Tell Me About Your Grandfather

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anotherbob

Lifer
Mar 30, 2019
15,678
29,400
45
In the semi-rural NorthEastern USA
my grandpa is probably the person I take most after however he never smoked. He was too cheap for it. We both have/had this quality of being pretty positive despite life throwing some shit our way. He was a charmer had a way about him where he was good at making friends. Also I clearly got my hair from him. He was certainly his own man. And from what I've heard he was about as randy as I am, which is actually kind of ridiculous if I am being honest.
 

anotherbob

Lifer
Mar 30, 2019
15,678
29,400
45
In the semi-rural NorthEastern USA
oh my other grandfather was a mean pos. I think the one story that sums him up perfectly is his family was near starving when growing up but when he died they found out he had a secret bank account where he put half his earnings. That sums that "gentleman" perfectly selfish and cruel, if anyone's got the address I'd like to make a donation to Satans heating bills.
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
It was my extreme good luck, to offset other luck, that I grew up knowing all four of my grandparents when they were mobile, active, and enjoying their grandkids. I was especially close to my mom's father and my father's mother. My dad's mom was a Scotch-Irish woman married into a proclaimed old Yankee (English) line, and she was far and away the best talker in the family -- proud, persistent,and witty. I'd spend a week or two during summers, and she would take me on a special trip somewhere most days, and I learned a lot from her. Evenings we'd watch Groucho Marx "You Bet Your Life" and Jack Parr's late show. I was lucky with grandparents.
 

tavol

Starting to Get Obsessed
Mar 23, 2018
175
172
My grandad only shared one story from WWII, it sounds like a tall tale but he swore it was true.

He was an artillery spotter and infront of the British lines with his squad in the sunken lanes of Normandy. They where moving towards the German lines when they rounded a corner and literally bumped into a German squad of artillery spotters heading towards the British lines. The Germans raised their rifles and shouted at the British to surrender and the British raised their rifles and shouted at the Germans to surrender, it was a stand off! Suddenly the German Sgt went for his pistol, he struggled getting it unholstered and the pistol went off hitting him in the leg. Luckily it broke the tension, rifles where lowered and cigarette where swapped and everybody went off in opposite directions.
 

crawdad

Lifer
Jul 19, 2019
1,471
11,447
Virginia
Both of my grandfathers served in WW2. One was a marine who had seen a shit ton of combat, who was stabbed with a bayonet and kept fighting. Lived the hell that was Guadalcanal and survived a banzai charge. He was a wild and cocky man when he left home to fight, but when he came back he had lost all of his hair and was the most laid back and chill person to walk the earth. It was ironic for this man who survived so much that he was brought low by pneumonia when he was just 58.

The other was a pilot who flew P-47s in Europe. He would serve again in Korea flying F-86s. He even flew as Scott Glenn's wingman once. Be had a nice job in management with Piedmont airlines. He lived to be 94.

The first smoked a pipe.
 

bnichols23

Lifer
Mar 13, 2018
4,131
9,554
SC Piedmont
My grandad only shared one story from WWII, it sounds like a tall tale but he swore it was true.

He was an artillery spotter and infront of the British lines with his squad in the sunken lanes of Normandy. They where moving towards the German lines when they rounded a corner and literally bumped into a German squad of artillery spotters heading towards the British lines. The Germans raised their rifles and shouted at the British to surrender and the British raised their rifles and shouted at the Germans to surrender, it was a stand off! Suddenly the German Sgt went for his pistol, he struggled getting it unholstered and the pistol went off hitting him in the leg. Luckily it broke the tension, rifles where lowered and cigarette where swapped and everybody went off in opposite directions.
Like the famous "Christmas truce" in WWI, it's just crazy enough to be true. Top command didn't like that one very much & orders went out that it'd better not happen again. It didn't. I have no problem believing your granddad's story. :)
 

sasquatch

Lifer
Jul 16, 2012
1,683
2,862
My grandfather was a pipe smoker. He died young. His job was radio repair, and I guess he was a math whiz. In his spare time he carved wood, made wooden scale models from scratch.... I think of him when I am making pipes, he would have been a good pipe maker. Measure 3 times, cut once.
 

Annaresti Red

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jan 20, 2021
243
1,186
Concord, CA
www.tobaccoreviews.com
My grandpa on my mums side grew up dirt poor in Kentucky, learned the carpenter trade, and kept it his whole life. He was wounded by a truck accident in the army while training for the European theater, but never went on account of the injury, it seemed to have stuck with him, he wanted to go.

He was Irish-American to the marrow, smoked pipe, and was always in his tinker's room - a place of awe and endless tins full of strange objects.

He passed away when I was about 10, and looking back I'm rather sad about not getting to know him better. FB_IMG_1611167485335.jpg
 
K

klause

Guest
My grandfathers were very different men, yet, paradoxically, very similar. Both men were called up to serve in the great conflagration of ’39-’45 – one a Royal Engineer and the other a Desert Rat under Montgomery.

I know nothing of their time at war. I have seen a faded photo of Rob, surrounded by the company he commanded and served with – young men, serious of face, but full of humour. Of Stanley all I have is a silver eagle that sits on my bookshelf, which, according to family legend, was ‘liberated’ from a Staff car. Who knows for sure? I have no idea what these men went through, how, or if it changed them – I did not know them before their experiences. I only knew the men that came home, and then only briefly.

Both men fully engaged in the serious activity of, ‘getting on’. Rob turned his talents to nurturing life, growing all that was needed to sustain body and soul – vegetables for sustenance and flowers for the eye and heart. He filled his home, and those of others, with life, the source of life, and the beauty of life – he created and sustained life. He surrounded himself with life and its joy – in the magnificent walled garden, the vegetable and flower beds, and the rows of wonderful greenhouses. Even now, when I step into my own greenhouse and smell the lush, damp, greenness of growing tomatoes I am transported to Bayham Abbey and my grandfather’s greenhouses. He was a very quiet man, who seemed satisfied with his lot in life, not wanting or needing more than he had – and, his home reflected this; it was warm and cosy, safe and secure, with an abundance of fare laid out on the table at meal times, or so it seemed.

Stanley was different, but, in his own way, he created and gave. He built homes for people to live in, grow up and grow old in; in which to start families and set off on journey’s to who knows where! He had a booming voice that carried out from under his deerstalker and commanded attention. He ventured out into the world, never happier than when he was out and about, the aroma of a cigar infusing his clothes and the space in which he moved. In the evenings he would enjoy a good meal and then sit in his favourite armchair in front of the fire and savour a glass or two of Teachers whiskey.

To me, as a child, the only thing they had in common, apart from being soldiers, was that they were consummate story tellers. They were always happy to sit and spin a yarn for young eager ears, and were quick to smile, gentle of speech and full of life. Their stories were awash with adventure, danger, good deeds, and magical but worldly settings, always ending happily with the young protagonists coming out on top. One of the storytellers always managed to include a veracious wolf, which had an insatiable appetite, for naughty little boys in particular.

I have been thinking of these two men more and more in recent years and pondering them, their lives, their place in the world and how they dealt with it. I used to think they had little in common, but now I know they were more similar than dissimilar – they were two sides of the same coin, and the product of their time, what they saw and what they did.

They were ordinary men, who did extraordinary deeds in extraordinary times. Though ordinary in stature, they were truly giants, lions amongst men – not just because of their service, but more so because of what they did with their lives and how they lived when they came home. They were the true embodiment of stoic strength, love, gentleness and kindness; they displayed a joie de vivre I rarely, if ever, see anymore. Story tellers with real stories to tell, and the truth of who they were laid bare for all to hear in the tales they told to a child.

They are of the same substance.
 

jhe033

Starting to Get Obsessed
Mar 15, 2020
109
838
Indiana
My father is my pipe-smoking influence, and he's still chugging along and smoking. His father wasn't a smoker and he passed away just before I was born. My grandfather on my mother's side was a cigar smoking ex-combat engineer from WWII. He didn't pass until I was 16 and I always imagine him in his rocking chair with a Swisher Sweet cigar tucked between his teeth.

I still smoke one of those for him each year, though the things are pretty dreadful in my opinion.
 

Annaresti Red

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jan 20, 2021
243
1,186
Concord, CA
www.tobaccoreviews.com
Glad to see this thread making a resurgence, lots of good stories and reflections on some lives well lived.

I just finished a short book my grandpa wrote about the power of self motivation. It was interesting reading it in his voice. It sounded like he was giving me advice for right now.

View attachment 61204
I'm interested in reading that myself... if I could just get the motivation to read more. It's a conundrum I tell you.

But really, I would like to read it.
 

Scottishgaucho

Part of the Furniture Now
Jan 22, 2020
660
6,990
Buenos Aires Province.
Neither of my grandfathers that I remember smoked a pipe...they were cigarette smokers.

My father died aged 44 when I was only 11. The only good thing I remember him for was his smoking of St Bruno Flake which I used to love to rub out and put in a jar beside his pipe rack. I suspect that's when my love of tobacco and pipes started.
 

karam

Lifer
Feb 2, 2019
2,341
9,012
Basel, Switzerland
Great stories.

I never met my grandpa from my father's side as he died when my dad was 4 years old. The details of his family's origins are scarce. His (my) surname and family profession (butchers) place him to likely originate from the Laz region (Laz people - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laz_people), trickling down to Greece over centuries. He went to university and studied chemistry, then becoming a pharmacist, making him a respected and relatively wealthy man, unfortunately he died of a heart attack aged just 45.

My other grandfather I did meet, he was a Greek Jew whose family emigrated to Italy around the 20s, coming back to Greece and enlisting in the army to fight in WW2. He didn't do much fighting, he had a massive scar on the belly and used to tell me it was from the bayonet of an Italian sergeant but it was in fact of surgery many years after the war. He used his ingenuity and knowledge of Italian to trick and steal from the Italian army in order to bribe people and save his family as well as other Jews of Athens from the roundups. He became a cloth importer after the war, using his contacts in Italy to import cloth to Greece, while Greece was a pretty secluded country at the time, and very few people could do what he did. A great-looking gentleman, travelling and doing business well into his late 70s, always with a funny story and a sparkle in his eye, a bit of a womanizer on the side, but never putting anyone above my grandma.

Another interesting grandpa, from my cousin's side, was a mechanic who joined the Greek navy and served on one of the two submarines Greece had in WW2, involved in commando missions with the British, then joining the merchant navy for decades.
 
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