Ursula, one of my granddaughters, and I sat at the table with an old photo album open in front of us. It was not just old but old fashioned as well. It had black pages and pictures were held in place by those little corner pockets that were glued to the page to hold the pictures in place.

“Who is the cute little naked kid in the wash tub?” Ursula inquired.

“That would be your Granddaddy Jessee, I believe,” said her granddaddy.

“Wow! That’s more of you than I ever expected to see at one time.”

“Good lookin’ huh? Too bad good things don’t last long enough. Now here are some pictures of my aunts and uncles, my mother’s siblings. This one is my youngest uncle, Lonnie. There are Clyde and Kyle. I don’t have a picture of Claude. And here are my two aunts, Odette and Idyle, better known as Tump. And here is their sister Ivo with Isaac, my parents.”

“Now here’s a picture of my Grandmother, Octavia Wells, the smartest person in the world, or so I thought when I was in third grade.”

“Where’s your granddaddy? Don’t you have a picture of him?”

“No, I don’t remember ever seeing a picture of him. I guess I’ll just have to tell you about him. He was your great great granddaddy, you know,” I said as we continued to peruse the album. 

Francis Marion Wells was my granddaddy. Of course I had another, James Abel Jessee of whom I know much less about. So I shall stick to Granddaddy Wells.

I’ve heard it said that in his younger days Granddaddy was a choir leader. From what I knew of him that came as a surprise. He did sing pretty well. When I was just a little fellow he set me on his knee and sang to me, his first grandchild.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was a custom in rural southwestern Virginia to hold singing conventions, a mostly all day affair with dinner on the ground. My parents took me to one when I was a child. I can see Granddaddy as a young man taking over the singing for part of these meetings, and he’d do it well.

Granddaddy was a famer as were most men of his time. He had a farm in the mountains of Virginia. His place was in a hollow that he shared with railroad tracks along one side of the hollow. The farm comprised some bottom land and adjacent hillsides where he grew corn, potatoes, hay for the cows and his horse, chickens and most all his food needs. He had an orchard atop a nearby knoll.

Of course I was acquainted with Granddaddy only in his latter years, so anything I report in his young days is only hearsay.

Granddaddy lived in a well built log house with a big fireplace, a roomy loft, a full front porch and an added-on kitchen and dining room. The walls of the main part of the house were papered with many layers of newspapers to keep the cold winds at bay. One could read favorite comics over and over until someone pasted up new papers. Granddaddy lived in this house with all those who had not left home. Beds occupied three corners of the room. A sturdy oak floor kept feet off the ground. Granddaddy was in charge of the big room at night. How do I know? Conversations went on as usual until Granddaddy said, “Fix my bed Tave.” Without a word Octavia rose, took a few steps and turned down the covers on his bed. Soon after that everybody went to bed.

Unlike the Jessees, Granddaddy was of average height, three or four inches under six feet. His blue eyes sparkled above his soup-strainer moustache. 

His bald pate made him wear a hat outdoors. Walking along the road he might meet a fellow-traveler who’d say, ”Hot enough for you?”

His reply would always be, “I never mind the weather so the wind don’t blow.”

Granddaddy had few, if any, teeth by the time I knew him, but that didn’t stop him enjoying a good apple. It worked this way: He first cut the apple in halves across the care. Holding an apple half in his left hand he scraped the flesh of the apple with the rounded end of a table knife
until he had a portion of soft, juicy apple for his toothless mouth. When he was done he had left only the peel and the core. At the dining table he used a similar technique except that the soft food didn’t require scraping. His daughters, however, took a dim view of his method at the table.

Granddaddy wasn’t always easy to get along with. He had only one curse word that I ever heard. Anyone can guess what it was. Right, it was shit. Many times that word was all that was needed to get his point across. Other times, however, he required a more definitive treatise and the expletive showed up numerous times. When he was done there was no more to be said. 

About once a week Granddaddy gathered in-season produce from the farm and took it and the buttermilk that Grandmother had churned and perhaps some butter, loaded the wagon and headed off to town to peddle his wares. On his way back he stopped at the Post Office which was actually part of a local store with post boxes. His was number 44, East Stone Gap. There was no rural delivery service there at the time. He made sure to stop at the Post Office when the Sears Roebuck catalog was likely to be in the mail. While at the Post Office he spent a few pennies for candy for his grandchildren.

“Well, Ursula, now you know more about the guy whose picture you didn’t see than about those you saw. Any questions?” I said..