Grandpa Samson: Part 2--My father

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.