Horse-drawn wagons, butt whoopins, and cigars

Earlier today, in another corner of the internet, I was reminded of the following and thought I'd share it here.

At family gatherings, my wife's grandfather used to love telling me stories over a cigar on the back porch. Same stories, every time, but I'm always as polite as can be to my elders and acted like it was the first telling, every time. Truth be told, I politely tolerated most of them, because one of them stood out as my favorite, not because of the story, per se, but because of how happy it made him to tell it.

When he was around 14, his father finally allowed him to drive the horse-drawn wagon into town by himself to take things to market. When he get out of eyesight of the family farm, he stopped on the road for a minute to load and light his corn-cob pipe that he had made himself. And off he went down the road, puffin' his corn-cob pipe on the way to town like a man.

Unbeknownst to him, while he was in town taking care of business, one of his neighbors had seen him smoking his pipe and told his dad (who was very anti-smoking). After finishing his business in town, he finally drove the horses up the road to their farm with a proud smile on his face that he had just done his first "adulting". As he was putting away the wagon and taking care of the horses, his dad came out and whooped his butt so bad that he had trouble sitting down for a week. He never smoked a pipe again. He would always end the story with "And that's why I smoke cigars!" And then we would laugh and laugh.

After he passed away at the ripe old age of 99, the family let on that everyone knew about the cigars, Pappy only thought he was sneaking them with me. They were also glad that I would listen to his stories because they'd heard them so many times before.

He wasn't my grandfather, but I miss him as much or more than my own.

Thanks for sharing, that brings back some fond memories. My grandpa had a habit of mixing up sayings and the one I can remember most was the saying "the TV's on the blink". I can remember more than once grandpa telling my sister and I that "the TV's on the stink". But yes like you, we went along with him as we would never want to hurt his feelings.

My grandfather used to sing-song "Here we go on the pickle boat" every time we drove over a bridge, large or small. My brother and I would always laugh, although we never did figure out what it was about.

Cheers to all the grandpas and grandmas out there!

A couple father stories. When a was a young teen my mom caught me smoking and it was the old "wait till your father comes home." At the dinner table I figured I'd be preemptive. "Hey pop, how old were you when you started smoking?" Without even looking up, between bites, he replied " 'bout 10." Another time while me and some young chums were playing football in the backyard he gave a would be lineman a tip on his form. "You gotta squat down, like you're gonna take a sh*t on the field."

Similar smoking story here with my dad, except it was 12. You should have seen the fury in mom's eyes when he added "I think I started smoking pot a little after that". LOL. He realized his mistake as soon as the words exited his lips. Dads are right up their with grandpas for awesome stories and sayings.

I grew up in Northern Illinois, and winters can be pretty cold and snowy there, though nothing like Minnesota or Michigan. Dad once gave me the speech:

"Why, when I was your age, I walked 3 miles to school barefoot. (He didn't impress me yet.) I had to cross the river 3 times on my way too and from school..." As I was wondering about the geography of this, he continued on, "in snow up to my armpits!"

"Um, Dad?"
"What?"
"You grew up in Oklahoma."



There was never much water in it and I'd think, "There is something seriously wrong with your river."