Re: feature night tonight?

Posted by Mike (WA) on March 10, 2014 at 16:30:35 from (69.10.199.90):

In Reply to: feature night tonight? posted by Larry@stinescorner on March 10, 2014 at 15:28:10:

I never knew either of my "real" grandfathers- they both passed on before I was born. But my maternal grandmother remarried, so Ellis Bramlett, my step-grandfather, was the only one I ever knew.

He grew up in Arkansas, and was the son of a share-cropper. He rose above his raisin', got a degree in Education, and taught high school manual arts for 30 some years. He was retired when he married Grandma, but continued to do carpentry work, often with my dad. He was an excellent craftsman.

He and Grandma always had Sunday dinner with us, when we had the dairy. He would help with the garden, and then do things with "us kids" for the afternoon. One time, he saw me throwing up rocks and hitting them with my stick "bat". He said "I think you need a real baseball bat", so we found an ash sapling of proper size, and he carved me a bat. Told me not to hit rocks with it, and bought me a baseball to hit. I used it for a couple of years, until I finally had enough power to break it, and that was that.

My cousin, who "wasn't quite right", stayed with us each summer. One time, their project was a surfboard that Jim could use in the creek (?). It was a piece of 3/4" plywood, about 18" wide and 3 feet long, rounded in front and square in back, painted up nicely, and Jim was going to stand on it and paddle around our creek. Well, I may have only been 6 years old, but I knew that sure as heck wouldn't work. When I started to say something, Grandpa shushed me by silently putting his fingers over his lips. When we were alone, he said "You're right, it won't work. But Jim was all excited about it, and we don't need to burst his bubble. Let him try it, and we'll go from there."

He continued to work on volunteer projects well into his 80's. He was the lead man on building the new Nazarene church in Centralia, WA (he was a Methodist, but when it came to volunteer work, he was non-denominational), and came home one afternoon and told Grandma that he was tired, and was going to take a nap on the couch while she fixed dinner. He never woke up.

RIP Ellis Bramlett, 188X- 1965, the best grandpa ever.

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