GRANDDADDY HUNTER

GRANDDADDY HUNTER


I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Granddaddy Hunter. Of all my four grandparents I identified with him the most, although, in some ways he was the least approachable. I don’t recall him being all that affectionate like my other Pa was, except for hello and goodbye kisses. But he was the most intellectual of the four and the best educated, although most of it was self-education.

He called me “love”. “Let’s go to the feed store, love.” “Don’t do that, love, you’ll scare the chickens.” During my early years, Granddaddy raised chickens—hundreds of chickens. I remember that the Orthodox Jews in Oviedo and then Orlando would buy their chickens from Granddaddy because he would kill them in the kosher way. I thought it was pretty gruesome, slitting their throats and then hanging them on a line until they bled to death. Anyhow, raising chickens for retail sales was how Granddaddy made the little bit of money they lived on. I got the impression from Grandmother, who outlived him by about 20 years, that he had plenty of ideas about how to make money and always thought that next year “his ship would come in.” Which it never did. My mother used to say that he wasn’t really a good husband, but that he was a good father. I thought he was great as a grandfather.

The stories he told were often about history. He was a great fan of history, and cared less about himself and his people. He kept up on current events and politics and got the morning AND the afternoon papers. My mother inherited his love of newspapers, and she and my father also read two papers every day—the Fort Pierce paper and the Miami paper. I’m a big newspaper reader myself.

I was Granddaddy’s first grandchild—he wound up with 9—and he spoiled me a little. He would take me to town in his ancient black Ford pickup truck, in which he carefully preserved the brakes by using them as little as possible. We would go to the Checkerboard Feed store so he could buy chicken feed in large flower-print cotton sacks that my mother then used to make my dresses until I was a teenager. Once he bought me a steel milking stool, which I still have. Then he’d take me to the Rexall Drug Store and we’d sit at the soda fountain and I’d get vanilla ice cream. It was the best ice cream I ever tasted and later in life I recognized a nearly identical taste in “French Vanilla” ice cream.

Granddaddy would play checkers with me, and he could see many moves ahead, and beat me in about 6 moves, capturing all my pieces. I didn’t much like losing but I was mightily impressed with his ability. Apparently in his younger days he had once run a general store, and I guess the fellows who hung around there playing checkers were a lot more competition than I was. Maybe that’s where he honed his arithmetic skills, also. He was an amazing arithmetician—adding/subtracting long columns in his head, with never a mistake. Poor Grandmother would write the chicken and egg orders down on paper and carefully tote up the columns. Granddaddy would glance at it and say, “Old woman, you’re off by 10 cents.” And Grandmother would re-do the figures and he was always right. My mother also had this gift for numbers and used it in her working days as a bookkeeper. I inherited the speed and learned some of the “tricks”, but, alas, I missed out on the accuracy. Jonathan seems to be carrying on some of the ability, especially to do work in his head.

Granddaddy had a sad end to his life. He had a major stroke and was in a coma for several days, and lost much of his memory and most of his physical strength. He came home from the hospital, but never worked or was normal again, gradually declining until his death about 5 years later. It was very sad, because for much of that time he was aware of his condition and hated the loss of his mental faculties. He’d say to me, “Oh, love, I just can’t think like I used to.” And we’d both cry.