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I loved to spend the night at Grandma’s house. I knew that Grandpa and Uncle Donald, my godfather, lived there, too, but I always thought of 1925 Storrs Avenue as “Grandma’s House.” When I stayed overnight there, I slept in my father’s old bedroom. It was on the second floor, the first room on the left, across from the very large bathroom. The bed was immediately on the left as you entered the room. The stairs to the attic were on the left, at the end of the bed. Across from the door were the windows, which faced the northeast. All along the wall under the windows was a very long desk with a long shelve above it. On this shelve were my grandmother’s prize African violets. They were stunning. Florescent lights hung above the plants; the combination of the florescent lights and the northeast light from the windows above must have created the perfect environment for the African violets, which are notoriously difficult to grow. (I can’t count how many African violets Grandma gave to my mother that died at our house.) I loved to sit at the desk and glance up at the lovely violets as I drew picture upon picture.
Another thing I loved about staying at Grandma’s house was the food. For breakfast, Grandma would make me a perfectly prepared soft-cooked egg. She would scoop it out of its shell and chop it in small bowl with a little butter (REAL butter, not oleo-margarine like my mother bought), salt, and pepper. There was also toast with butter, and jam if I wanted it. Grandma squeezed oranges for my orange juice, and I also had tea with cream and sugar. This was so unlike my usual breakfast at home of cold cereal or oatmeal. And NO pancakes, which I did not like, at Grandma’s house. Often, we would also have a dish of fruit with breakfast. Apricots were my favorite. We never had apricots at home. Breakfast was heaven at Grandma’a house.
In the summer, “The Vegetable Man” would stop his cart pulled by a horse in the street in front of my grandparents’ house, which was in the middle of their block. On one side of the cart were all sorts of local fresh vegetables; on the other side were fresh fruits. My grandmother would let me help select the vegetables and the fruits for the family meals. My favorite vegetable was fresh peas. I was allowed to shell the peas and rinse them so that Grandma could cook them. At home, we had mushy canned peas. These peas were fork-tender when Grandma steamed them, and then put a pat of butter on top of the dish of steaming hot peas.
The fruits I usually chose were bing cherries, dark red and so sweet, and peaches and apricots. Grandma would let me eat the cherries after she washed them. She would cut up the peaches and the apricots, sprinkle a little sugar on them, mix them, and then we would have them for breakfast or sometimes over vanilla ice cream. I can still smell the fragrance of the peaches and the apricots in my child’s mind. Aaahhh!
For lunch, Grandma would make soup, usually cream of tomato soup, and make me a sandwich, usually of sliced ham, with a little butter, mayonnaise, and mustard on white bread. She always had dill pickles for me, since I was a “pickle freak.” I ADORED dill pickles. Our dinner would often be roast pork, roast beef, or pan-fried steak, served rare and juicy. Every now and then, Grandma would roast a duck on a spit. These were my favorite things, and Grandma always made sure that she served them when I stayed overnight.
Never was I scared when I stayed at Grandma’s house. I felt safe and secure there; my grandparents were right next door to my father’s room, and Uncle Donald’s room was across the hallway from my grandparents’ room. Someone was right there if ever I needed them, but I don’t remember ever needing comforting or having nightmares or anything unpleasant happening when I was there.
Unfortunately, my overnight stays at Grandma’s house came to a rather abrupt end when I was 7 or 8 years old. My mother thought it was unfair that I stayed at Grandma’s and my sister did not. Joanne was quite the opposite of me; she was very active and “antsy.” She didn’t listen nor obey well. She always got into some sort of mischief. And Grandma simply didn’t want to deal with it, so yes, Grandma played favorites, and I was the favorite, My mother did not like it, and so forbid me to go to Grandma’s house unless she also invited Joanne. Grandma just didn’t want to put up with Joanne’s antics, so my visits to Grandma’s house stopped until I was in high school.
Every Wednesday when I was in high school, I would take the city bus downtown with my school friends. We would shop or “just look,” and then I would take the bus to my grandparents’ house for dinner. I would help my Grandma and Uncle Donal make dinner, and we would chat together as we worked. Then we would eat, watch the news, and I would do my homework. Around 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m., Uncle Donald would drive me home, or my father would come to pick me up and take me home. Dad often came a little early so that he could spend some time with my grandfather, and then we would go home later. Wednesday nights at my grandparents’ house provided a my safety net for me throughout my high school years. I felt wanted, loved, cared about, listened to, and I was given loving advice at my grandparents’ house. If given the choice, I would have stayed FOREVER at my grandparents’ house!
On the opposite side of the yard, across from the rose bushes, my grandmother planted her annuals. These were the flowers that have to be planted from seeds every year, such as zinnias, snapdragons, daisies, pansies, petunias, etc. Bulb flowers were also to be found here, such as tulips and daffodils. Grandma dug up the bulbs after the blooming season for that flower had passed and then replanted the bulbs at the appropriate time for them to bloom during the next season.
At the far end of the yard, against the retaining wall that backed against the yard of the house on Oneida street, Grandma had her rock garden. Large rocks were placed in this area, and succulents such as “hens and chickens” that needed little water and light grew in this area. The rocks were covered with moss and the succulents grew in the shallow soil surrounding the rocks.
Grandma allowed Grandpa his own part of the yard, too. On the end of the yard closest to the house, opposite the rock garden, Grandpa had a small vegetable garden. In the summer, he had tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, and squash. He also had a grape arbor next to the vegetable garden, near the driveway. He grew luscious deep purple Concord grapes. There were benches inside the arbor, where you could sit and breathe in the sweet aroma of the grapes. It was shady and cool in the arbor, and a wonderful place to sit on a hot summer day. Grandma would make grape jelly from the Concord grapes, but of course, we would also sneak and eat a few of the fresh grapes.
Soon after my grandparents’ marriage, my grandmother became pregnant with my father Floyd, who was born on September 16, 1912. Around this time, my Grandma began to use “Rose” instead of “Rosa” as her given name, and that is how she was known all her life. We knew that she was originally “Rosa Anna” because she had her First Communion and Confirmation certificates framed and hung in my grandparents’ bedroom. Grandpa apparently chose my father’s name: Floyd Donald. But my grandmother named the other children!
The family of three lived in the area of St. Francis parish; that was where my father was baptized. While my grandmother was pregnant, she made the christening (baptismal) gown for the baby. Both my grandparents were raised in devout Roman Catholic families. In the Catholic church, babies were usually baptized as soon as possible after birth so that they would go to Heaven if they died (very common in those days). If a baby died without being baptized, it was believed that the baby would go to a place called Limbo, a nice place but they would never be in the presence of God because they still carried the “stain” of Original Sin, the Church taught. In addition, unbaptized babies could not be buried in the sacred ground of the Catholic cemetery; they were buried in unconsecrated ground in a special section. So my father was baptized about a week after his birth. I don’t know who his godparents where; that’s something I’ll have to investigate.
Soon my grandfather began to build a house for the family in the northern part of the city at 1925 Storrs Avenue, just a block east of Oneida Street, one of the major north-south streets. It was near Kemble Street School (the elementary school) and Utica Free Academy (the high school). Only a block away was a spacious city park. The house was not far from Our Lady of Lourdes Church, where the family began to attend church and where all the Samson boys made their First Communion and Confirmation.
When my father was about 4 years old, my grandmother gave birth to a baby girl who died soon after birth. However, she lived long enough to be baptized in the hospital and was named Rosemary Catherine. We know that she was baptized, because even though my father said she died at birth, she was buried in the consecrated area of St. Agnes Catholic Cemetery. My brother worked at the cemetery during his high school summers, and he came upon her grave. She must have been born alive and baptized, because stillborn (dead) babies could NOT be baptized.
The death of Rosemary threw my grandmother into a deep depression. In addition, my father had a terrible asthmatic condition. So my grandfather took their doctor’s advice and took the family to to St. Augustine, Florida, for the winter months of 1916-17. The doctor thought that the warmer climate at the seaside would be good for my father, and a change of scenery might help ease Grandma’s depression. They took many photographs on their prolonged vacation; I was able to look at them with my grandmother and Uncle Donald after my grandfather’s death. I recall that there was a lovely photo of my father and his father with a toy sailboat at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. I really loved that photo and wish I had asked for it then. Uncle Donald took possession of the photos after Grandma died, and then they passed to my Uncle Bob. I know one of my cousins has at least some of the photos; perhaps other cousins have the others.
My grandfather had experienced some illness when I was young. I remember that my mother gave blood when my grandfather underwent surgery to remove part of his stomach (I don’t know what the problem was). But in the summer of 1969, Grandpa began passing some blood in his urine. In August, his went into the hospital and it was found that he had some sort of cancer that involved his blood. He was in the hospital for about 3 weeks and was quite alert and lucid until the night of his death. My parents had gone to visit him, and found that he was slipped away. They called my grandmother and uncle, who rushed to the hospital, and Grandpa passed away on September 6, 1969, at the age of 85.
My parents came home and told my brother that Grandpa had died that night. My brother sat in our back hall, hugging our dog Sissy, crying, and telling her that Grandpa wouldn’t be coming back anymore. For months afterward, when my Uncle Donald’s pulled into our driveway, Sissy ran to the car and looked for her best friend who would never return.
Grandpa is buried with Grandma, my godmother Aunt Elsie (Uncle Bob's wife), and Uncle Donald in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Whitesboro, NY. The Samson headstone has a bas relief of the Sacred Heart on it. Their graves are just a short distance from my parents graves and the graves of Uncle Nick and Aunt Josephine.
My grandfather was much like my father in personality. He was quiet, gentle, and soft-spoken. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and loved the outdoors and animals. He loved his family--his immediate family, his extended family, and even his in-laws. I never heard my grandfather raised his voice except at his youngest brother, Nick. Uncle Nick was a bit of a character, cheap as cheap could be. (When his wife Josephine was alive, she had to take the remainders of the bars of used bath soap and melt them down, then let them harden into a larger, usable bar of soap. Nick and Josephine reused coffee grounds. Uncle George Kraeger once commented that he thought Josephine’s coffee was fine, until someone informed him that he was actually drinking tea.)
When I was in high school, I always went to my grandparents’ home after school for dinner. On this particular night, we were just finishing our dinner when the back door opened and in stomped Uncle Nick, my grandfather’s youngest brother. Uncle Nick was yelling, “They’ve torn down the coal bin!” He flung his gloves, hat, and scarf on the hallway floor, began crying, and kept yelling about the coal bin. Here was the problem with the coal bin: Uncle Nick’s sister Anna Kraeger’s grandson, Gerald, and his wife Corinne lived with Uncle Nick and helped take care of him. Corinne needed space in the basement of their two-flat home to hang a clothes line since Uncle Nick didn’t have a dryer (surprise). Never mind that the coal bin was empty and probably hadn’t been used in 20 or 30 years. But Uncle Nick was extremely upset that Gerald had torn out the coal bin.
Grandpa calmly got up from the table, went out to the hallway, grabbed Uncle Nick by the elbow, and pulled him into the den. It was then that I heard my grandfather raise his voice, the ONLY time. He must have gone into “older-brother mode.” Grandpa shouted, “Nick, you silly old fool! You haven’t used that coal bin in 25 years and you never WILL use it again! What is the matter with you? I’ll tell you what’s the matter, you’re an old fool. A silly old fool!” He went on to tell Uncle Nick that he should be grateful that he had a nice young couple--his sister’s grandson and wife--who were willing to put up with all of Uncle Nick’s nonsense and take damn good care of him. Uncle Nick was speechless. He must have been in shock (he didn’t even ask if there was any dinner left). Uncle Donald got involved (after dinner), got the two brothers calmed down, and took Uncle Nick back home (he had walked from his house a mile or so away). Grandma and I finished our dinner and washed up the dishes.
One food that Grandpa loved was limberger cheese. This is a VERY smelly cheese that must be kept tightly sealed or else everything in the fridge would smell like limberger cheese. My grandfather loved limberger and onion sandwiches with mustard!
I mentioned that we ate frogs. Well, technically, we ate frogs' legs. Grandpa and Pat would go to some ponds in the woods near our house and shoot frogs and skin the legs. Then my mother would cook the frogs' legs. She would lightly batter them and fry them; I prefer them sautéed with garlic and tomatoes, the French way. Even today, if I go to a very good French restaurant, such as Le Jardin in Vermont, I will order frogs' legs, or cuisses de grenouilles. (I love escarots, as well!)
Grandpa made his own sauerkraut, which is simply pickled cabbage. In a large stoneware crock in my grandparent’s cellar, my grandfather would place shredded cabbage and kosher (large-grained) salt. He would mix these well, and place a round wooden board on top of the mixture, and hold in all down with a large brick. The cabbage and salt would ferment in the crock, and voilà! Sauerkraut! It was not until I was in college that I realized that most people actually bought sauerkraut in stores, because when we needed sauerkraut, we brought a glass Ball jar to my grandparents’ house, went down to the cellar, scooped out a jar-full of sauerkraut and took it home. Periodically, my grandfather would grate more cabbage into the crock, add a little salt, stir the mixture, and let it sit and ferment.
The common dandelions, generally considered a weed, was a plant that my grandfather used both for food and for making wine. The leaves of the dandelion plant are actually very good as a salad, with a little oil, vinegar, and sugar on them. My grandfather also made wine from dandelion flowers. He also taught my brother how to make dandelion wine. It has an interesting taste, and a powerful “kick.”
Grandpa loved to walk. That probably had something to do with his longevity; he lived to be 85 years old. As I said, he walked to the various construction sites; he also walked through the Forest Lawn cemetery and through the woods to our house. This was about 3 miles "as the crow flies." He would call my mother to let her know he was coming--a safety measure. He nearly always carried his rifle when he walked through the cemetery and woods to our house--another safety measure. In the summer, he would then take us kids walking in the woods. That's how I learned to recognize different trees, as he pointed them out to us. Sometimes we would take pails and secure them on our belts, and we would pick wild strawberries, wild blackberries, and gooseberries. Of course, we would eat as many berries as we picked! But we loved to walk with Grandpa as he told us stories of his youth.
In the summer when raspberries ripened, my mother would take us with my Grandpa to Aunt Anna's house to pick the raspberries from her many raspberry bushes. She had 4 or 5 rows of raspberry bushes which grew up along wooden railings. I LOVED to help pick raspberries! Grandpa would leave some for Anna for her cereal and dessert, and take a bucket home to Grandma. But we took the rest home, and my mother would make a pie and usually can the rest of make jam or jelly. But I would have preferred to just eat fresh raspberries with a little sugar syrup!
Grandpa told wonderful stories. He had a slight accent; he never said "th's." One day he told about seeing many birds on his walk through the woods to our house. I remember him saying, "D'ere must have been tousant ['thousand'] unt ['and'] tousant of dem!"
When I think of Grandpa, I can still smell his pipe tobacco. Grandpa smoked a pipe, and the smell to me was smoky and sweet. It was a very pleasant, comforting, safe smell. Grandpa (and Grandma and Uncle Donald) were people who always made me feel safe, appreciated, and loved, which I often did not feel around my parents, sad to say.
My grandfather loved animals. My grandmother wasn't keen on dogs, but when I was young, they had a cat named Ginger, a yellow tabby. He wasn't fond of children and we learned to keep our distance early on. But Grandpa had a special relationship with our dog Sissy, whom we got when I was in the 7th grade. Grandpa loved Sissy and she loved him. He would pet her and say, "Oh, if only you could talk!" What would you tell us?" If Grandpa walked home through the woods, even if we kept Sissy in until an hour later, she would follow his scent and turn up at my grandparents' home. So my mother or father usually took Grandpa home after he had had a glass of beer so that Sissy wouldn't follow him.
My father was very close to his father. They both loved to hunt and fish, and even when my father was an adult and my grandfather elderly, they never missed a deer-hunting season nor at least one fishing trip for rainbow trout. When my brother Pat was old enough, he, too, always went along on these trips and learned not only to hunt and fish, but to also respect the land and animals. What they killed or caught was ALWAYS eaten--deer, squirrel, rabbit, trout, bullheads, and frogs. I was not (am still not) a great fan of venison (deer meat), not just because it came from a deer, but because I don't like the taste. I ate everything else (except the bullheads).
Grandpa and my father also went snowshoeing: walking on top of deep snow on snowshoes. He also taught my father to hunt with a bow and arrow, and taught my father to make his own arrows, as well. He taught me how to shoot a rifle, as well as teaching my brother and sister. And most importantly, he taught us that we are stewards of God's creature, and he taught us to respect our environment (before environmentalism was a big thing.)
Grandpa was a skilled carpenter and cabinet-maker. He built the home that my grandparents' lived in at 1925 Storrs Avenue in Utica. My father and his brothers grew up there, and my Uncle Donald lived there for a while even after my grandparents' deaths.
When my father graduated from high school in 1930, just months after the Great Stock Market Crash of October 1929 which signaled the beginning of the Great Depression, he was unable to go to college to become an architect as he had hoped to do. Instead, he went to work as a carpenter with my grandfather and his brother. They were all members of the carpenters' union, The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. (The union gave me a scholarship of $100 every year that I attended Niagara University; this scholarship paid for my books all through my undergraduate years.) They most often worked for the Alt Brothers Construction Company; even after my grandfather had retired, he would walk to one of the Alts' construction sites to see how the work was progressing, visit my father in the summer when he worked for the Alts' on summer break from teaching school, and "chew the fat" with other carpenters.
Since I wrote quite a bit about Grandpa Samson, I really need to write about the person I loved most in the entire world: Grandma Samson. My grandmother went the world to me, and I want to share everything I know and remember about her with you.
Grandma, my father’s mother, was born on April 21, 1888, the daughter of Catherine (Kate) O’Melia Shibley and Joseph Shibley. Shibley is most likely an anglicization of the German name Scheible, since Joseph’s parents, Matthias and Grace came from Baden-Baden in Prussia. Great-grandfather Joseph never used the word “German”; his parents were “Prussian,” which is more correct since Germany was a collection of princely states when they arrived in American with their older son Enos. Joseph was the first child of his parents born in American. They were German-speaking people. Kate O’Melia (whose parents came from Ireland) married Joseph Shibley and they lived in Fish Creek, NY with the elder Shibleys. Kate desperately wanted to learn to speak German to that she could speak with the neighbor ladies of the area who were mostly German-speaking, so only German was spoken in the Shibley home.
Joseph and Kate had four children. Howard was born in 1886, my grandmother Rosa Anna was born in 1888, and they had two younger children: Flora, born in 1892, and John (Jack) who was born in 1894. Howard and Rosa were very close all their lives. Howard never married, and eventually inherited Kate’s brother Martin O’Melia’s cabin and all its contents in Fish Creek. I remembering visiting Uncle Howard often. The cabin was at the foot of a hill, on which he had sheep and goats that grazed on the land. He also had a small pond on his land. It was a beautiful, rustic little place, quite cozy. No central heating, of course, but no one had heating heating in that are then (and NO air conditioning, of course).
Grandma and Flora were rather rivals for their father’s attention, it seems. Grandma felt that her father spoiled and favored Flora. And Jack was the baby, totally spoiled, of course. Flora eventually married Floyd Canfield and moved to Utica, as did my grandmother when she married my grandfather. Flora had a son, Roy, my father’s cousin, and the Samson boys and Roy Canfield were very close.
There is an interesting story about Aunt Flora. At one point in her lifetime, she painted nearly everything a light, turquoise-like green. Everything. Beds, wicker furniture, dressers, tables, EVERYTHING. When I was grown and needed a bed frame in 1979, my father said that he had his grandparents’ bed that Joseph had had made for his wedding to Kate in 1891 in the upstairs of his garage. It was, unfortunately, been at Aunt Flora’s during the “Aunt Flora Green” period, so my father took it to be stripped by dipping it in a paint remover. He felt that there was good wood underneath, and he was indeed correct! The bed was made of black walnut and was absolutely beautiful. The huge headboard was made of a single piece of black walnut. The bed was incredibly heavy, being that it was solid wood, not veneer. I used that bed until I moved to Austin in 2002. Then I gave the bed for Cassie to use. The sideboards eventually rotted and broke in around 2007 or 2008.
After my Aunt Elsie, Uncle Bob’s wife, died at the early age of 55, and Roy Canfield had passed away, Roy’s widow Fran and Uncle Bob became quite good friends and were good company for each other, as they shared many of the same interests. Uncle Bob and Cousin Fran were great friends until Fran’s death of heart disease. Jack, too, married and moved to Utica. He married Florence XXX. They had one adopted daughter, Jane, and one child, Rosemary, of their own.
As with most of the children in the area, the Shibley children were educated in the one-room school in the town. They knew English but had only spoken German at home until Howard and Rosa went to school. Grandma aspired to be a teacher, so she continued her education past the 8th grade, and eventually attended Normal School, which was teachers’ training college in New York State. When Grandma graduated from Normal School, her graduation gift from her parents was a rifle. She had secured a job in the one-room school near their village, and when she walked to the school, she had to walk through a wooded area where there were wild animals. So she needed the rifle for protection from the animals, such as bobcats and lynx.
Miss Shibley, as she was known to her students, met my grandfather while she was a teacher and he was a carpenter. They married in Fish Creek at the Catholic Church in November 1911. Grandpa was 27 and Grandma was 23 years old. They moved to Utica, about 45 miles to the south, which was the largest city in the area. It was easier for Grandpa to find work as a carpenter there. And each of them had siblings who also lived there: Grandpa’s youngest brother Nick and his wife (Nick was also a carpenter); and Grandma’s younger sister Flora and her husband Floyd Canfield, as well as her younger brother Jack and his wife Florence (Jack was also a carpenter).
