Grandpa Was a Character

Grandpa Borgman

My maternal grandfather is one of my favorite people. Even though he died almost forty years ago, his memory lives on in the stories I leave for my grandchildren.

Grandpa never talked much about his early childhood. It is my understanding he came over on a boat from Germany as either an infant or toddler. Shortly after they were processed in the Charleston, South Carolina Immigration Center, his father ran off. Grandpa’s mother was rescued by a man named Houston who raised the boy as his own son. Thus, until Grandpa was married, he was known as Frank Huston. According to my Mom, Grandpa finally reconciled with his birth father late in life. It seems his birth father had not much longer to live, and wanted to make amends. I was in the Air Force by then and missed the whole thing.

The only thing I know for sure about Grandpa’s early years was that he never learned to read. He laughed as he told the story about getting kicked out of the second grade for seducing the teacher. Attendance at school was never regular. From the time he could walk, he worked on the farm, so school was a hit and miss affair. According to his story, he was a full-grown teenager and the teacher was about the same age. He went to school by horseback; his route taking him right by the teacher’s house. It was customary to offer a ride if it was convenient, so they rode double on his horse and took the opportunity to do what teenagers now do in the back seat of their cars. Everything was fine until they got caught. He never went back to school.

He shared one brief story about his experience in WWI. He was an infantryman and was sent forward to scout for German snipers. He found one and shot him. The sniper was chained to a tree and fell just short of the ground. The chain evidently made an impression because it is the only war story, he ever told me. The rest of the stories I have, I either observed or was told by Grandma.

She tells about meeting him for the first time. She and a girlfriend were walking by the feed mill in Independence, Missouri and saw him carrying sacks of grain. She told her friend that she liked the way he looked and was going to marry him one day. There were dances every Friday night and a few days later she asked him to take her to a dance. They were married a few months later. She was 15 and he was 22.

Grandpa used to say kids wanted to work until they were old enough to be any help, and I guess I was an example. I followed him around like a puppy mostly getting in the way. My earliest memory was riding on the lead horse pulling the bull rake to take hay to a stationary bailer. He made me a set of blocks to put on the truck pedals so I could steer through the field while he and my uncles loaded bales of hay. He even put the same set of blocks on the tractor so I could help. I got my first paycheck when I was seven. He decided I was big enough to tie wires on the bailer. By that time, we had upgraded to a mobile hay bailer so we didn’t have to bring hay to it. Grandpa drove the tractor, one of my uncles would push the wires through the bales, and I would tie them on the other side. It required neither muscle nor brains, so I was a natural. I received a dollar per 12-hour day. I was just glad to be there. I learned a work ethic and developed a full vocabulary. I don’t think I ever heard Grandpa speak a full sentence without cursing at least once.

I was around ten or twelve when I was cleaning up after milking one morning. Grandma had gone to town, and Grandpa was mowing alfalfa south of the barn. When I finished, I headed up to the house and noticed the tractor was stopped. Grandpa was walking around kind of lost. I went to see what was happening. He was looking for his finger. The sickle bar had become jammed with wet hay. While he was pulling hay out of it, it clicked and lopped off the first joint of his ring finger. I shut the tractor off and went up to get the pick-up while he continued to look in vain for his severed digit. I drove him to the doctor, and took him home after he was treated. He was resting on the back porch, and I had just about finished mowing the hay field when Grandma got home. Neither anyone at the doctor’s office nor Grandma mentioned anything about Grandpa’s underage driver. I guess he taught me well. He did the same exact thing on the other hand the following year when I wasn’t around. Grandma took him to the doctor that time. When he retired, he bought two diamond rings, one for each stubby finger.

Grandpa had a stroke when he was in his early sixties. While he was recovering, a couple uncles and I completed all his harvest contracts. I didn’t finish combining soy beans that year until sometime in February. He slowly recovered, sold the farm, and spent his last twenty years using his full vocabulary of colorful epitaphs to tell stories to his 26 grandchildren. When he finally passed, he left a fairly affluent widow. Not bad for