FAMILY GATHERINGS

             My family background is German except for my mother. Mom had to tough it out at family gatherings because when the family was together, they spoke German. The family was good to her and tried to keep her in the discussion.

            My Grandfather was born in 1864. I was born in 1939. That means that he was 74 when I was born. He was very happy as I was his first grandson. 74 was  quite old to become a Grandpa.

          Here I am when my grandpa sees me for the first time

                Most of the family would get together two or three times a summer. We only lived 8 miles apart but because of transportation and roads we didn't get to Grandma and Grandpas very often.

        Now skip on a few years. At the family gathers the men visited in the living room. The women stayed in the kitchen. The girl grandchildren were nice the little girls. The boy grand children ran all over Grandpa's very neat farm yard. Grandpa was out on the yard with us trying to protect his neat yard from the grandsons who ran all over the place. Grandpa had  special way of piling his would. We would crawl over his neat wood pile and mess it up. He was probably watching us to see that we didn't harm ourselves.

      So I often think about what he thought about his first loving grandson and that grandson who later ran over his neat farm yard.

      Grandpa lived at our house for much if his last ten years.

PUT SOME DETAILS IN YOUR WRITING.

    Kids are notorious for not having much detail in their writing. So instead of harping at them I would show them a piece of my writing and ask them what else they would like to know about it. They all had an opportunity to ask something and I could say "Well, that's a good idea " or "Why didn't I think of that?"

     So here's a piece I wrote and what the kids asked. I can't find where I rewrote this so the lesson ended here.

   When my brother Myrven and I were very young, possibly 4 or 5 , we went to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days. in the summer.We were both terribly active little boys We were into everything. We ran through all parts of the house. We went through all the buildings in the farmyard.  We went over all the farm machinery and moved all parts that would move. We ran over Grandpa's wood pile and that was really a no no as Grandpa's woodpile was piled very neatly with not one stick of wood out of place.

    Here we are at about the age in the writing.

    Of course, we tended to get very dirty after a day of these activities and were always totally exhausted at night and went to sleep instantly.
      One day we saw Grandpa calling us and he had a rather large new tree branch in his hand. We were both totally terrified as our father would often find a switch from a tree branch to give us a spanking. We also couldn't believe that our extremely nice Grandpa would ever give us a spanking. We slowly walked over to Grandpa. Grandpa wasn't mad. He sat us down and stated to cut up the branches with his knife. Grandpa made two whistles from the tree branch and as you guessed it two little boys were absolutely thrilled with whistles created from a tree branch
     Now I wonder if Grandpa knew what was going through our minds as he called us?

     Grandma and Grandpa a couple of years after we visited them

   Now here are the questions
    Kyle_ liked the ending
    Brock - Where farm?
    Jer - Is Grandpa living?
    Jag_ Tell more on family
    Jas-   Details about making whistle
    Randie- Dirt- lecture
    Jeff- Grandpa's name
    Brett - describe farmyard
    Luke- Animals
    Curtis- How got to the farm?
    Billy - Explain excitement

   So since the kids go t to ask questions , my readers can ask questions. It will be interesting to see the differences.