks—each with mammoth steering wheels, loud horns, and high point-of-view! It was similar to this...
The workers were courteous and shared knowledge about how things worked. They were very different from the guys in my community who were rude, deliberately damaged people's trashcans, spilled garbage and abandoned it, and had filthy trucks. Those experiences with my grandpa and the village's workmen instilled in me a sense of cleanliness as a citizen, and I valued the importance of municipal workers doing civic deeds for the betterment of society. Life Lesson: be nice to everybody because everybody in the community does an important job that contributes. (It's a shame that American communities don't celebrate their transit or sanitation systems. In other nations, that occurs and keeps residents enthused).
My sister and I often spent Saturdays with my grandfather, and he took us with him during his errands. Het taught us the value of money, how to spot a good deal (as
opposed to simply buying something impulsively or because the word “Sale” was advertised). He taught me how to choose fresh food. He taught me how to identify great bread (instead of artificially-enhanced Wonder Bread that Americans love), as well as
useful cuts of meat from the butcher.
Our excursions were in his oversized 17.5-foot-long, 4-door sedan. Made in 1976, it was a Pontiac: the Catalina model.
Every five years, my grandfather bought a new
car, and he always paid with cash. To be
generous to my "disinterested" father (or perhaps because Dad was putting aside money even
at that early stage for his future without us), my grandfather gave two of his used cars to my parents. Mom used them until the vinyl seats cracked unbearably
and the engines coughed.
Growing up, my grandfather learned to drive on grand automobiles like this...
...and, thus, he always preferred huge cars with long hoods: a sign of prestige in his generation.
I enjoyed
the honor of hoisting up the garage door, to allow my
grandfather to back out his limousine-like car.
Brainwashed by American advertising, he—and most Americans—thought that big cars were desireble... like a sofa on wheels. Had he grown up in another country, he probably would've been happy with a fuel-efficient vehicle that was easier to maneuver.
In fact, to make room
for that Pontiac in his garage—after my grandfather drove home with it—he took a sledgehammer and hollowed out the cement wall, so the nose of the long car would
fit inside... and allow the garage door to close behind its rear fenders.
Needless to say, my grandmother was NOT happy about the ruckus or damage.
When the stately car backed out and came
to a halt on the driveway, I used a rope chord to pull
the door gently down again. That was my honorable chore.
On my last day in that house, that rope
chord actually broke in my hand. It seemed symbolic.
Thanks to my grandfather, I also learned
that you don’t discard perfectly good things just because
they’re old… and that just because something is new doesn’t mean it's
worthwhile—especially if it is cheaply-made. I was taught to appreciate craftsmanship and to preserve it. Above all, homes should have lots of natural light, lots of space (against clutter), and are best when they are used to make people comfortable.
*If you want to see how I used those lessons to entertain guests in my home, please use this link:
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