GRUMPPA'S MUSINGS...

📁 Stories

  • Summer Camp Story…

    Since you are at camp, thought I’d share a “Grumppa” story with you. 

    You may have a hard time imagining this but your Grumppa was your age once.  This story occurs when I was a couple of years older than you are now.  I went to church camp in Summersville, WV.  It was a very nice camp with dormitories about 5 minutes’ walk from the cafeteria.  It was about this time of year so you can imagine that it had been hot and I was expecting it to be hot.  On the second morning, our counselors came in to wake us up and they were wearing winter parkas.  I was quite confused, it was the middle of July, who’d wear winter coats in the summer?  I soon found out that it had really “cooled” off overnight.  The temperature that morning was 32F or freezing.  The heaviest thing I’d brought with me was a denim jacket just in case it got a little chilly in the evenings.  I didn’t go to breakfast and huddled in the dorm for most of the morning.  Luckily it did warm up during the day so by mid-afternoon we could stand it.  I hope that you build memories like this during your camp this week.  I hope you make new friends.  I don’t hope that you wake up to 32F.

    Love,

    Grumppa

  • A Summer of Nail Pulling (and Other Teenage Tortures)

    One thing I learned from my parents—and somehow managed to completely forget the moment I got my own credit card—was the art of reusing things.

    Before I was born, my dad and grandfather built the house I grew up in. But they didn’t just go to a lumber yard; they literally tore down their old house to build the new one. It was the ultimate “DIY” project, though back then we just called it “being frugal.” My dad was decades ahead of the modern “fixer-upper” trend, just a lot more extreme and with much less HGTV theme music.

    Fast forward to my high school years. Dad got the rights to tear down another old house just down the road. He handed me a wrecking bar and a sledgehammer, and for a while, I was the happiest kid in town. There is something incredibly exhilarating about being paid to be destructive. I spent that summer feeling like a one-man demolition crew. Watching those stubborn, over-engineered walls finally lose the battle and come crashing down from the second floor? Pure, unadulterated teenage joy.

    But as they say, all good things must come to an end.

    Once the house was a pile of lumber in our backyard, the “fun” part of the job was over. Dad looked at the mountain of wood and then looked at me. He suggested—and by “suggested,” I mean “ordered with the kind of authority that made groaning a strictly internal activity”—that I pull the nails out of every single board so we could reuse them.

    Now, you have to understand: they built houses differently back then. These boards were twenty feet long and seemingly held together by a nail every quarter inch. My “destructive” summer turned into a “tedious” summer. I spent the rest of my vacation filling five-gallon buckets with rusty nails. It was the world’s slowest, most repetitive puzzle, but it certainly cured me of ever telling my dad I was “bored.”

    Today, I live in a “throwaway” world. If something breaks, I don’t reach for a bucket of straightened nails; I reach for my phone and order a newer, better version. I’ve officially failed the “Reuse Everything” lesson.

    So, the next time you’re feeling sad or bored because your tablet is charging or your phone is slow, just imagine your old Grumppa standing in the backyard, sweat dripping, pulling his ten-thousandth nail out of a piece of wood.

    Suddenly, a slow Wi-Fi connection doesn’t seem so bad, does it?

  • If it wasn’t for birthdays…

    I know that you think that Grumppa is old, but that’s a good thing. It’s good for you to see the different generations in your life through yours, your parents, and your grandparents. The oldest of you even had the wonderful privilege of knowing your great, great, Grandma Hall for a short period.

    As for me, I kind of grew out of birthdays. My brothers and sister had moved away and my birthday was just one in five that occurred in a little over a month:

    • Uncle Steve – May 18
    • Uncle Tom – June 4th
    • Me – June 12th
    • Uncle Jim – June 27th
    • Aunt Sue – July 8th

    But that’s a story for another time. I just never saw my birthday as that big of a deal.

    Not that I don’t celebrate them; I just went to a big family birthday party for Uncle Tom who turned 80 last week. If I reach that milestone, I may just celebrate too. Whether it’s who I am or just the nature of memory, my two most remembered birthdays are not of the happy kind.

    The first occurred in 2009. I had been told that my job would end on
.. you guessed it
 my birthday. Not that there wasn’t celebration; there was, it just wasn’t for me. The organization was celebrating an achievement milestone and I was shown the door in a hurry so they could get back to celebrating.

    The second was in 2016 when my sister passed away. I’m not good at remembering dates that I don’t want to think about, so knowing our bond, I have a sneaky suspicion that my sister chose that day intentionally—a final, permanent way to make sure her little brother never forgot her. There was celebration that day, but it was for her leaving a world of pain and suffering (she had cancer) and going on to a much better place.

    Have I created any traditions? Sort of. Every year I look at my Facebook page and see all the people who wished me a happy birthday. I try to come up with my one annual Grumppa Facebook post where I talk about another year passing and what it means. This year, I just may point everyone to this post.

  • Grumppa got run over by ….. his dad?

    A truck similar to the one Great-Grummpa drove back then.

    Imagine being run over by a truck that looked something like this when you were six years old. That’s the story I’m going to tell you.

    I didn’t get to learn all of life’s lessons in Kindergarten because I didn’t go to Kindergarten. I started with First Grade. According to Google Maps, it was one mile from my house to the school house at the bottom of the hill. I’ll save the story about walking to school for a different post. Sometimes my Dad (your great-grummpa) would take me to school on his way to work in a truck similar to the picture above.

    This particular day, I got out of the truck and proceeded to walk around to the front of the truck to cross the street over to the school. My father had thought that I had walked around the back. As you can tell by the picture, this old truck had a pretty high hood and I was shorter than the hood of the truck. Dad couldn’t see me.

    As I was walking in front of the truck, Dad started to take off and I felt the truck bump up against me and start pushing on me. I knew what was happening and I had the oddest thought at that moment. I was going to be Superman and push back against and stop that truck. Physics being what it is and Superman being a comic book hero, I lost that battle. Dad drove the truck over me (luckily the truck also had a high clearance and I wasn’t in front of the tires) and continued on to work, not even noticing me lying on the road.

    After shaking off the shock, I got up and tried to figure out what to do. I knew that the family of a girl I went to school with lived right next door to the school (which wasn’t open yet), so I went to their door and knocked. I told the mother of the house what had happened and asked if she would call my mom. She asked me if I was alright and I told her that I just had a bump on my right knee. When I pulled up my pants leg to show her, I was greeted with a bunch of blood on what looked like tissue paper.

    My mother came to pick me up and take me to the emergency room, but on the way she stopped by where my Dad worked and let him know what had happened (remember, no cell phones). I had to stay in the car so I have no idea what was said; since I was the fifth of six children, maybe they’d been through something like this before; I’ll never know.

    At the hospital, I found out I was lucky that whatever grabbed me did not hit and pull my kneecap. They did have to put 9 stitches in my leg though. The scar has gradually faded away over the years, but I can still see a tiny bit of it if you want me to show you.

    I’m not really sure that there is any moral to this story, but then again sometimes stories are just that, stories.

  • Family Stories – An Introduction

    Welcome to Grumppa’s Musings…

    At Grumppa’s Musings…., we believe in passing down our stories to our family much like the old tradition of oral story telling (just with a technology twist).. Our personal family blog is an invitation to share laughter, warmth, and reflections with immediate family and close friends. With each post, we explore what makes our family unique while offering a glimpse into our playful and light-hearted moments.

    About Grumppa’s Musings…

    Grumppa’s Musings… is more than just a blog; it’s a canvas of our family’s journey. Here, we chronicle everything from joyous gatherings to quirky family traditions. Emphasizing a family-first approach, we aim to capture the essence of what brings us together—love, laughter, and a touch of humor. With each story told, we hope to foster a sense of connection and nostalgia amongst our readers.

    Family Stories

    Our family stories section is dedicated to sharing heartfelt memories and funny anecdotes that evoke a sense of belonging. These narratives take us down memory lane, reminding us of cherished moments around the dinner table or laughter-filled vacations. Some stories will be lighthearted, while others hold a more serious tone, reflecting on deeper experiences that shaped our family dynamics. Here, we not only share our legacy but also invite others to join us in the joy of storytelling.

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