My Other Grandfather Story

My other grandfather. My father’s father. The German.

He’d convinced us all we descended from the wife of Martin Luther, transplanted first to Hesse, near the center of Germany, then transported as soldiers by the British during the American Revolution, acquiring the particularly loathsome habit of skewering colonists onto bayonets, then pinning them to a tree. In truth, it’s more easily imagined this ur-grandfather was among the drunk Hessians sleeping it off that Christmas Eve when Washington crossed the Delaware, and was taken prisoner. From this cloud of recollection appears a neatly written note testifying only that said ur-grandfather subsequently appeared “mit Frau and twei Kinder” — with wife and two children.

And there it ends, our bonafides, until what years later would become my birthday, October 29.

•••

In the days and weeks leading up to Tuesday, October 29, 1929, my grandparents were opposing poles of optimism and fear, ignorance and wisdom, buoyed by a religious fervor from a single well, but poured differently into each vessel. When my grandmother quoted Mark or Luke, that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” my grandfather explained to his more literal wife that she misunderstood; that the Aramaic for “rope” had been mistranslated into Greek as “camel,” meaning it was only more difficult — much more difficult, my grandmother rejoined — but not impossible for a rich man to enter Heaven. In fact, my grandfather went on, it was possible the “eye of a needle” was not a literal eye at all, but the name of a narrow pass that was difficult for a camel to transit, again lowering the bar under which the rich attained Paradise.

Further, it was my grandfather’s opinion that as godliness accompanied cleanliness, it also partnered with wealth. God rewarded his faithful servants with worldly goods in the here and now, and spiritual ones in the hereafter. The righteous always prospered more than sinners. My grandfather was a case in point.

He was an accountant — the Chief Accountant — for the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Like Saint Peter, he kept accounts — debits on the left, and credits on the right. Debits were the costs of sin, to be balanced by God’s favors. The righteous, because their sins were small, and they were assured of greater rewards in Heaven, could borrow against today’s sins, letting them live richer lives, even freer from sin. It was not quite the indulgences sold in medieval times by the Roman Catholic Church — something both my grandparents despised — but neither was it dissimilar.

So it was, that when my grandmother envisioned Armageddon when the Down Jones Industrial average fell more than thirty points, and as many billions of capital dollars vanished, my grandfather saw opportunity. It was all panic, and fear-mongering, he said. It showed a lack of understanding, and worst of all, “poor breeding.” The market had slipped by as much just within the last year, then recovered, attaining even greater heights. He quoted Kipling, which he’d learned by heart in school:

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting

Now was not the time to sell, he reasoned, but to buy. He’d been wise — courageous, some said — to have borrowed heavily in June when the market dipped to 300, leveraging purchase of three times more stock than he could afford. Three months later, The Lord rewarded him by raising the market over eighty points; a godly profit of nearly thirty percent.

And when the market turned south again in September, he was determined to use the profits from his earlier gamble as stake for the next hand. And it almost happened. In early October there was a rise. It was followed by a fall, but no more than any of the preceding temporary dips over the last year. But it continued to fall. And fall. And fall, until on Tuesday, October 29, the market that had peaked at 380 two months earlier, was now valued forty percent less: 230.

Grandfather was fearless. He rode the market all the way down. It was only a matter of time he told my grandmother, until things reversed. In the meantime, he still had his position with Upjohn. He’d speak to his brokers, and the people at the bank. They were all good men -- by which he meant, Christian men. They’d agree to a reasonable schedule of repayment. No, he told my grandmother, he’d never sell the house. It wasn’t necessary, and especially now, with prices depressed, it would add little to the positive side of the ledger. There was no reason to let the staff go. The cook, nanny, and maid together cost less than a hundred dollars a week. They’d work for even less. And as he had no intention of resigning from what my grandmother called “The Old Boys’ Club,” it was not necessary that the children give up their music lessons. If belt- tightening would be required he said, they could all benefit from “eating healthier, dressing less lavishly, and avoiding trifles.”

In that last regard, he meant my father, then only three years old, on whom my grandmother doted unmercifully. He was the middle child, his sister five years older, and brother not quite a year old. Grandmother insisted on cutting his hair in a “bob” straight around the head at about jaw-length, with bangs in front. Worse in Grandfather’s opinion, she dressed him in lace shirts, and silk knickers, with sheer white stockings in patent leather shoes with shiny brass buckles. “Little Lord Fauntleroy” grandfather called him, with no sense of amusement in his voice.

On that, Grandfather advised they all pray, and spent the rest of the evening in his study, making notes from an oversized Bible. My grandmother sat alone at the kitchen table, making notes of her own.

•••

Over the next four years, Grandfather’s spirits rose and fell as stocks first climbed in late November, recovering a third to a half their losses, then fell again in April and May. Another reprieve was followed by yet another fall to even lower levels. By July 28, 1932 Wall Street fell to its lowest, losing nearly ninety percent of its value from 1929. Average wages were half what they were four years earlier. US industrial production had fallen to a third its level in 1929. The Gross National Product was just over half what it had been.

Thirty-four million Americans had no income. Unemployment was twenty-five percent. There were breadlines as wide as the sidewalk and blocks long. There were riots. Twenty-five thousand World War One veterans marched on Washington, where they were dispersed by tanks, cavalry, and infantry commended by McArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton.

Twenty-five percent of Americans lived on or from farms. Twenty percent of the workforce was employed on farms that were now carrying debt three times higher than in 1910. Half the farms produced only $1,000 worth of food, fiber, or tobacco each year. Even good news turned bad. In 1931 a bumper wheat crop depressed prices, forcing farmers into foreclosure, and off their land. Then came drought and dust storms that at times blackened the sky all the way from the Great Plains to New York.

People were on the move; drifters, hobos, migrants. For the first time, emigration from the United States exceeded immigration to it. US birth rates declined. A pall settled over the land. People held their breath. They endured. There was nothing else they could do.

By November 1933, despite his most extravagant hopes, Grandfather had fallen out of favor with The Lord. He’d become unemployed. He’d exhausted the patience of all those good Christian men, and the house was in foreclosure. The servants were gone. His club membership expired. There were no more music lessons. There was no piano. My grandparent’s few remaining possessions were either in suitcases, or had been pawned, distilled into a tightly wound cylinder of dollar bills he handed to his wife, my grandmother. She looked at it.

“It’s almost three hundred dollars,” he said.
She looked up at him.
“Enough to —“ He looked away, then back at her “If you’re careful ...”
“How will I know where you are?” she asked.
“I’ll write — to Sally’s.”
Sally was an old school chum of my grandmother’s, who’d moved to California when she married. Her husband owned a large orchard in the foothills of San Jose, but had died several years ago. It’d been arranged that Grandmother and the children would come to live with her while my grandfather looked for work.

“I’ll wire you money,” he added.

Grandmother nodded, then turned to look at my aunt, holding my uncle by the hand. My father stood beside them, a perennially surprised look on his face. He was seven years old.

“That’s it, then,” Grandmother said to her husband.
“Yes.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then Grandfather turned and walked away. None of them saw him again for six years.

•••

Pack up all my care and woe
Here I go, singing low
Bye bye blackbird
Where somebody waits for me
Sugar's sweet, so is she
Bye bye blackbird
No one here can love and understand me
Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me
Make my bed and light the light
I'll arrive late tonight
Blackbird, bye bye

— Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon (1926)

My father remembered the train ride from Michigan to California as one of the great adventures of his life. Despite their circumstances, they’d reserved a sleeper, my father claiming a top bunk. While my grandmother and his siblings mostly stayed in the car, he roamed the train, to the observation car, and of course, the dinning car where kindly Negroes dressed in starched white uniforms looked out for him, letting him stay with them in their tiny, smoke-filled ready room, giving him treats and extra food.

He was befriended by a soldier on his way home for leave, who taught him to put gravel in his voice and sing the California Blues:

I'm going to California where they sleep out every night
I'm going to California where they sleep out every night
I’m leaving you mama, cause you know you don’t treat me right.

He followed the Conductor on his rounds through the cars. He lied to the other passengers. He said he was older than he was. He implied he was traveling alone — that he was an employee of the railroad. He ran errands for them. He made up places he’d been, and places he was going, explaining that Sally — his mother insisted he call her Aunt Sally even though there was no blood relation — that Aunt Sally was fabulously wealthy — like Daddy Warbucks — he being the equivalent of Little Orphan Annie, making his way in the world by pluck, hard work and a cheery disposition. By the time they reached San Jose, he was known from one end of the train to the other. But when he stepped off onto the platform with his mother, sister and brother, he was just just another kid, his mother’s child.

Sally met them at the train with her son Jason, who was about my father’s age. They drove northeast, in a new Pontiac coup, toward the foothills. Soon they were off paved roads, and turned down a gravel road between rows of trees. At the end Sally stopped in front of a wide, whitewashed adobe house with a red tile roof. My father and Jason hung back as the others gathered up luggage and walked to the house.

‘You play marbles?” Jason asked.
My father nodded.
“Whaddya got?”
My father dug into a pocket, producing a large agate swirl.

“That’s it?”
He searched again, this time showing another aggie, some cat’s eyes, and a couple steelies. Jason smiled. He crouched down and drew a circle in the dirt. “Knuckle down!” he commanded.
My father started to kneel, then was struck with a thought that stayed with him the rest of his life. He was wearing velveteen knickers, the only ones he had. If he ruined them — torn a hole in them, or ground dirt into the knees — he’d never get another pair. There’d be nothing to wear except ill-fitting, straight, wide-legged pants like Jason’s.

“No,” my father said, standing up. “I’m going in.”
Jason’s mouth fell into a pucker. He shook his head, his arms akimbo.
“Baby,” he said.
My father didn’t look back, but that idea, that once something was gone it could never be replaced, stayed with him forever.