My grandfather was a quiet, kind, gentle man who loved his wife, children and animals. It was my impression that my grandfather couldn’t believe his good fortune finding my grandmother and he was keeping quiet lest she notice her error.

Family tradition has it that he was born in a “sod hut” in pan handle and that his parents were in “the race.” My grandfather often read to me and could tell a tall tale, like the story of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox., but I don’t remember him making any up. I’m fairly confident that he thought he was born in the pan handle of Oklahoma. My grandmother’s Bible states his birthpalce as Kay County, OK. His family traveled north (possibly to Idaho) in a wagon when my Grandfather was old enough to remember the trip. I remember him telling about their flour getting wet when they crossed rivers.

We lived in a very modest, 1 bedroom house in Brisbane, San Mateo Co., California, a town with a population of 5,000. Brisbane is located just outside of San Francisco, California. Our phone number, in Brisbane, was DE3-1566. The DE stood for Deleware. Brisbane is a community in a bowl of mountains that is open on one side facing generally north. Our house was built on the side of the mountain and was constructed so the living quarters were on the second floor over the, 1 car, garage. We never parked in the garage. Like many of the homes of this style, familiar in the Bay area, it had a cement floor and partial side walls but you could also see where the mountain side had been dug out to form the garage floor. In the winter, the spring water from within the mountain used to flow through the garage, down the driveway and on down the hill. It got very mossy on the driveway. After struggling with mildew in the house for years, Grandma would periodically remind me that it wasn’t wise to buy a house in summer.

We lived at the end of a dead-end street. It was a straight street of about 3 blocks that started out flat then climbed more steeply the further you went. It leveled out again, in front of our house. The narrowest part of the road was opposite our house. There was a sign, clearly stating that it was a dead end street, but people used to drive up anyway. Once you got to the end of the road there was a cliff with a drop of around 40 feet to the road below on the side opposite our house. The only place wide enough to turn around was in our dirveway and it had a significant bump at the start of it. The best way to make the turn, smoothly, was to give the vehicle alot of gas to clear the bump and get well up into the short driveway. It worked best if your acceleration increased from the bottom of the hill going up, the steepness of the driveway would slow the car down at the last minute before you plowed throught the garage doors. Lost drivers certainly had no way to know this. It the winter with the moss on the driveway you had to get a “running start” because you certainly weren’t going to get any traction. It was pretty good entertainment to watch drivers try to be “casual” about making the “turnaround”. We had 2 cars go over the edge in about 15 years. They just wedged in sideways against the big Eucaleptus trees on the downside of the hill. Tow trucks pulled them out. Finally the next door neighbor built a new driveway, adjoining ours, and that created a wider area for strangers, who were lost, to turn around. We lived in the lower, flatter area of Brisbane. Brisbane wasn’t a place for timid drivers.

We had a kitchen, a bathroom with bathtub, 1 bedroom, The entry to the house was into what may have been planned as a dining room but was always used as the Living room. Adjoining it through an archway was a room that ran across the width of the front of the house intended as the Living room. It had large arched widows across the front of it facing the street. When I was a little girl, this was my bedroom and playroom. As I got older probably around the age of 12, my grandparents took the big room and gave me the bedroom with the door.

While I’m thinking about it:
My grandfather didn’t think phones were here to stay and never used one if he could avoid it. When he did use a phone, we had a standard desk style phone, he would hold it next to his head and shout into it.

The address of our house was 37 San Francisco Ave. I still have the “37” that Grandpa made from iron, at the shipyards. It hung over the front of the porch at the top of the entry stairs.

He carried his little son in a gunny sack while riding the rails, looking for work. He worked as a logger, rancher and finally when Grandma said she wouldn’t move again because it was time for me to attend school, he took a job with the shipyard at Hunter’s Point, San Francisco as a pipe fitter. It was tough for him, he was used to the outdoors.

He was a rancher, meaning he cared for animals, not a farmer. After we moved to the “city” of Brisbane, we had a small vegetable garden and raised chickens for the eggs. I don’t think we had any rabbits in Brisbane but we had them before that in Collinsville. They were raised for food and pelts that were sold and the money put aside as savings for me.

He could “gentle” a horse. That means he could train it to accept a bridle, saddle and rider without causing it to buck. He was admired greatly for this ability. My foster grandmother (Bingham) and foster aunt Marj Frey had Grandpa “gentle” a horse while we visited one summer. I remember learning, on that visit, that my Grandfather had constructed the bridge that went over the creek at the entrance to their ranch. It used massive timbers and I remember wondering how he did that alone and of course, he probably didn’t that’s just how I heard it.

He loved to play cards. He played Pinoccle with my mother. They would sometimes play at the tiny kitchen table and I remember them laughing and carrying on about their losses and victories. I seem to remember it was after I had been tucked into bed. They were probably playing as far from my sleeping area as possible.

Found an old calendar of my grandmother's:
Jan 16: KDW fell
Jan 19th: Home for a day visit.
April 7 1967 note: KDW Rest home 2 years.
July 16th: KDW 1st Stroke - Admitted to Peninsula Hosp. July 17th
My Grandfather had surgery for a broken hip August 9, 1967. He returned to the extended care facility, Serra "something", on August 24th.
He died on August 30th 1967.
He would have been 73 on September 4th.
Ron & I separated September 22nd.
Kelly turned 3 & Kevin turned 2 in Oct. I turned 23 in Nov.