Grandpa Hoyle saved me when I was fifty years old even though he’d been dead for thirty-five years. I was really surprised that this elder ancestor with snowy-white hair and prominent hooked nose, who smoked a pipe while watching the television, would have such an effect in my life for I had always thought of him as being rather proper, emotionally distant, and not so interested in young folk. I’ll tell you how he saved me, but first these things I recall.
Grandpa and Grandma Hoyle—Elmer and Mable—lived in Junction City, Kansas, just a block from us, so I often visited in their home. When at their house as a very young kid, I mostly liked the mangle, a big machine for pressing laundry in large quantities. I was fascinated when Grandma or Mom used it to press the laundry for the grocery stores owned by the family. The other thing I found engaging in their house was a totem pole I discovered on a shelf in the basement. They must have bought it while on a trip to the American North West, a tourist curio, carved and painted. Some of the bark still adhered to the carving that sat on an orange-painted base. The pole itself was transected by wooden wings near the top. I loved that totem pole. Oh, and I loved the glider on the screened-in porch even though it was metal and uncomfortable; I could really swing on it!
When I got older, the television became more important. We didn’t watch it much, but I distinctly recall on summer Sunday afternoons watching the Kansas City A’s, my dad’s and grandpa’s favorite team. I was not contented simply to watch the game, so I sat on the floor near the TV, just in front of the shelves of the World Book Encyclopedia. As I watched the game, I perused my favorite volumes of the encyclopedia, especially the one that included the entries and pictures of Indians. I guess I never was much of a sports fan although I liked the idea that lacrosse was a game invented by Indian tribes.
Grandpa told me about the two umbrella catalpa trees in his front yard, how it requires two trees to make one. The roots of one are grafted onto the trunk of the other. The grafted roots become newly-formed branches making the umbrella shape. I was fascinated by the unusual trees that to me looked like giant mushrooms and seemed somehow magical with their monstrously large leaves and long beans.
Most stories of my grandfather I heard from my dad. For instance, during the Great Depression Grandpa always laid out a loaf of bread, ends of lunch meat, and sandwich spread in the back room of the store for anyone who was hungry. He fed lots of unemployed folk during those terrible times. Dad told me about Grandpa’s blue spruce trees that grew on either side of the front steps to the screened porch, how Grandpa had brought them home to Kansas from the Rocky Mountains in coffee cans and babied them for years. I loved their blue-cast sharp needles. Dad told me the saying Grandpa used if a guy had to take a leak on the side of the road: ‘If they’ve never seen one they won’t know what it is; if they have, it won’t make any difference.’ Dad told me with wonder of Grandpa’s practice that if he gave $100 to one of his sons to help him buy something, he’d give $100 to each of his others sons. Perhaps this was a balancing act of an old Quaker man in relationship with his three sons, a balancing act my dad didn’t think was necessary.
My sisters and I learned not to ask Grandpa how he was doing. If we forgot, he’d bore us with descriptions of pains, aches, and illness, yet Dad claimed he’d never been sick one day of his life until his eightieth and final year. We learned to say something like, “You’re sure looking good, Grandpa.” When adults asked Elmer how he was, he’d declare: “I think one more clean shirt will do me.”
My Hoyle grandparents went to the same church we attended, First Christian Church, on Eighth at Madison. I didn’t see them there often since I went to the early service to attend the children’s programs and they attended the second service in which the adult choir sang. They didn’t often attend Sunday nights (I was always there), and for many years they had been reluctant to become members of the congregation.
In general, Grandpa was a good man who somehow didn’t connect with me on an emotional level. He always seemed rather formal, likely a result of his Quaker upbringing. He didn’t kid or delight me like Grandpa Schmedemann, but he did come to my rescue when many years after his death I was facing some life-changing decisions. I was approximately fifty years old and saw my life falling apart.
I had heard a story about Grandpa when taking a college class taught by W.F. Lown, who years before had been the minister of our congregation. After church one Sunday morning during which Lown in his sermon had told a story that hung on the use of old Quaker language with thee’s and thou’s, Grandpa said, “I really liked your story, Brother Lown. Wouldn’t it be grand if we could use Bible language all the time?” Lown thought a moment and replied, “I guess we’d all be speaking Greek and Hebrew.” Grandpa apparently thought about Mr. Lown’s perspective and within a few weeks joined the church and immediately began tithing. Lown said he’d never before or since met a fifty-five year old man who made a change anywhere nearly as significant as that. I treasured the story about this ancestor I had never got to know very well.
The story served me as an anchor for handling my own changes. Grandpa Hoyle’s decisions set the stage. At age fifty-five, he made a major religious realignment and with it a redirection of his resources. I was mulling over my own situation when I realized Grandpa’s three sons had all made important mid- and mature-life changes. At age fifty-five Earl, my dad, left the grocery business that he really had loved to take on the responsibility of pastoring a church, a work he carried out creatively and faithfully until his retirement at age sixty-five. Ellis, my uncle two years older than Dad, sold the grocery business and set up an insurance agency he ran until he retired several years later. Eldon, Dad’s younger brother by ten years, left the grocery business in his early forties to pursue a real estate career. These solid, model-citizen men made major changes in their adulthood. I likewise could do the same even though my changes were a contrast. The religious dimension of my decisions was to leave a thirty-two-year career in ministry; the personal dimension was to leave a twenty-nine-year marriage. I did the former with elation and relief, the latter with reluctance and great care. I also knew I would be able to make both changes following the leadership of these man-ancestors.
Grandpa’s practical approach helped. His thoughtful changes were a challenge for me to be likewise responsible towards the people I was leaving behind. So in my mature years I found my most reserved grandpa advising me and loving me in ways I’d never before experienced. If I ever seem reserved, even cool, it’s probably just that old Quaker in me showing through.
About the Author
Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”
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