What could i tell? On the one hand, it all seems so long ago, and i'm beginning to understand what it means to be sixty years old. On the other, it seems like only yesterday. And if i don't get things in exactly the right order, and put people in the wrong place at any given time, i should be forgiven by my elders, who should understand the problem. With that little caveat, then, this is what i would tell my grandson about my grandfather:
"So when i think of my very early childhood i see the windshield and the power and telephone lines strung from pole to pole at the side of a two-lane road, and my grandfather's ears, sticking out from the dark round shadow of his head framed in the sundown evening light.
"I don't remember Grandpa talking much, but he was always listening. Cyrus Calvin Davidson was a good listener. His friends called him "Davy", but Grandma called him "Tussie". He wore Old Spice aftershave, when he shaved. His face sometimes got pretty rough before he got the razor out, and then he would make my sisters giggle by rubbing their cheeks with his whiskery stubble.
"In 1951 and 1952, we lived in Japan, where my father was stationed during the Korean War. When we returned to the farm from Japan, in 1952, my Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Fern had moved from Ashton out to the farm, and they lived in the two storey farmhouse and Aunt Elizabeth ran a herd of dairy cows and sold the milk to the dairy in town. Uncle Fern was an electrician, and they had six kids.
"Grandma and Grandpa lived in the cinderblock room at the eastern side of the entrance to the north end of the potato cellar, and my brother and i lived in the east room on the south end, with my Uncle Bill, and my sisters lived in the west room with my Aunt Paula. The kitchen was in the western room on the north end of the cellar, across the entrance from Grandma and Grandpa's room. My mother lived in Alaska. She and my father had split up, and she was working in Anchorage.
"My cousin Terry and i were born in the same year, he in January and i in April. We were nine years old, then. Grandpa would take Terry and me, and later, Terry's younger brother, Lynn, to the baseball games in Idaho Falls. He taught us how to score the game, and we'd get scorecards with lucky numbers in them, but i don't think we ever won anything. We'd pester him for hotdogs, and sometimes he'd buy them. He was a thrifty man. Hotdogs weren't really necessary to the game of baseball. He played baseball all his life. He was a catcher, and his fingers were all gnarly from catching too many fast balls. We often stopped on the way home from the games at a restaurant in Rexburg, and had a late dinner before going back to Ashton, especially if Grandpa got sleepy. Sometimes he'd go nearly off the road before he'd admit that he needed to stop for coffee.
"At Warm River, north of Ashton, there was a stretch of river with lots of places where the trout would hang out, and Grandpa would take us fishing. He was a fly fisherman, and he used to tie his own flies. It never occurred to me to wonder how he could tie flies with his fingers all busted up. I figured there wasn't anything he coudn't do. We'd start out at the river below the south end of a railroad tunnel, and fish to the north end, then walk back along the tracks through the tunnel to where the car or the truck was parked. Terry and i couldn't keep up with Grandpa. By the time we'd catch up with him he'd be putting fish in his creel and moving up to the next hole. We did more rockwalking than we did fishing.
"Before Terry and i were big enough to reach the pedals on the tractor, Grandpa did the ploughing, and he'd come in from the field with his face black from the dust caked in the sweat on his face. When i was in my teens, i did some of the ploughing, and i'd come in looking just like Grandpa used to do. We worked together in the fields and he didn't, as i said, talk a whole lot, so i drove him crazy singing songs i learned from listening to recordings of a folksinging group called the Kingston Trio. I would spend my summer school vacations up at Ashton, hoeing thistles from the spuds, and running irrigation lines. I felt so proud when i got my first pair of irrigation boots, but i learned to hate those boots. We'd get up before the sun, eat breakfast and work until lunchtime. Grandpa would take about an hour's nap after lunch and then we'd hit the fields again. We grew hay and wheat and potatoes, and sometimes we didn't quit until it was too dark to work anymore.
"I don't think my Grandpa was afraid of anyone. He used to get pretty nervous when the (potato) seed inspector came around in the spring, but i never saw anyone else that could worry him much. Bruce Reynolds used to make him pretty mad when he ran his sheep past the farm and they got into Grandpa's fields. I learned a lot of nifty swear words when the sheep were around, and whenever Grandpa worked on machinery. The potato combine was always breaking down, and i learned a lot of socially unacceptable words helping him fix it.
"In the fall Grandpa used to work for a man down the valley building slope-sided truck beds ("bulk beds") for hauling potatoes. I'd help him and we'd work on the bulk beds and listen to the World Series. We'd take long lunches, and he'd be leaning back with his eyes closed, looking like he was asleep, but he didn't miss a play. His favourite team was the Kansas City "A"s, and it must have broken his heart when they moved to Oakland.
"He was like a father. When i enrolled at Idaho State University, he was so proud of me that he secretly sent me money for, as he said, "spending foolishly". This is a man who, to my knowledge, never spent a cent "foolishly". But he'd put himself through college, and he wanted me to have an easier time of it than he had.
"I last saw Grandpa just before i went to Korea the second time, in 1972. Grandma and Grandpa were living in the house that had been my Aunt Helen and Uncle John's when the folks were out at the farm. Your grandmother and your dad and i were driving from Washington, DC to Fort Lewis, Washington, in a car belonging to some colonel who'd been transferred to Fort Lewis. I have a picture that i took of Grandpa then, standing under a tree at the edge of a field by the house in town. He died in May of 1976, and he's buried in the Ashton Cemetery. Grandma died the following February.
Love,
"My earliest memories of Grandpa Davidson are of his ears, which stuck out from the side of his head a bit like open doors on a Volkswagen. It would be early evening and he and one of my younger uncles would be driving my mother, brother, sisters and me from Seattle, Washington, to Ashton, Idaho. This was just after the Second World War, and my Uncle Jim was in the Navy and Uncle John was in the Army, so it would have been Uncle Ed or Uncle Bill with us on the trips from Seattle. It seems to me now that we did this fairly often, but it was a long time ago, so perhaps it wasn't as often as i think it was.
Grandpa"