[Danimal16]

My Grand Dad was a tough old SOB. Illiterate, but not ignorant. A bit prideful and very short on the complements with his kids (My Dad and his 4 brothers), he was wonderful with his daughters. His biggest fault, and he admitted this with much difficulty in his last years that he had a hell of a time saying he was sorry.

When I was on a survey team in California, he really go all excited. It changed our relationship, and for years I did not know why. He went from this kinda cantankerous old man to this never ending well of incredible knowledge. He knew the back country, could farm until nearly the day he died and I found out that he was a lumberjack in Northern Wisconsin back before WWI. He became a pretty good dairy farmer, suffered through his alcholism (quit in 1948 after nearly being killed in a car accident), and died in his bed in his home ( a former switchman's house on the Central Wisconsin Railroad built during the Civil War) and is still talked about all these decades later.

Found out that Grandpa, Gus, hung out with the surveyors on the logging crews whenever he could. They taught him a lot about math and maps and the land, and were also responsible for teaching him how to read (a little) and write (equally little). He told me that he admired them, never forgot them and that it had to be our secret.

I miss that old man.