When I was grocery shopping Tues. I saw a couple of little kids that reminded me of my brother and I. My brother and I were Irish twins. We were born less than a year apart...eleven months and two weeks.
When we were about three and four we were sent to our paternal grandparents for a few days. I have no idea why were were sent to the grandparents or how long we stayed. Our paternal grandparents were quite old. At that time we were the only grandsons they had. We were like the little guy in the cartoon where a dotted line shows where he went. We were fast. We went all over the yard. We went through the barn and chicken house. We climbed over the woodpile. We ran through Grandma's garden. We were on the go all day.
There was one rule and that was we must not cross the road. Across the road was a gravel pit and it was like a big sandbox. We sneaked across the road a few times but were never caught. Sooner or later we were caught. Grandpa came out to the road to call us. He had a big tree branch. The big tree branch meant one thing and that was that we would get a "lickin" . We couldn't believe that our loving Grandpa would give us a "lickin". We took the smallest steps we could and as slow as we could to come up to Grandpa.
When we got up to him he took us to the steps at the house. We sat down and he used the tree branch to make whistles for us. We were amazed at the whistles and went over the yard again with the whistles.
Grandpa was 70 when I was born so old for a grandpa. A three and four year old must have been a challenge for them. We didn't know that Grandpa didn't speak English. He talked to us in German and we didn't know the difference.
So keeping with the luck theme, we were lucky we didn't get punishment but got unique a toy.
This photo of my grandparents is about 1947.
