My grandfather was a bear of a man with thick silver hair, snow on top of a mountain.  He would take my brother, Michael and me for long walks in the woods.  When we crossed the field, he would always remind us the field wasp has a nasty sting.    Along side the trail there was a cast off wagon wheel decayed by time.  I would imagine that Indians had once ambushed a covered wagon and this wheel had been lost during the chase.

 The path crawled up the hill like a snake.  When we finally reached the top there was a spring.  A dipper hung from a nail in a tree.  Looking into the spring you could see every stone and leaf on the bottom.  Crawfish scurried for cover when our shadows passed over them.  Grandpa told us that is how you could tell if the water was pure.  If the water wasn’t pure, the crawfish couldn’t live there.  You couldn’t drink that water too fast or your head would hurt. It was liquid ice.

     Sometimes a squirrel darted in front of us.  Grandpa sent us off to catch it.  We ran after it until it dashed up a tree.  He laughed at our amazement that we didn’t catch it. His laughter boomed through the hills as he slapped his thigh. We thought if he said so we should be able to.  The trip back was sometimes too much for little legs.  He hoisted us up onto those broad shoulders and we rode home.

     Henry Worthhart, a father with no time or patience for thirteen children, had hours on end of both for these two grandchildren.  He spent hours on end with us. After 40 years at Goodrich, he retired to eighty-eight acres in southern Ohio.  Retired?  He worked his land and hired out part time as field hand to neighbors.  He came home tired in the evening.  After supper he would sit in his big rocker and listen to his radio programs.  I would sit on his lap.  Or sometimes I pulled up the piano bench behind him, stand on it and brush his hair.  I liked to do that because he enjoyed it so and it made me feel important. On occasion an opera singer would come on the radio.  My grandfather did not like that type of music and he would always say, “Give her a corn cob.”  I always wondered why he wanted to give her a corn cob and what she was supposed to do with it.

    He dug a pit to make a new outhouse. Then muscles straining as if he were Hercules, he lifted a huge concrete slap and put it in place to make the floor. He didn’t seem to realize he was getting older and he should have had help.  It was just too much for him.  The next day my brother and I were surprised to find him still asleep went we awoke.  This had never happened.  We jumped on the bed and did our best to wake him.  But he was never to awaken again.  He was only in my life for six years, but what an impression he made on me.