My Guest Author today is my sister. She is older than me so she has memories that I don’t have. My grandfather, Poppy, died just a month before I was born. I rely on my sister’s memories, photos and family stories to know him.
(I would have been his favorite!)
Sister Margaret texted me recently to ask what I remembered about Poppy. (I was 8 and she was 3 months when we left Montana and living next to Gommy and Poppy.) From an 8 year old’s perspective, and some things I’ve thought about since, here’s Poppy.
Times at Gommy and Poppy’s were always special. There was a cheerful, calm hum to the log house.
Poppy and Ernest (his ranching/sawmill partner of Ward and Parker) would come in from evening chores, hang their coats and hats on the hat tree by the front door (stomping the snow off their boots if it was cold outside), and put another log on the fire. The stone fireplace was one they’d built from round stones from the Sweet Grass River that ran through the ranch. On either side of the living room, there were big picture windows where Poppy had red geraniums blooming year-round.
They’d turn on the radio that sat on its own special shelf in the kitchen, next to the doorway to the music room – where Poppy had his desk and Gommy had her piano and china. They always listened to the news evenings, and at lunch they’d listen to the farm report and stock market.
Then we’d have supper (cooked on the green and cream-colored wood range), sitting on benches around the long oak table with everyone’s brands carved in the corners. (Each person had registered their own brand for cows and horses, whether they had any yet or not.) Supper might be roast beef (from our own cattle), potatoes and gravy, homemade bread, fresh churned butter, jams, pickles, a vegetable, dessert, and hot tea. As an Englishman, Poppy liked his tea. But he didn’t understand why someone would add lemon to make it sour and sugar to make it sweet. He thought almost every meal should have meat and potatoes.
After supper, Poppy and Ernest would go sit by the fireplace in big oak rockers on either side of the warm fire. Poppy had a ritual of putting on his slippers, taking his pipe out of his pocket, cleaning it out with his pocketknife, nocking the loose tobacco out by banging it upside down on one of the rocks sticking out from the fireplace. He’d fill his pipe with tobacco, tapping it out from his red Prince Albert tin. He’d light it, puff a couple of times to get it going, and then lean back in his big rocker and relax. Ernest might light a cigarette (he smoked Camels) and read one of his National Geographics. There was a shelf, or two, or more on the yellow National Geos on Ernest’s side of the fireplace. Poppy might read. I imagine Gommy read when we kids weren’t around, setting down on the brown wicker sofa in front of the fire. The fireplace was lit year-round, too. It gets cool even in summers back in the mountains at a mile above sea level.
Sometimes Poppy would sit and bounce kids on his knee, especially the boys. He’d sing, “Bozo, Bozo, you’re no good. I’m going to chop you up for wood.” And they’d laugh and laugh.
Guest Author on the right
Poppy was a medium-sized man. He liked to stand with his feet spread apart and his thumbs tucked in his belt. (Brother Bee stands that way.) He liked to look good when he went to town. He’d wear a good jacket, shirt and tie, nice slacks, and his hat. (His rancher’s white forehead showed when he took his hat off.) I thought he was very good looking. One of the earliest pictures of him shows a young man very fashionably dressed in a 3-piece suit shortly after he left England and went to Canada. He was a dandy, full of youthful confidence!
Poppy’s desk was in the middle room. That’s where he kept track of his ledgers and maybe where he wrote his poems (or so I’ve heard. I don’t have any of his poems.). It was a mysterious place, one we kids weren’t allowed near.
Outside, on days the men worked in the shop welding and fixing things, his poetry came out in a blue streak. Mama would always whistle when she walked by, so the blue streak would stop for a minute. (Is it any wonder that Daddy Buck had learned to cuss in English, Spanish and Norwegian by the time he was 5 or 6? English from Poppy, Spanish from The Uncles, Norwegian because we lived in a Norwegian community.)
Poppy was pleasant, kind of quiet, smart. He was so proud when David was born! He had 3 granddaughters by then, but David was the first boy. Poppy wanted the Ward name carried on! I think he would be amused that out of all his 20 grandkids, 46 or so great-grands and 50+ great-great-grands, the ones with his initials (for Robert Carrington Ward) came through his second oldest granddaughter.
I know he would be proud of the whole crew! With a twinkle in his eye, he would bounce them on his knee and sing to them.
