If you knew my dad, you’d agree that he looks just like him. Most of my paternal uncles also look like him. In fact, so do most of my paternal cousins. Even my kids do! Lol.
I guess he had some pretty strong physical traits.
On September 13 this year (2024), he would have turned 127 years old, but he left this earth over 45 years ago. He’s my grandfather Leland Albert Harrison.
Grampa always seemed to be old. It shocks me now to realize that he was only a few years older than me for most of the time I knew him. He suffered from gout, and was in near constant pain which restricted his mobility. It didn’t help that he was quite heavy. Which came first, his weight or his gout is hard to say, but each condition aggravated the other. He always wore slippers, even when he was outside because his feet were constantly swollen and painful.
It is well known – especially among his grandkids (of which he had many), that he didn’t know how to deal with kids. He didn’t know how to chat with kids, interact with kids, how to even keep us all straight. So he resorted to teasing. It was his only way.
He’d sit in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, and try to catch us if we attempted to get by. We needed to get by because the kitchen was full of adults sitting around the table or standing, and the living room had red plastic building bricks (the only toy I ever saw in that house). He had an extended reach with his cane, and we learned not to underestimate his reflexes. Just because he couldn’t walk didn’t mean he couldn’t grab you. We’d watch him closely and when he seemed to be distracted we’d make a dash for it. It was really rather scary. He didn’t know what to do with us when we weren’t quick enough, so he’d give us a rough head rub or twist our ears (according to some cousins, but he never twisted mine).
An inconvenience for the older ones, but terrifying, maybe even traumatic for some of the younger ones. Now I look back on it and see an old man who did the best he knew how, but from the perspective of young grandchildren it was very tricky to navigate. I never knew him any other way. One day when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old, my grandmother had sent him out to put the sprinkler on the front lawn. I was outside running around with cousins when I came upon him kneeling on the ground beside the sprinkler, unable to stand up. I stood back and silently watched him as he struggled. It was almost a reverent moment for me. I’d never seen an adult in so much need. He asked me if I would bring him “that chair over there”. I brought it, silently. I stood back and watched as he used it as a prop (with much difficulty) to help him stand. When he was on his feet, I quietly walked away to rejoin my cousins. I liked him better after that, he wasn’t just the scary grampa who sat with a cane in the doorway. He was much more . . . . vulnerable.
He and gramma lived in a tiny house they built on his parents’ property in town. In that tiny house with one bedroom and a room reserved (so I’m told) as a place to store coal (later converted into Grampa’s bedroom), they raised 15 kids. Gramma bore 16 children: one died in infancy (Earl), and one died of typhoid fever just before her 15th birthday (Dorothy Ileen). Sadly my grandmother and his mother never got along ‘to put it mildly’. Living a stone’s throw from each other didn’t help, and it must have been very distressful for both of them. I’m sure it was a series of misunderstandings and misplaced pride on both sides that caused the rift, but those feelings perpetuated themselves as life continued and offenses piled up – the older boys tormenting their Gramma Harrison with childish pranks. I never knew my Great Grandmother Capitolia Harrison, she died when my dad was only 13. But I kinda suspect if she’d been alive when I was little, I still wouldn’t have known her. Sad that friction and even enmity in families can be such a thing. And sadder still that it can ooze into future generations long after the original offenses are forgotten. (hmmmm, a life lesson there for sure)
Many years later, while expecting my first child, I told my mother I was considering the name “Afton” as a good name for our new baby if it was a girl. This was my Grandfather’s sister’s name. My mother was mortified! and told me that Gramma Harrison would be unhappy with my choice as she very much disliked her sister in law. I didn’t want to bring any grief to my grandmother so I abandoned the idea, but I was curious about the harsh reaction. My mom had never even met her. I kinda regret never knowing that part of my dad’s family. They all lived in the same little town, and attended the same congregation on Sundays. Tragic when you think of it. I wonder how they reconciled those feelings after they all met each other again in the next world. I bet there are many regrets for how they let it go on for so long.
Leland and Pearl Harrison had a lovely cozy ‘little’ home. Emphasis on little again. And it was always clean; Gramma was fastidious about clean. She had iodine on a kitchen shelf and woe be to any kid who fell and scraped their knee. Iodine hurt worse than the wound. My dad inherited her fear of ‘germs’. He was only 6 years old when his sister died, but it seemed that the years following her death were ones of hyper anxiousness on the part of his mother; today we would called that PTSD. My whole young life was all about ‘not spreading germs’. From this vantage point, I empathise a lot more with my father’s preoccupation with washing hands and clean dishes. Typhoid fever is a terrible disease caused by a salmonella bacteria that is spread through contaminated food or water. It is most common in rural areas of developing countries where there isn’t modern sanitation. I guess small farming communities on the Canadian prairies in the 1930s qualify. And people continue to be contagious with typhoid fever long after they’ve recovered.
Grampa often asked us “whose kid are you?”
I would answer “I’m Wes’s daughter Grampa. I’m Cindy.” I was never certain whether he was teasing or if he really didn’t know. But now, I’m quite certain our sheer number and the fact that we only showed up for a few hours once a year in those days, didn’t help. There was never a hint of any question that Gramma knew us though. Gramma would cup our faces in her hands and kiss them and tell us she loved us. She knew where we fit in and who we belonged to. Her!
He’d call my sister and I “Winder and Cinder” which would always make us giggle, and implied to us that he at least knew OUR names. Some days anyway. He was a tease in every way. It was the only way he knew how to deal with people. And he teased my gramma mercilessly. There may have been a time early in their marriage that she laughed at his teasing, but she wasn’t laughing when I knew them lol. He’d tease her and she’d lash out with some rebuke, then he’d respond with “Don’t be mean to me Mama. You know you love me.” It was very entertaining to us grandkids, but I felt a bit bad for Grampa because it seemed he was always the injured party. One day when I was a young teenager, I confessed to my mom that I thought Gramma was mean to Grampa, and that she hurt his feelings. Mom told me that he’d often reach over and lift up her dress with his cane – which embarrassed her and prompted her rebukes. I had missed that little detail. No wonder she was mad at him.
He was also very accustomed to being waited on hand and foot. She took care of his every need. It probably never occurred to him to peel a potato or wash a dish or even push the toaster down. She fed him every meal he ever ate.
In those days 70 years old was a lot older than it is now, and though he never drank a drop of alcohol or smoked a cigarette in his life, he was not the picture of health. His sheer inactivity was probably his biggest problem. From my vantage point now, I think he deserves some credit for holding his own when literal hoards of adult children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and other relatives would descend on their home on given day throughout the summer time. In that small house, there was only one place for him to be – sitting on his kitchen chair in the doorway.
I wish I had known the man inside him. I never did, but I treasure the few memories I share with my siblings and my cousins of him. As scary as they were while we lived them, they make us chuckle as we relive them. He died when he was 80 years old, one month before our first child – a son, was born. They overlapped for that short time in the spirit world. I hope they knew each other.
Happy birthday Grampa.
My guess is you’re celebrating with Lemon meringue pie. I’m quite certain they serve that in heaven. It was my dad’s favourite too; perhaps you’re sharing it together.
Warmly,
Cindy Suelzle
* Grampa died March 17 1978. Leland Albert Harrison
* Gramma died 12 years later, at the age of 88, April 16 1990. Pearl Cora Reece Harrison