Memories of "Uncle Fred" Grosvenor
It must have been about 1938; fall of the year; just getting daylight. My family was sitting at the breakfast table. We had been up a couple hours already. Dad and I had milked the cows and caught the mules and harnessed them to the wagon and were set to go for a long day of corn shucking. Dad suddenly said, "Listen!" In a distance we could hear a "bam!" "bam!" "bam!" spaced 15 seconds apart. We all knew what it was: It was the sound of corn ears striking the backboard of a wagon. Uncle Fred was shucking corn already...by moon-light! It would be almost an hour before we could make it to the field. Uncle Fred was an early riser and an extremely hard worker. He seemingly ignored the discomforts of heat and cold. The weather did not deter him. In the summer his chambray shirt was never dry. In the winter he scorned the use of an overcoat and gloves. He delighted in arriving early at a neighbor's house to help butcher hogs and upon finding the neighbor still asleep would fill a 30 gallon kettle with water, and build a fire under it and have a kettle of boiling water when the other helpers arrived.
He was a hard-drinking man and on the trips to town, he always bought a bottle of hootch to accompany him on the long buggy-ride home. The partially emptied bottles he stashed around the barn because Aunt Martha wouldn't allow them in the house.
The thing that Uncle Fred and I shared most was a passion for squirrel hunting, a sport at which he excelled. The last time I saw him was at a chance meeting at Roxie's tavern when he was already in his nineties. walking with a cane and almost blind.
When I allowed that he probably didn't get to hunt much, he very enthusiastically described a system he had worked out with his ten year old Grandson, Danny Jarrett. Grandpaw knew where to hunt and could hear. Danny could see the squirrels and prevent Grandpaw from shooting the neighbors or their livestock. They managed to bag quite a few squirrels even though grandpaw couldn't see them when he shot them!
Uncle Fred was very much a man's man. I'm glad I knowed ye, Uncle! [Cecil Saul - 2013]