Kokomo Kootsie

6/19/2004

In the good old days of the twenties and thirties the only charge account our family had or ever heard of was at the Mom and Pop store a half block from our house. They sold everything from a match to steamships as granddad used to say.

What we bought was groceries, and only groceries needed to feed the family; no frills or fancy things. At least that was grandma’s rule and she followed it to the letter.

I had some different ideas about what we could use a charge account for! Anything but food was on my mind; at least not food to cook! I wanted all the penny candies; ice cream cones; and by the pint when I could out talk grandpa. I could never out talk grandma; I didn’t dare try. That came later when I was in my teens and learned to be a good debater.

That was one bone of contention between my grandparents; granddad letting me charge whatever I wanted. Just as she sent him down town to shop for sales, bargains from her scanning the weekly adds, she would also send him to get whatever was needed day by day at the corner store and have it put on the ‘bill’ as it was called.

Every Friday or two we paid the bill, settled up the account! I always went with granddad and the first time I recall, the old fellow who owned the store gave me a small, very small brown bag of candies! I was thrilled to pieces. An unheard of treat!! Grandpa explained to me it was called a treat. Sometime when a bill was paid you got a treat by way of saying thank you. You can bet I never missed a trip to settle up; but I had to share it with my little brother, Jack!

Before we could make that Friday trip to pay up, grandma would get out all her receipts for groceries bought and charged, and go over each item slowly, moving her lips as she read, saying often, "What’s this? Now I know I didn’t send for that!" And the argument began!

Granddad tried to explain, and try to cover his tracks when most were my tracks where I had talked him into letting me charge candy or ice cream! And his Beech-Nut Tobacco! Granddad chewed tobacco. Grandma hated his chewing habit and never provided for him to buy it. He had a very hard time getting a bag of it. Anyone who smokes knows it’s a must have, when you have a monkey on your back, with a habit of tobacco, or drugs or strong drink!

Granddad had been long retired so had no income of his own. Grandma’s came from the grown children who lived at home, worked and supported the household. So poor granddaddy would so many times get a bag of Beech Nut Tobacco, put it on the bill and try to disguise it by writing over it, or trying to erase it and putting it down as a quart of milk or loaf of bread! But it was worth the battle it provoked with grandma, as she always knew he was falsifying the grocery bill, when her gimlet eyes scanned over it.

By today’s standards it was so pathetically harmless the length granddad went to for a bag of chewing tobacco. Today an addict will kill for a fix. Beech Nut chewing tobacco cost a mere ten cents in 1927 and earlier.

One summer morning I got up late and granddad was home alone as grandma had taken Jack and gone on one of her rare shopping trips to town. Granddad asked what I wanted to eat; tried to get me to agree to something we had, but I wanted an ice cream cone! I thought grandma not being home a perfect opportunity to get what I wanted. He tried to talk me out of it; but when I knew I was going to get the cone, I raised the ante and demanded a pint! A pint of strawberry ice cream! I finally got my way and poor worried granddad, and I happy, went down to the store and I got my pint of strawberry ice cream. He had been saying over and over I could not eat a pint and I’d answer, 'Uh huh!'

When we got home he tried to rush me through eating it before grandma got home. He was right. I couldn’t eat it all. He had to eat the rest and took the empty carton down to the alley and tossed it across to a neighbor’s trash heap by their back gate! Knowing he’d catch a scolding when pay-up time came, still he let me get that ice cream. He’d tell her he craved it on such a hot day if need be!

There was no greater love than my beloved granddad had for his two grand kids.

The day of reckoning came and that one bill was a scribbled up mess. Granddaddy surely had a hard time placing an item on the bill that made sense price wise, trying to replace the ice cream listed. So he had erased, scribbled and erased more than once and was unreadable!

Grandma would go over and over the grocery bills, quarreling all the while. Grandpa would hover around and when he could stand it no longer, go out on the front porch, lean against a pillar, and swear, cursing everything in Indiana from the weather on up or down! I’d stand beside him and listen as he directed all of it to me, never talked down to me, and never reminded me I was to blame for any of it. I was barely nine years old. Too young to think about blame, but I do recall a twinge of guilt for the pounding granddad was taking!

When grandma was finished adding it had better be exactly what she had ordered that the grocer had charged for. After she was satisfied that she could do no more, she would call granddad and give his the exact amount needed. If she had to give more than called for, she reminded him several times before he could leave the house, to be sure and bring the change back not spend it! Warned him to be sure and get each bill marked paid!

The problem was, it was never a simple task to settle up the grocery bill. She made real work of it and had both of them mad and Jack and I very upset. Not only did she see our purchases, even if she couldn’t tell what for, she would swear she hadn’t gotten many items that she just had forgotten about. We all hated that settle up time.

Granddad has a stroke in 1927, couldn’t really talk and his mind was cloudy, not always able to know what was going on. He often spoke of wanting his bags packed, he was going to Nicholasville (Ky)! He would try to get out of bed but could not. When some former neighbors came to visit him, he knew exactly who they were, but was never able to recognize his wife, grandma. He’d tell me to go get his wife and when she stood beside his bed, he would ask where his wife was and to go get his wife!

One of the last things I remember, he asked me to get him a chew of tobacco; said it was in his trouser pocket. It was exactly where he remembered. I put a big wad in his mouth. He began to choke, trying to fight for air, and I ran and got Auntie and told her he was choking. We ran back to him and I told her I gave him a chew of tobacco! She pulled his mouth open and scrapped the wad of tobacco out. She scolded me the worst I’d ever been taken over the coals. I began to cry I was so scared, and say he asked for the tobacco. She said, "He cannot eat or swallow, barely able to get some water down him!"

He died eleven days later. In his old pants pocket, the same old pants he’d wiped his hand down a few years before when he and I shared the secret of the lard bucket incident, I found one third pack of his beloved Beech Nut Chewing tobacco, and two old pennies, in his snap shut little money pouch he always carried and I had gotten many a treat from it’s contents all my young life.

I was always glad he had that. He had some Beech Nut left and he was not broke; he did have two pennies. He wasn’t a pauper!

The two pennies were ear marked for two chocolate covered suckers for me and my little brother Jack, I knew, if he had lived!

I kept that bag of tobacco and the little worn leather purse and two pennies for years, taking them with me when I moved away to his beloved Nicholasville and married there. I would take them out and look at them and drift back to grandpa and my wonderful days when he was the best part of my life in the good old days. When my biggest problem was more candy and ice cream and his chewing tobacco!

His dearest wish I heard many time was to live until we both grew up and married. I’d hold the pennies which were all green with mold and I’d count the years he had been gone, and it was hard to realize it was only about five years ago yet it seemed he’d been gone forever.

I would wish he had been allowed to see me and Jack, married, had been given about ten more years. I knew he would not have to beg for a dime to get tobacco, or take a little bucket to town to put lard in as he had to do for grandma, though never had it put in the bucket! Never have to explain a grocery bill or anything to me.
It would have been payback time for all his kindness, all he gave us, how wonderful and magical he made our lives when we were growing up.

I knew he would have left all in Indiana and moved right back to Kentucky, lived with me and my husband in his beloved Kentucky, and been so happy. So would I have been happy, sweet grandpa, so would I have been so happy.

To your memory, beloved granddaddy, I’m so glad you were in my life for a while.

John Hillary Overstreet

Gone but not forgotten ever.

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