Meet Anson:
He was my great-great grandfather. Apparently he had a soft spot for kittens.
There are many anecdotes about this man, who was born in 1864 and died in 1941. (Maybe he was a war buff. I don't know.) For one thing, he adopted my Aunt Mettie, whom I remember as being the most amazing woman alive (with the exception of my grandmother.) This is a woman who lived to be 105 or so and still went "jogging" in her back yard when she was over 100. I remember one time she tripped and fell, and was far more irritated that she'd ripped her stocking than concerned she might have broken a hip. There are lots of stories about her, too, but that's another post.
Anson, among other things, was apparently an incredibly strong man. Even into his 80s, he could take an ax and cut down a 4” diameter tree in one hack. One story tells of him taking the train to San Antonio one winter and leaving his watch on the bed in his sleeping car while he went to breakfast. When he came back, the watch was gone. Anson went to the conductor and reported his watch stolen, and the conductor, while sympathetic, was not particularly helpful. Anson told him, "Well, actually, the porter was the only guy in there and he probably stole it. Can I talk to him?" The conductor told him that was impossible, but called for the porter anyway. The porter was brought in and of course denied any such thing. According to the story, Anson picked the man up by his ankles and shook him -- and the watch fell out of the porter's pocket on to the floor.
Another story about Anson also involves him heading to San Antonio. (Hey, the man liked to winter where it was warm -- clearly proving he is related to me.) This time he was driving. He saw some poor bedraggled motorist and took pity on him. This was in the 1930s: It was a lot harder to get to and fro then, and there were no cell phones or convenience stores or rest stops -- or interstates, for that matter. Anyway, Anson pulled over and asked the guy what the trouble was. The guy didn’t say anything, he just pulled a gun out and held it to Anson's head and took his watch and billfold. Well, we already know how Anson felt about getting his watch swiped. When the opportunity arose, he looked up the road and exclaimed, ‘Hey! Look!’ and when the idiot with the gun actually looked, Anson coldcocked him. And took back his stuff along with the guy's gun, and left the guy lying there by the side of the road. But that wasn't the end of it; Anson was a good citizen. He stopped in the next town and found the sheriff’s office, turned in the gun and said, “You know, there's a stickup artist out there about 5 miles back. If you hurry, he'll probably still be there."
Anson was very fond of his son and daughter-in-law (my great-grandpa Glenn and grandma Eileen.) When G&E were newlyweds, they went to live in Chicago. (Glenn wasn't big on farming; and instead got into cars. He started out working with a cab company, went on to own a Packard dealership in southern Illinois, always had big fast power machines.) So every Friday night, to help out the crazy kids, Anson would wrap a chicken and put it on the train to be delivered. But while his heart was in the right place, his wrapping skills were apparently not the greatest, and my poor great-grandmother reportedly spent every Saturday morning mortified because when she would go to pick the thing up, the string had routinely come undone and the bird's head or feet would hanging out of the package, garnering all kinds of odd looks from the Big-City folks she'd pass by while carrying the thing.
I'm not sure when it happened, but eventually Anson went deaf. (I think he went deaf. I don't think he was born deaf, but I'm not sure.) And at some point he moved in with my great-grandfather and his family after they left Chicago. My grandfather used to recount how it was a matter of course that he and Glenn would converse with Anson by writing stuff down on a notepad, and then Anson would answer aloud. But eventually it always devolved into them writing questions and Anson responding in kind by writing his responses, until my great-grandfather would rip the pencil from his hand sputtering, "Stop that writing! WE aren't deaf!!!"
When Anson was 76, he got up one weekend morning before everybody else, and as was his routine, went out to water the livestock. He got up on the well platform to pump the water, when the platform collapsed and he fell several feet into the well. Of course, everyone else was still asleep, so nobody heard him splashing around and yelling for a rope. Eventually he got fed up with waiting and climbed up the pump pipe. When the rest of the family got up, he was exasperatedly wringing out his clothes and hanging them on clothesline. Sorta like Aunt Mettie and her stockings.