Looking Back With Grandpa

By Jerry Joanis

The book contains 52 short stories about a young man growing up in the 50's 60's and 70's. It was written for his 4 grandchildren to understand how different the times were and to interpret the paths their Grandpa took during his early years. The author is very lucky to be married to Jackie and a proud grandfather of beautiful, smart, athletic, funny, and delightful grandkids. He is an avid golfer, veteran of the Vietnam war, and a member of the Trempealeau Lions Club. The book is filled with stories that will make you smile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jerry Joanis
• Release date: Nov 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781733467933

Jerry Joanis

The author is very lucky to be married to Jackie and a proud grandfather of 4 beautiful, smart, athletic, funny, and delightful young people. He is an avid golfer, veteran of the Vietnam war, an active member of the Trempealeau Lions Club, and a past driver for the DAV. He can be contacted at [e-mail]

Book preview

Prologue

To Callum, Sullivan, Finley, and Declan........

The gift of StoryWorth was given to me by your mom and dad.... Jason and Erin. Jason knows I am writing a book about my 18 months in Viet Nam and so he thinks, well lets get him to write another book at the same time. Are you kidding me? I am writing one book and you want me to take a break from that book and start another book. I am not happy.

First......... This was my 2017 Fathers Day gift and it was the worst Fathers Day gift in the history of Fathers Day. I always thought that gifts were meant to be gifts. You know a gift, wrapped in pretty paper, with a bow, and you open the package and go Ohhhhh, how did you know I wanted this, I love it, just what I wanted, It’s perfect, and I can’t wait to use it or wear it. That is not what I received on Fathers Day 2017.

Nope .... I got a StoryWorth subscription. I get to open my e-mails each and every Monday morning and find a new question from StoryWorth about my likes, dis-likes, childhood, school years, military, marriage, father, mother, sibling, and etc, etc, etc. After 52 weeks StoryWorth sends you one hard cover book and you can order additional books for $85 each. One good outcome was that the weeks did fly bye, as I would find myself talking to myself out loud on Monday morning as I was reading e-mails, OMG is it Monday already!. Another Question from StoryWorth!!! And now I am forced to sit in front of a computer and write/compose a story about myself or my feelings. NO NO NO. But......... the questions just kept coming, every Monday morning. Even when you ignore the question. A new one comes the next Monday and the next Monday. I even received an email from the Customer Care Dept at StoryWorth after ignoring the questions:

Hi Jerry,

It’s been a few weeks since you last wrote a story.

If there’s anything I can help with, don’t hesitate to let me know. Otherwise, by all means continue writing at your own pace!

Jen,

Customer Care Dept at StoryWorth

My own pace..... I wasn’t submitting any stories! YES it had been more than a few weeks.... it was probably closer to 4 or 5 weeks, since I had submitted a story. And I am sure that story was a very short story. Remember.... I feel this is a terrible Fathers Day gift.

We live in a four season part of the country and with winter approaching and the golf season waining, I found my interest slowly picking up to write a few stories. I learned how to add pictures and change the questions and even make up my own questions for these Monday morning e-mail StoryWorth questions. It’s now snowing and cold in Wisconsin and I found it easier to sit and write my stories. Please keep in mind....I wrote all the stories in this book and did the proof reading. Well... not exactly, I did hire a friend after I completed all the stories because, I realized theses stories were going to print. No corrections after the book goes to press. Jim Cavanaugh was a writer for our technical manuals at Westfalia/Surge and he graciously accepted the assignment of proof reading the writing of an amateur writer. Thanks Jim.

I started to connect with some old high school classmates and old work related friends. I found myself calling people and explaining my distress of writing a story and needed help with details of a long ago incident. They came through...... sometimes with the details and sometimes with a picture. Wow.... I was starting to enjoy this.....BUT, I would tell people; don’t tell a soul I am enjoying writing these stories.

I asked my sister Cathy what story should I write about her and she said theBull Whip Story. And so I did. But, then I ask her to do some research and overnight, she was totally into the research of newspaper articles and old family pictures. She has become obsessed with the research and is now sending pictures, articles and my stories to our cousins in Illinois and across the US. And now she is planning a family reunion..... And, she calls me every day with a new detail she has uncovered about our grandparents or parents. It is like she is on some kind of MISSION. She reads every story and is re-living the happy times of living on a dairy farm in Wisconsin or the early life and times of small town living in Marseilles, IL. She even has told me how sad it will be, when my stories end....... I will not be sad!!....... I will be dancing in the streets and drinking Whiskey. Cathy thinks that Jason and Erin gave me the most wonderful Fathers Day present in the history of the world. No... she is Wrong!

I tracked down the manager of our high School basketball team in ‘64 and ‘65 by sending out feelers through classmates. Bill, after our high school graduation has never returned to an Ashland high school reunion and in-fact really didn’t want anything to do with our class or city. I made inquires and one day out of the blue received an e-mail that said:

Hey Jerry,

Barb said you wanted to find out how I was doing, etc. True? And how are you, and what are you up to?

My contact info is below. I’m better at phone conversations than email. You wanna talk one day?

Glad you asked. Regards,

Will

I called Bill, I mean Will, and we talked for an hour. He is gay and has been with his partner for 40+ years. He went to work for a small startup company in Seattle, Washington called Microsoft. He became the person in charge of the department that wrote all the instructions on how to use any Microsoft product. I told him that I had become an Apple user and he laughed as he told me Microsoft wrote all the instructions using Mac computers. He also said one reason he retired early was Microsoft eventually required his department to switch to PC’s from Apple. It was a mess in Will’s own words during the switch from Apple computers to Microsoft computers. Will retired early and built a home in Colorado and then a home in the Smoky Mountains and finally a home in New Orleans. He is on many community boards across the country and told me that he even works on his basketball jump shot to this day. I hope that he and his partner will attend our next Ashland High School class reunion. The 1965 Ashland high school class would welcome saying Hi to Will and his partner at our next reunion.

I have reconnected with a classmate from Marseilles and one from Ashland. I have called and emailed both of them for confirmation of facts or they contributed additional parts of the story that had slipped my mind. Don Baron and Ed Monk Monroe have been wonderful.

Many of the stories I have written I did share with people that were directly involved or relatives of people in the story. I wrote a story about the time I was almost fired because my good friend Fritz Tumm pushed a button that released all the cows in a large California milking parlor. Fritz recently passed away and I shared our story with his family......they thanked me and said....... yep......that was Fritz.

Occasionally I would get subtle comments regarding StoryWorth from my son and daughter-in-law and my lack of timely submitted stories or that I was taking the assignment of writing a little casual. I was even accused of going rogue, for you see, I was changing the questions or writing my own questions. All of this is true!....... But it was my Fathers Day present. You are writing these stories for your grandchildren and great grandchildren to read one day I was told by my son and daughter-in-law. Keep it G rated I was told! OK..... I kept this book readable for all age groups, but openly admit my second book, Don’t Talk About Viet Nam should not be read by my grandchildren till they reach voting age. Better yet I think they should wait unit they reach the age of 30. A definite R or X rated book.

The StoryWorth experience has been wonderful. I have enjoyed the process and have forwarded the StoryWorth web site to many friends. The stories are my stories, in my words, the way I remember the story. If you find some grammar errors.....it is my grammar.

It sincerely was the best Fathers Day present ever........ But I will never ever admit this to my son Jason and daughter-in-law Erin.

Tell us about your mother?

My mother ( Letitia Jean Hopton) was an only child of Rachel and Cecil Hopton and very much a city girl. When my family moved to Wisconsin and bought a dairy farm, she immediately adapted to the farm life with such great ease. One day she is a city wife and mother and the next day she turns into a farm wife. She is now milking cows, baling hay, driving tractors, delivering calves, and making breakfast, lunch, and supper for the family as if she had been doing these chores all her life. She worked from 4:30am till 8,9, or 10:00pm every day of the week. There was no Google or YouTube videos to teach you how to do these new farm chores. You learned mostly by trial and error, or by asking a neighbor, or asking the Agriculture County Extension officer, but mostly by trial and error.

We lived in a very nice sub-division, in a nice home, with great friends and neighbors in Marseilles, Il. and now we lived 12 miles from the nearest town, in a farm house with sawdust insulation in the walls, a home with no heat on the second floor, no shower, we had an outside sauna, and 30 cows that wanted to be milked each morning at 4:30 and each night at 4:30. All this and the dairy economy was bad. Which means we didn’t have very much money. And she never complained!!!! She adapted and made the best of every day. Mom cooked potatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner as potatoes were very cheap and you learned to love potatoes. Mashed, hash-browns, American fries, and left over mashed potatoes made into potato pancakes for breakfast. But, our favorite meal was her buttermilk pancakes and fresh maple syrup for breakfast..... with Bacon and Eggs. We had no picky eaters at Moms table, as you ate what was put in front of you and if you didn’t like the liver and onions....... well ...... you ate them anyway. We ate home butchered holstein culled cows which means we had some interesting cuts of meat. Well... we simply ate what the cow gave us.

An interesting fact is the we had very little in material things and yet relatives would leave their kids at the farm for the summer and Mom would care for them. Our cousins from Illinois frequently spent the summer on the farm. She even took in two young girls for a couple years because a relative, Dads first cousin, lost his wife and he thought his daughters would be better off living on the farm and cared for by mom. Ruthie and Anna lived with us for a few years. They were part of the family. No one was ever turned away at the farm.

She did have one habit and that would be on a frigid Northern Wisconsin night and sitting in the living room of a cold drafty house after the cows were milked and the evening meal completed........ she would ask the family if we could feel a chill in the air? And then off to the kitchen cupboard that stored the adult beverages and back she would come with a glass of Mogen David wine. It was funny ....as there could be a chill in the air even during the summer months. Also Mom never waited for us to answer the question. I guess it was a rhetorical question. And now you know that all nights can have a chill in the air in Northern Wisconsin.

Mom was the camera person in the family. She took silent movies with an early Kodak 8mm camera using Kodachrome movie film. She was not Steven Spielberg....... It is funny because I had some of her old 8mm tapes that were stored away and I had them transferred to DVDs. To my surprise.........most of the tapes were of clouds she recorded on our car trips to Wisconsin. CLOUDS!! Great.... I spent $70.00 to watch 1950s clouds and oh wait....I almost forgot...... fence posts, telephone poles, and farms flying by as we traveled to our only vacation spot in the world.... Washburn, WI.

Now..... When it comes to still photography, she was the best. Keep in mind.... you took pictures with a Kodak brownie camera, with a flash attachment that used flash bulbs, and always using Kodak film. The roll of film would stay in the camera for months or on the shelf before someone would get around to taking it to the drug store to get the film developed. Then you had to go back to the store and pick up your pictures. And only after months after taking the pictures did you find out if you had a decent picture from the entire roll of film. But here is where my mom was a forward thinking modern woman. She wrote notes on just about every picture in her collection. Place, date, names, event, and even her thoughts. My sister Cathy and I laughed and laughed as we reviewed our mothers picture collection. And many times we laughed just because of her notes on the back of a picture.

Christmas was her favorite holiday and with the Christmas season she had a few traditions. One was baking Christmas cookies and other holiday goodies and the second