David & Grandfather Herb – 1953
My Grandfather's Lesson
~ By Dave Abraham
In the late fall of 1953, the air hung cold, waiting for winter and something else—an unspoken tension about to unfold before my eyes. My grandfather, a man of quiet resolve, had never been one to invite trouble. But trouble doesn’t always knock—it sometimes appears in the form of a stranger. That day, an ordinary Saturday, a chance encounter between my grandfather and an unknown woman set in motion an event I would never forget.
As a boy, I spent a great deal of time with my grandfather, a market gardener, working alongside him on his various farms, where he grew a variety of vegetables. In those days, when not on the farm or at the market, we’d go up and down the hometown streets, knocking on doors, offering our products for sale from the back of his truck. All fresh produce straight from the fields along with several varieties of fruits from the local orchards. Along the way, I learned to wear the calloused hands of farm work. Picking crops and weeds, yet there were days when I sat like a king driving the “big” tractor pulling the stone boat.
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It was a cool fall Saturday near the end of October. We were at the city market with two 14-foot tables displaying our wares. I was up on the back of my grandfather’s five-ton, split-axle GMC truck, packing apples into six and eleven-quart wooden baskets. You couldn’t wear gloves to do this, and a few times, I received a glance from my grandfather if I had my hands in my pockets, trying to warm up.
The truck had side stake racks all the way around, with two that swung open at the rear facing the display tables. The racks were close to five feet high, with a six-inch space about ten inches up from the bottom. When doing the apples, I’d crouch down along the left rear side racks using bushels as a wind break.
Besides my grandfather and me, there were two other workers handling customers. The busy time was between 10 am and noon.
Absorbed in my packing, as apples were always in demand, I heard a woman’s voice say, “Stop it. You are hurting me.”
I looked up and scanned the tables, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Then I heard it again, “Please stop.”
I then realized the sound was coming from my left, so I crouched down and looked out through the bottom rack space.
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My grandfather, a strong man, was holding a woman’s wrist, bottomed out in our cash box. She was trying to make a scene, but at the same time, embarrassed, didn’t want anyone to notice her.
My grandfather asked her why she had her hand in his money. She didn’t reply.
Behind her were three small children hiding against her coat and tugging at her sleeve. Two of them were crying.
My grandfather said, “I can call the police on you.”
She said nothing.
More seconds went by before my grandfather released her hand. As he did, he asked, “What is your name?”
He took out his order pad notebook and wrote it down.
He then asked for her address and wrote it down.
My grandfather then told her to “git” and never come back to his table.
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The rest of the day passed as usual, and we had sold out most of what was on the truck.
Around 2 pm, we started packing up and placed the orders we had to deliver to people’s homes on the back of the truck—bushels of apples and 75-pound bags of potatoes.
After six stops, my grandfather asked if I was getting hungry, and of course, I said yes. He said, “We have one more stop to make, then we’ll go home as grandma has some hot oyster soup in butter with homemade bread waiting for us.”
We lived in the south end, but he started driving to the north end of the city, towards an area I had never been to before. After several twists and turns, he stopped in front of a two-story house. The first thing I noticed was that the paint was peeling, and the front deck had some broken spindles.
He told me to go and knock on the door.
Obeying, I skipped along the sidewalk, then up to the door. There was a turn-style ringer, so I twisted it a few times. Moments later, a child came to the door. We both looked at each other for a second, then a woman appeared, wearing an apron and holding a rolling pin in her left hand. She asked what I wanted.
I turned and pointed out the truck.
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She took a step back, then asked why the truck was there.
I said, “I don’t know, but my grandfather asked me to knock on your door.”
At that moment, my grandfather appeared at the back of the truck and called the women to come out. She hesitated, but then he asked her again, and at that point, I started walking back to the truck.
I turned towards her and said, “Come on.”
As she moved forward, her three children followed closely behind her.
When she got to the truck, she said, “I’m very sorry for my action this morning, and I apologize.”
I now figured out she was the cash box lady.
My grandfather ignored her and asked how old her children were. I don’t remember the numbers, but they were not very old compared to me at the time as I was seven.
He then asked the oldest child, a boy, if he had a wagon. The boy said yes, so my grandfather asked him to go and get it.
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Within a minute, he came back to the truck with the wagon. My grandfather asked the children if they liked to eat apples. They all replied “yes.”
My grandfather then asked me to get up on the truck and hand him three shiny Macs. He gave each child an apple and asked what it tasted like. The children all said good. My grandfather then asked me to drag a bushel of Macs and a bushel of Spy cooking apples to the back of the truck. Then he lifted them down and put them in the wagon. He then reached in and pulled back a 75-pound bag of potatoes—Sebago’s. He then had me give him a couple of turnips and a basket of cooking onions.
The woman said she had no money to pay for this.
My grandfather turned to her and said, “I know who you are. I know your husband takes to drink. Look after your children, dearie, no one else will.”
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The woman broke out in tears, sobs actually, and she put her arms around my grandfather. She held on until he told her to put her arms down as some neighbours had gathered on the street. He said he had to go now as his soup was getting cold.
When she stepped back, he put the bag of potatoes on his left shoulder and pulled the wagon with his right hand. He told me to bring the other stuff.
He carried the food up the steps, into the house and left it all in the hallway. He then turned around, and we walked back to the truck, closed the back gates and got into the cab.
As we slowly pulled away, I rolled down my window and could see the children munching on their apples, and the woman wore a mix of smiles, tears, and gratitude.
Driving home, I asked my grandfather why he gave the woman the food after she had tried to steal his money.
He said, “There are 13 cobs of corn in every dozen. Don’t forget that.”
It wasn’t until I became much older that I understood the connection.
During the last two years of his life, my grandfather on occasion would load his pickup truck with a handful of vegetables and drive out to the countryside and visit the elderly. I suppose many were acquaintances back in the day. When he returned home, my grandmother would ask him if he sold anything. Sitting in his rocking chair beside the wood fired stove, with a grin, say, I need more potatoes.
After he passed away, I told my grandmother the cash box story and asked why he had given the food away to that particular woman.
She said, “Your grandfather knew a lot of people, especially those in need. You see, when he was a small boy ( circa 1905 ), his father was a drunk and often there was no food, and your grandfather swore to the day that he would never drink for drink was not the way.”