A Photo from Glascock Farm 30s or 40s

Great Uncle Jimmy & Cow

Philomont

When my dad was a kid, he would spend many summer days working on the family's farm.  Here is his Uncle Jimmy and a cow.  Moo.

Dead Guy in the Back Seat

Gramaw would often tell me this story when we were wandering the Shenandoah Mountains, usually on our way to get spring water...

"Bill and I were out driving around when we noticed that a power line was down on that dirt road over there," she told me, gesturing to the woods beside Route 55.  "So we went over to look, and there was a man in the road, just laying in the road.  I stayed in the car and Bill got out to check on him.  He had been electrocuted by the downed power line.  Bill said we couldn't just leave him there, that we'd have to take him into town.  'Please Bill,' I said, 'Can't we just go back and call the police?'  But Bill wouldn't leave him, so we put the dead man in the backseat of our car and drove back into town.  The man was just sitting back there, dead, and I was afraid I would turn around and his eyes would be open, looking at me.  Anyway, we took him into town."

Happy Birthday Gramaw!

 Happy Birthday, Gramaw!  We miss your beautiful face, sparkling personality, sweet smile, and infectious chuckle.

Ouch!

It's always an adventure when I hang out with my dad.  This time, I wasn't actually with him when the adventure began, but I did go with him to get stitched up later.
My husband, Dad, Uncle Jimmy, Cousin JP, and a few of their friends had been up at Uncle Jimmy's hunting cabin for a couple nights when, in the early morning,  I got a text from my husband, Matt:
 "Do you have any Steristrips?"
My reply was:  "No but I can get some.  You or ?  Dad usually uses duct tape."
Matt called shortly thereafter telling me not to worry---it wasn't as bad as he thought.  What really happened is Dad discovered that I knew he had a cut and didn't want me to worry. 
Around eleven o’clock that morning, Mom, Aunt Carolyn, and I drove up the long, narrow, and winding road to the hunting cabin.  We arrived in the cool, crisp late morning, and all the guys were packing up and almost ready to head back to civilization.  Dad was standing with Mom telling her what happened.  I walked up in mid-conversation and caught "Jimmy and I just got it to stop bleeding," "peeling potatoes," and "in the dark."  His middle finger on his right hand was duct taped, so I didn’t ask to see it, but knew if it took hours to get it to stop bleeding, he probably needed stitches.  I was trying not to plague him with questions and concerns, though. 
Later, when we returned to Nannie's, Mom requested that Dad show us the cut.
He and mom pulled off the duct tape and two of the three band aids before I interrupted with "Ick!  Leave it alone!  It's starting to bleed again!"

Everyone agreed he needed stitches and someone pointed out that a cut like that could be taped up but would drive him crazy since it was on his right hand and he was always busy-busy-busy and it would take longer to heal without stitches. 
Mom put some fresh bandaids on, causing dad to break his silence with a pained chuckle, "Ouch!  Jimmy's gentler than you are!"  Dad and I re-wrapped his finger with the duct tape then he disappeared upstairs without a word. 
We sat around discussing Dad's need for stitches and his stubbornness.
He came downstairs after five minutes and said, "I don't need to take a shower before I go, do I?"
"No!" We chorused.  He had been at the cabin for a few days but had changed clothes so he no longer smelled of man-cave and fried food.
I asked if I could go with him to the hospital.  I was antsy and needed to get out of the house.

In the closet-sized waiting room, duct tape on finger

Dad and I drove the narrow road to the teeny, tiny hospital where he was seen quickly.

“So how did this happen?” The doctor asked after inspecting Dad’s finger.

“Well, I was getting ready to peel potatoes before everyone got up.  I was cleaning the knife, but I had it turned the wrong way…”

She gave him two shots at the base of his middle finger, a digital block.  “Now this is the only time you can flip me off,” she smiled at him and covered the rest of his hand with a blue cloth.  After a few minutes she started cleaning the cut.  Dad winced and jumped, then just gritted his teeth and got very still.  “Can you feel that?” I asked. 

“Yeah I can feel it,” he responded. 

I looked at the doctor who said, “Well, you will feel some pressure….”  To which Dad replied, “I can feel that stuff burning,” and gestured to the antiseptic.

Apparently the doctor figured it was nothing, because she continued to clean and swipe at the cut with the brown antiseptic-drenched gauze while dad made ouch faces, which consisted of him gritting his teeth and grimacing.

The doctor then got out her suture kit and poked the needle into his skin at the top and side of the cut.  “Now, I can definitely feel that,” Dad announced.  “In fact, the only part that’s numb is the bottom of my finger.” 

This made her pause.  “It’s just numb down there?"  She asked, pointing to the base of his finger.

“Yeah,” Dad replied.

“Well, in like, less than ten percent of patients the digital block doesn’t work.”

“It just feels like a bee sting, go ahead and finish.  I’ll be alright.” Dad directed.  “A white-faced hornet sting,” he amended.

“Soooo,” I asked, “How many stitches do you think he’ll need?”   

The doctor leaned over and inspected the cut again, her long wavy dark hair falling forward, and said, “Probably about ten.”

“So ten bee stings Dad.  That’s a lot of stings.”

The doc said, “No, it’s going to get worse as I go.  I’ll do a local anesthetic.”  She started gathering supplies during which time Dad could resist no more and pushed down the blue cloth so he could have a good look at his finger, which had been slowly looking worse the longer we were there. 

“Aaah!  That’s my sterile area!”  The doctor cried.  “Now I have to sterilize again.”  She plucked the blue cloth from Dad’s hand with forceps and threw it away, covered his hand with a paper sheet, the middle finger sticking out, and started slopping the antiseptic on with the gauze again.  She then injected inside the cut and area around it to numb it up.

Finally, Dad’s finger was numb and she stitched him up as they chatted about horses and deer.  Dad kept leaning over to see what she was doing.  He started to lift his left hand to move the paper down to get a better look.  I grabbed his hand and said, “No touching!”  The thoughtful nurse who was in and out pushed the paper down so he didn’t have to crane his neck to watch his finger get stitched.  

Dad ended up with eight stitches and stern instructions on how to care for it.

Two hours later, we were back at Nannie’s.

             

Beating the System

Johnny, Palm Springs 1965

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After breakfast at Silver Diner, Dad and I waited for Matt to get the car while Nana took Po to the bathroom. I don’t know how it came up, but as we sat on the bench in front of the restaurant he began a story…


“One year license plates would be black with white lettering, and the next they’d be white with black lettering.

Once, the state trooper came right to the house to take the tags off my car. Like the one in the garage at the beach…that one was ’63, but I painted ’64 right over it and it looked pretty good. I did such a good job, it fooled the police. They didn’t look too close though.

The ticket you got, when it was the one where you knew you would lose your license, that was when you went right to DMV, say you misplaced your license, and they’d give you a duplicate. After you went to court and they took your original license, you had the duplicate. They didn’t have computers back then.

Sonny [one of his friends] lost his license until he was 21 in Virginia, so he went to West Virginia and got one there and lost that. He was always racing and speeding.

My brother Frankie, he used to pull into the coffee shop all the cops used to go to [in Fairfax City] and he’d smoke his tires in the parking lot then race off.”

Frankie

Tommy, Dad's twin, in Japan.

Clever Lady

When I was a kid and Gramaw would take me to the mountains, I always enjoyed the trip up there almost as much as being there.  She would tell me stories of her childhood, about my dad and uncles, and my PawPaw (these such stories generally ended in PawPaw cussing somebody).  We would drive country roads to get there and avoid Route 66, though it was faster that way. 
One hot, sunny day I noticed Gramaw, who was wearing a t-shirt, also had a long shirt sleeve on her left arm, which was resting on the window well as she steered the car with her right hand. It was just the sleeve cut off another shirt.
"Gramaw, why do you have a sleeve on your arm?"
"To keep it from getting hot and sunburned," she replied. 

"Oh," I replied thoughtfully.  And thinking back, I can never remember her applying sunscreen or bug spray, instead, she had these little inventions to keep those pesky things away.

29 Diner

I just found a good picture of the diner and an accurate description of its history (I've put a link to the right).  Yay!
I am surprised that Gramaw didn't take any pictures of the diner when they were building the foundation and placing the diner.  I can't find a single pic in all of her albums.
She told me when they were building the foundation, her twin baby boys rode in the front seat of the dump truck she drove.
My gramaw kicked arse!