May 13, 2015
I will talk a bit about my ancestors...I think I've done this before but I will do it again anyway. First of all I never really knew my grandmothers. My father's mother, Rose Wagner Bowman died less than a year after my parents were married and 4 months before my older sister was born. My mother's mother, Rose Brasse Heazlit died when I was about 51/2 years old. I do remember some things about her, but not a lot. She was nice and sweet and chubby. I try to remember what we did with her. I was spending the night at her house and my cousins, Susie and Lee came to play. Grandma said we could go outside barefooted IF we didn't go in the mud puddles...well of course we did. She was so mad! She had us in the bathtub and she was grumbling the whole time. We weren't allowed to play with any of the cups that we usually did...we just had to get clean. Then there was the time that Grandpa and Uncle Kenny were putting a ring in a cow (bull's?) nose. I was so scared, but I'm not sure if I was scared for the cow or for my grandpa and uncle! I remember she had a scar on the front of her neck where she had her goiter removed. Seems like she fed me blackberries with cream at some time. I loved her kitchen. She had a wood burning stove and an electric stove. She also had a clothes dryer in her kitchen. She had the neatest pantry. It was long and narrow and had lots of shelves.
My grandpa Heazlit was a big guy with a high voice...especially if he was sad and talking about grandma after she passed away. I can remember going with him to gather eggs. He would tell me to just put my hands under the hen...well when she pecked me it hurt! It didn't bother him with his tough old hide! Grandpa always walked with a limp. I didn't really know why, but I can remember him talking about some buckshot working its way out of his hip. Didn't put two and two together at the time, but one Sunday before church, I was reading my dad's sermon. He sometime preached when the regular minister was on vacation. Anyway I read the sermon and he told how he had shot Grandpa (his father-in-law!) by accident and that he never went hunting again! Oh my! I was so glad I read it before church. I'm not quite sure what I would have done if I had heard it the first time in church in front of everyone. Mom said she just assumed I knew as they had talked about it openly. Grandpa was a tough old farmer. He grew daffodils and other flowers, he kept bees, he milked his cows and grew his crops. He had sheep and pigs and chickens (those were Grandma's). He had ducks and geese and fancy pigeons and guinea hens. I remember that he also had a mule at one time. He had the work horses, Bert and Ben and a horse name Slim. I loved playing in and around the barn. He would let us drink fresh, warm milk right from the cow. In the early spring we would go to the woods and ride the wagons while the guys gathered sap and poured it into the big vat on the wagon and then we would go on to the sugar shanty where the maple syrup was being made...ohhh the smell was so sweet. It was dark and hot in the sugar shanty, but the smell was to die for! Oddly enough I didn't really like maple syrup until I was in my twenties. I loved the farm and was so sad when he sold it. Us kids would play in the creek or walk back in the woods and pick gooseberries or blackberries, or play in and around the barns. Grandpa died in 1977. Melissa is the only one of my kids to be held by him. She was a little over a year old when he died.
My grandpa Bowman was a little guy. I think I ended up being taller than him. He had snow white hair and was bald in the middle. He lived with Mrs. Russell when I was little and then when I was 10 or so, Mrs. Russell went to live with her daughter and Grandpa came to live with us. He passed away when I was a senior in high school. I didn't appreciate him while I was growing up and would have loved to have a chat with him as an adult. He would tell us stories of when he was young and said he didn't go to school long because he had to work to feed all his brothers and sisters. He would go to Uncle Harold's every day and work on his farm, feeding chickens or plowing or planting in the fields. He would come home everyday for lunch and a nap and then go back to the farm until supper time. Sometime Mom and Dad would go dancing and grandpa would babysit us. He would put the 3 of us in his old black and white car and take us for a drive...he drove soooo slow! Sometimes he would drive up and down the back roads, or he would take us to visit his brother, Don, who worked on a farm in Rochester, OH. We always enjoyed those trips. Sometimes I would go with him to run his hunting dogs. He would tell me the name of the trees and plants. Those were always fun times. Grandpa chewed tobacco...ewww! It was kind of nasty. He never chewed in the house, but he always had a wad in his mouth if he was outside. Both grandpas wore bib overalls most of the time. Grandpa Bowman always wore a hat. I don't remember Grandpa Heazlit ever wearing a hat unless he was dressed up.
Aunt Frida was my Grandmother Bowman's older sister. She was the grandmother I didn't have. She would send us a dollar for our birthdays and make us doll clothes for Christmas. I think she would come and stay with us every summer. She taught me to bake and sew embroidery. She was so talented...she could bake, sew, make rugs, make flowers out of crepe paper. She was good at all of that stuff. She told me that she had rough elbows because they didn't have enough milk to drink as children and she had bunions because her shoes were too small when she was growing. up. Yet she went to college and became a teacher until she was married.
