Gone But Not Forgotten (Grandpa Cleve)

Cleve Walser
(Grandpa Cleve)

Cleve Walser was my mother’s father. Cleve was born in 1910 and was part of a family of ten children. He received his education in a one-room school house. He had to quit school while attending the fourth grade to help out on the farm. He was raised in a small community called Reedy Creek near Lexington, North Carolina. Upon getting married he moved to a small log home off of Mount Carmel Road in Lexington, North Carolina.
The house was drafty and in need of repair but it was home. The house had no indoor plumbing and a small ‘spring box’ was used to keep milk cold. The natural spring was located over two hundred feet from the house.
A new house was built later on another part of their land beside Mount Carmel Road, which was a state-maintained dirt road. My grandpa Walser built the house himself. He never worked a public job in his life, making his revenue off the land. Farming wasn’t a hobby for Cleve, it was his life. Grandpa Cleve didn’t have much of an education as far as school goes, but he made up for it with common sense and determination.
Some of my first memories of grandpa Cleve were that of selling produce from his old blue GMC truck. My cousin Keith and I would take turns going to town with grandpa on his ‘truck route’ on Saturdays. Grandpa would be carrying whatever was in season for that time of year. Throughout the year he would sell water melons, eggs, onions, tomatoes, squash, okra, corn, cantaloupes, cherries, strawberries, and sometimes country ham. Grandpa Cleve would use me as a ‘door knocker’. Upon pulling along side the curb in front of someone’s house he would send me to knock on the door and let them know that the “produce man” was here. I also filled the job of baggage handler if the customer was unable to carry their purchase to their house. The selling was the fun part of the process and also the easiest. The real work took place behind the scenes. First there was plowing and fertilizing. Then you had to plant the seeds. As the seeds began to grow, then comes the maintenance to keep the weeds and bugs away. Of course the veggies have to be picked and stored. The produce then has to be organized on the truck. Finally, most of your Saturday is spent going from house to house on the truck route to sell your goods. Couple this with the day by day upkeep of the farm plus the raising of children and later the toleration of grandchildren. A piece of cake!
Grandpa Cleve was easy-going most of the time. He had a long fuse. But he did have a fuse and every once in a while it became lit. Grandpa didn’t have much self-control when it came to disobedient farm animals, especially hard-headed pigs. The maddest I’ve seen grandpa is over a hog stuck in a fence by its tusk (overgrown teeth). I have seen him literally hit a hog on the back with a hoe handle trying to get the hog’s attention. At that point I’m really not sure who was the most stubborn, grandpa or the hog. The real gauge to tell of grandpa’s true anger was in one signal. If grandpa was mad and proceeded to bite his bent index finger it was going to be a bad day for somebody. This gesticulation was only directed at me once that I can commit to memory.
One summer day I was being a typical boy. I was climbing in one of two large cherry trees that grew beside my grandparent’s house. I was about half-way up the tree resting in the forks of a limb. I’m not sure how long I had been resting but Mother Nature was calling and I had to pee something terrible. Convenience overrode rational thinking. “Hey, who’s gonna’ know anyway”. I unzipped, aimed for an opening between the limbs, and let it rip. Oblivious to me was the fact that grandpa Cleve had came out the back door and saw the entire scene unfold before him. I shut down all bodily functions as best I could and then I saw it. Grandpa was moving rapidly in my direction with his teeth firmly biting his index finger. Terror ran through my body in waves. All I could think was “feet don’t fail me now!” I hit the ground running and didn’t/couldn’t stop until I got home, never looking back. I knew I was ok because I was still alive. Grandpa didn’t track me to my house. I guess he thought that he scared me bad enough without having to physically punish me. Good for me. I shutter to think what he might have done had he got his hands on me in that state of rage. Pigs have much thicker and tougher skin than I.
My first car was a yellow and white 1957 Ford. I borrowed $300.00 from mom and dad to buy the car from grandpa Cleve. The car still had the original spare tire in the trunk and had plastic seat covers on the back seat. The car was previously driven only to church or the short trip to town. I remember Keith and me riding years before in that same car with grandpa driving. Keith and I were teasing him about the car, commenting on how we couldn’t image the car going very fast. Grandpa took the challenge and gunned the gas on a straight patch of road and didn’t let up until we got to 80 mph. Grandpa still had a “wild hair”. The car wasn’t too fast according to most race car standards but it was tough and carried me through my high school years. I wanted a more ‘hip’ car so the Ford was sold to my uncle’s brother shortly after I graduated from high school. I ended up with a 1970 Dodge Sports Satellite: deep dish mag wheels, white letter tires, low-profile front wheels, air shocks and a “Fuzz Buster”. That’s another story.
If you spent any time at all at Walser’s Carp Pond in Reedy Creek you would most likely have seen Cleve there too. His brother Jack and his wife Ester owned and operated the pond. The trick to carp fishing was to bait a spot the evening before and then come and claim the fishing spot before anyone else around daylight the next day. There was always a daily and a weekly jackpot for the biggest fish caught. To enter the contest a fisherman had to pay a fee for the jackpot that you wanted to enter. Carp fishing was a “hurry up and wait” game. Most people fished with three reels at a time. Carp usually take the bait and move slowly. If you grab up the reel too fast you usually pull the bait right out of the carp’s mouth without hooking him. The bait making itself was an art form. Each person had their own formula for the ‘dough ball’ used to catch carp. It usually could be made up of grits, bran, molasses, corn meal, Sugar Pops, onion juice, or any number of combinations of ingredients. Most experienced fishermen would cover their bait to keep their secret safe from wondering eyes. Grandpa Cleve was convinced that he usually got the best ‘hits’ on his rod & reels when he was eating one of Ester’s hamburgers and drinking a cold Sunrise Grape soda. It was also well known that you had to hang your fishing net on a nail and make sure it wasn’t touching the ground. If not, you wouldn’t catch any fish at all that day! I’m not sure about the fishing net superstition, but the hamburger theory is true because it happened to me more than once. Go grandpa! Just for the record. I won the weekly jackpot once with a nineteen pound carp and without the aid of my dad netting the fish, all would have been lost. I recall one fishing episode when between grandpa Cleve, Keith, my dad, and me we had about fifty feet of shoreline taken up with little space between. On one such expedition we caught so many fish that by the time we could bring one fish in and get it weighed, a fish would hit another reel! Other times we would set for hours and not get as much as a nibble. I’ve heard it said, “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work”. Go figure.
Grandpa’s favorite place to eat was a local restaurant called Tarheel Q. It was a Lexington Style barbeque restaurant about 5 miles from his house. Grandpa once told me of the time when he was around 90 years old and visited the Tarheel Q. He asked some of the waitresses to guess his age. They guessed him to be about 65 years old! He did always look very well for his age. All the waitresses liked him and he would always hand out chewing gum to all of them every time he dined there.
Grandpa was also a faithful member of Good Hope United Methodist Church. He only missed church one time in all the years that he attended the church. I was privileged to be able to attend his 90th birthday celebration that the church held in his honor. One church member recited a history of his life and presented grandpa Cleve a plaque before the church parishioners. Keith (my cousin) & Teresa (Keith’s wife) sung the song “Daddy’s Hands” to honor grandpa. A birthday dinner was given in the fellowship hall following the presentation.
One puzzlingly chapter in grandpa’s life was his second marriage. Two years after my grandmother’s death grandpa remarried. This was not in itself an unusual or uncommon occurrence. Many senior citizens get remarried after the death of their spouse. Their extraordinary living arrangements were a constant mystery to me. They lived together in my grandpa’s house for a short period of time. The next thing I knew, Lucy (my step-grandmother) started fixing up her previous house. I thought she might be considering renting her old house but that wasn’t the case. She moved out of grandpa’s house and moved back into hers. Grandpa stayed weekends with her but the rest of his time was spent at his house. The marriage stood and they kept up this arrangement until grandpa died. The will stated, “What was his was his and what was hers was hers upon either of their deaths”. I have remained friends with Lucy to this day, but I have never really understood their odd arrangement. I do have some theories. (1) It could have been too hard for Lucy to live in grandpa’s house with all of the memories of grandma still there (2) perhaps she felt an underlining pressure from our side of the family concerning thoughts of “taking grandpa from us” or (3) As long as they were happy it wasn’t any of our business!
Grandpa Cleve drove until he got tired of getting his license renewed at the age of 92. During the course of time my uncle Terry gave grandpa a golf cart to help keep him mobile. He still drove his tractor past his 92nd year but had to stop because he was just getting too old to get on and off of the thing. He also had a “spell” and almost ran off the road into the woods and possibly could have driven down an embankment. He also was starting to lose his footing while walking and had fallen down a number of times.
I personally don’t remember grandpa getting sick very often. He once had a mild heart attack, but it didn’t do any damage. He developed cancer near the end of his life, but I don’t think the cancer was the main cause of death. I believe he was tired and his body just wore out. He lived a full 94 years and was alert in mind almost until he drew his last breath in June of 2005.
One memory etched in my mind is that of grandpa coming home from squirrel hunting with his single barrel 16 gauge shotgun. He came out of the woods, shotgun in hand, with a squirrel sticking out of almost every pocket of his overhauls. Grandpa and I sat in the back yard under a Maple tree and skinned those squirrels. From time to time grandpa would let me borrow the gun for several of my hunting trips. Grandpa Cleve is now gone, but thanks to my mom and dad I now have the old 16 gauge shotgun. Mom and dad bought the shotgun for me at grandpa Cleve’s personal property auction shortly after his death without my knowledge. They surprised me with the gun as a Christmas gift the Christmas following grandpa’s passing. That is one time in my life that I was totally blown away with emotion. I lost it!