Grandpa Samson: Part 3--Grandpa and His Grandkids

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.