As I recall it,the weather stayed warm and nice a long way into the fall of 1966.My father and my grandfather did a lot of work about the place,building a room in the basemen,then a cold storage room right next to it, where we began to store things like carrots and potatoes. They paved the driveway as well, and the work seemed to take a long while.Or maybe it was just that my grandfather stayed with us for some time after most of the building had been completed.By Halloween-it was the first Halloween I can remember much about, he was still there.I can recall waiting with him in the front yard,and being anxious to get on with the trick or treating.Then sometime after that he was gone again, and I'm not certain as to where.
My grandfather was a bit of a mystery to me.What I saw was a rather short,square man,who looked old, though not as old and frail as my other grandfather.He dressed out of style by a good thirty to forty years, in a grey Harris Tweed jacket, and a grey tweed hat,of the fashion preferred by British auto racing enthusiasts.His shoes were rather old, but he polished them often,so they were at kind of a dull shine most of the time.That's what he wore, even when he was building.Nobody wore safety boot back then, at least not when they were building in our house.My grandfathers hands were all scarred and he was missing a finger on his right hand, though his hands were not overly calloused or hard, possibly because of his advanced years.At that time he would have been very near to seventy years of age.In all, he was rather well groomed in his appearance.He kept his hair trimmed short, and I went with him, at least twice to the barber school while he was staying with us.
The room that was built was really built so that we would have an extra room, because we still had the same boarder as the year before, plus we'd had one or two other boarders in for shorter periods of time.One was a girl my mother knew from up close to Canterbury.I recall too that we had a girl named Isabelle staying with us for a short time. Then one day this car arrived and picked her up.I was sitting on the curb in front of the house when the car arrived.It had Prince Edward Island plates,and,though it must have been only a year or two old,it was about the ugliest car I'd ever seen.It was all painted in gray primer and was covered in mud and rust,and it rumbled because it's muffler was all rotted out.And it only had a windshield,and drivers side front window that were made of glass.The rest were covered with plastic.And that's the last time we ever saw Isabelle.Still, we had boarders, and my parents wanted to keep boarders for a while,so the new room was badly needed.But, as it turned pout,my grandfather occupied that room for most of that fall.Our one boarder stayed upstairs,in the room on the back corner of the house.
Not only was my grandfather a carpenter- a ship's carpenter,to hear him tell it- but he did a few other things that, though rather ordinary, kind of amazed me too.For one thing, he cooked.Now in our house, my mother did most of the cooking.My father could cook,but he didn't all that often.Once in a while we would have homemade french fries, and it was always my father who made them.He had what seemed to me the peculiar habit of keeping a small fire extinguisher by the stove when he did this. But I don't ever recall my father cooking things like cookies or bread or pie.But my grandfather did.At least he did once.
It was late afternoon, and the room downstairs was all finished. Outside it was just a glorious sunny fall day,and my sister and I were playing on the back steps.My grandfather was cooking a pie.Or,rather, he was putting a pie that my mother had made into the oven, where it was to cook for about an hour.So, at the back step, I could smell the aroma of fresh apple pie as it cooked in the oven.Neither my mother nor father were home at the time, but I'd gotten more or less comfortable with the idea of my grandfather running the kitchen.In all,he seemed competent and I've wondered if he didn't have some experience working at a mining or lumber camp as a cook.
But then, as I was sitting on the step, thinking about going out to the anthill to check on the ants, I heard a sort of a muffled pop. And, before I knew it, there was a big cloud of smoke coming pout the back door.Nobody ever really said to me that you were not supposed to run back into a burning house, so, that's what I did. Inside the stove, there was what looked to me like a huge fire, though in fact it couldn't have been that big.There was a lot of smoke though.It only took a few seconds for my grandfather to emerge from the hallway, and when he did, he was saying words that were more or less forbidden in our house.And he was saying a lot of them.He opened up the oven, found a coffee cup,and started firing cup after cup of water into the oven,where it hissed and steamed, and started to smelling bad.
Finally, I thought, I'd get to see the fire trucks come to our place. So I started out the back door, in the general direction of the alarm box up the street.Then I remembered that I wasn't supposed to go there by myself.On the way, I met our neighbor, the one that lived out back, along Crandall Street.He was just coming home from work, so I went right up to him and asked if he was a fireman, saying we had a big fire in the kitchen."No.",he said, "I'm not a fireman." I suppose that by this time it was evident to him that there had been a fire, because there was a ton of smoke.The neighbor asked if we were alright, and by this time, my grandfather had appeared at the door, with a partially burned towel of some sort, using it to fan smoke out the door.Inside, the fire was out, but the whole house stunk.
Sometime just about five O'Clock my mother arrived home, to a house full of smoke.The pie, now out of the oven and sitting in the kitchen sink was obviously ruined.It was just a black mess that didn't look anything like a pie at all.The insides of it were still all over the inside of the oven,in big tar like chunks,that were still boiling, along with all the water that had been tossed in.As it turned out, what had caused the fire was the fact that my grandfather had not poked any holes in the top of the pie, and had likely let it get way too hot as well.So it just expanded like a balloon until it popped, spraying apple pie filling all over the oven.Really, it wasn't all that much pie filling but it sure made an impressive amount of smoke.
My mother took things as they came, not getting too upset about the fire.But I was beginning to sense that she likely had some concerns about my grandfather.What, exactly those concerns were, I never really found out, because she would never say things like that in front of her children, or to my fathers father, out of what she believed was civility. But nonetheless, I'm certain the concerns were there, and they would become a little more obvious in the years to come.
My grandfather was a bit of a mystery to me.What I saw was a rather short,square man,who looked old, though not as old and frail as my other grandfather.He dressed out of style by a good thirty to forty years, in a grey Harris Tweed jacket, and a grey tweed hat,of the fashion preferred by British auto racing enthusiasts.His shoes were rather old, but he polished them often,so they were at kind of a dull shine most of the time.That's what he wore, even when he was building.Nobody wore safety boot back then, at least not when they were building in our house.My grandfathers hands were all scarred and he was missing a finger on his right hand, though his hands were not overly calloused or hard, possibly because of his advanced years.At that time he would have been very near to seventy years of age.In all, he was rather well groomed in his appearance.He kept his hair trimmed short, and I went with him, at least twice to the barber school while he was staying with us.
The room that was built was really built so that we would have an extra room, because we still had the same boarder as the year before, plus we'd had one or two other boarders in for shorter periods of time.One was a girl my mother knew from up close to Canterbury.I recall too that we had a girl named Isabelle staying with us for a short time. Then one day this car arrived and picked her up.I was sitting on the curb in front of the house when the car arrived.It had Prince Edward Island plates,and,though it must have been only a year or two old,it was about the ugliest car I'd ever seen.It was all painted in gray primer and was covered in mud and rust,and it rumbled because it's muffler was all rotted out.And it only had a windshield,and drivers side front window that were made of glass.The rest were covered with plastic.And that's the last time we ever saw Isabelle.Still, we had boarders, and my parents wanted to keep boarders for a while,so the new room was badly needed.But, as it turned pout,my grandfather occupied that room for most of that fall.Our one boarder stayed upstairs,in the room on the back corner of the house.
Not only was my grandfather a carpenter- a ship's carpenter,to hear him tell it- but he did a few other things that, though rather ordinary, kind of amazed me too.For one thing, he cooked.Now in our house, my mother did most of the cooking.My father could cook,but he didn't all that often.Once in a while we would have homemade french fries, and it was always my father who made them.He had what seemed to me the peculiar habit of keeping a small fire extinguisher by the stove when he did this. But I don't ever recall my father cooking things like cookies or bread or pie.But my grandfather did.At least he did once.
It was late afternoon, and the room downstairs was all finished. Outside it was just a glorious sunny fall day,and my sister and I were playing on the back steps.My grandfather was cooking a pie.Or,rather, he was putting a pie that my mother had made into the oven, where it was to cook for about an hour.So, at the back step, I could smell the aroma of fresh apple pie as it cooked in the oven.Neither my mother nor father were home at the time, but I'd gotten more or less comfortable with the idea of my grandfather running the kitchen.In all,he seemed competent and I've wondered if he didn't have some experience working at a mining or lumber camp as a cook.
But then, as I was sitting on the step, thinking about going out to the anthill to check on the ants, I heard a sort of a muffled pop. And, before I knew it, there was a big cloud of smoke coming pout the back door.Nobody ever really said to me that you were not supposed to run back into a burning house, so, that's what I did. Inside the stove, there was what looked to me like a huge fire, though in fact it couldn't have been that big.There was a lot of smoke though.It only took a few seconds for my grandfather to emerge from the hallway, and when he did, he was saying words that were more or less forbidden in our house.And he was saying a lot of them.He opened up the oven, found a coffee cup,and started firing cup after cup of water into the oven,where it hissed and steamed, and started to smelling bad.
Finally, I thought, I'd get to see the fire trucks come to our place. So I started out the back door, in the general direction of the alarm box up the street.Then I remembered that I wasn't supposed to go there by myself.On the way, I met our neighbor, the one that lived out back, along Crandall Street.He was just coming home from work, so I went right up to him and asked if he was a fireman, saying we had a big fire in the kitchen."No.",he said, "I'm not a fireman." I suppose that by this time it was evident to him that there had been a fire, because there was a ton of smoke.The neighbor asked if we were alright, and by this time, my grandfather had appeared at the door, with a partially burned towel of some sort, using it to fan smoke out the door.Inside, the fire was out, but the whole house stunk.
Sometime just about five O'Clock my mother arrived home, to a house full of smoke.The pie, now out of the oven and sitting in the kitchen sink was obviously ruined.It was just a black mess that didn't look anything like a pie at all.The insides of it were still all over the inside of the oven,in big tar like chunks,that were still boiling, along with all the water that had been tossed in.As it turned out, what had caused the fire was the fact that my grandfather had not poked any holes in the top of the pie, and had likely let it get way too hot as well.So it just expanded like a balloon until it popped, spraying apple pie filling all over the oven.Really, it wasn't all that much pie filling but it sure made an impressive amount of smoke.
My mother took things as they came, not getting too upset about the fire.But I was beginning to sense that she likely had some concerns about my grandfather.What, exactly those concerns were, I never really found out, because she would never say things like that in front of her children, or to my fathers father, out of what she believed was civility. But nonetheless, I'm certain the concerns were there, and they would become a little more obvious in the years to come.
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