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Education

My grandfather was in his late teens when he hid under the straw in railroad car packed with the family’s cattle, farm equipment, and household goods for the trip from Blue Earth Minnesota to Bellingham. The railroad allowed one person to ride in the car to tend to the cattle. That place was taken by my grandfather’s older brother. Grandpa had to dive under the cattle bedding when the railroad inspectors came around. When the railroad car arrived at the siding in Bellingham, they opened the door, and a chicken, seeing Bellingham Bay, flew squawking out into the water and was never seen again.

Schooled enough to survive, my grandfather was not refined. He chewed tobacco, leaving a trail of brown saliva wherever he went. My mother said he never used an indoor toilet, preferring the woods. He seldom bathed, usually smelled of manure and wore overalls for all occasions occasions but church. For entertainment, my grandmother read to him in German.

My grandfather’s father, Gottlieb, was a devout Lutheran who pored over his cherished complete works of Martin Luther. He did not transmit his piety to any of his children except my grandfather, who was the least prepared or inclined toward theology. My grandmother told me the only time my grandfather rested was in church.

From Gottlieb to my grandfather, the family slipped down a notch in culture and refinement. In Germany, Gottlieb was an educated man without a heritage. He built his heritage by emigrating to America and using the skills he gained through education to become a landowner. Even in landowning, Gottlieb exceeded my grandfather. My grandfather owned forty acres. Gottlieb originally owned one hundred sixty acres, some of which he later sold.

It is easy to attribute this slip to the years spent in Minnesota. Gottlieb’s younger brother emigrated a few years after Gottlieb and joined him in the car yards. But the younger brother skipped Minnesota and went directly to Whatcom County. It was the younger brother’s reports of Whatcom County that brought Gottlieb. The younger brother’s children got more than a third grade education, graduating from high school and college, and eventually becoming teachers and university professors.

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A Man, a Cigar, and a Plymouth

My great grandfather, Gottlieb Waschke, like most men from the turn of the century, smoked cigars, but he was not good at driving automobiles.

Pear tree planted by Gottlieb Waschke
Pear tree planted by Gottlieb Waschke

He had a nickel silver match case with a cigar end clipper and an engraving of a stag on the front. My grandmother said he brought the case from Germany.

After he married off six daughters and more or less established four sons, he bought a Plymouth and drove it around some, but he never learned to drive well. A man with six married daughters was under no  compulsion to drive any better than he felt like, and the state had not gotten around to traffic laws or requiring driving licenses. In photographs, Great Grandpa resembled his contemporary fellow Prussian, Otto von Bismarck. My father remembered him as stubborn with unshakable self-confidence, even arrogance. Those traits could not have been mellowed by his success with managing family affairs.

Dad rode with Grossvater a few times. He overheard the old man muttering “Recht, recht,” and “Links, links” (German for “right, right” and “left, left”) as if he were driving his German speaking team of horses, when he wanted the car to turn. Dad, who was not more than six or seven at the time, said he wanted to laugh, but did not dare.

John Schaefer, a family friend whom I have mentioned before, told me a story about my great grandfather’s driving. One sunny Friday in September,

Large pumpkin
Large pumpkin

when all the farmers were in Bellingham shopping, paying bills and selling things, Great Grandpa decided to drive in to town. John Schaefer saw him in his Plymouth on the corner of State (then called Elk) and Holly, a busy spot in town. In its way, as busy as any intersection anywhere. Great Grandpa was stopped waiting for traffic. When traffic started, he popped the clutch and killed the engine. Horns started honking, and one driver, probably having just left one of the taverns that were everywhere before and after 1919, shook a fist menacingly.

John Schaefer was a self-professed no-good at that time, probably just out of one of the taverns himself, watching from a safe vantage on a bench on the sidewalk, smoking a scant teaspoon of Bull Durham tobacco wrapped in wheat straw paper. John said Gottlieb gave his harassers less attention than he paid the smell of cow manure in the barn, took a six-married-daughters stretch, and searched his pockets for a cigar, which he eventually found. With great care. he used his nickel silver match case trimmer on the end of the cigar. The crowd gathered and more drunks got word that something was up. They began to creep out onto the street as Gottlieb trimmed his cigar exactly as he liked it, stopping to test the draw and admire his work.

John began to fix himself another smoke as Gottlieb lit a match. The first match blew out in the breeze before Gottlieb got it up to his cigar. In those days, before the landfills and regrades had leveled and molded the geography, Elk street was closer to the water than it is now and John said there were a few oysters to be picked up right in town. On a tough day, you could go out on the tide flats and gather a meal, and Jake at the Waterfront Tavern would let you eat it at the bar if you could afford one of Jake’s watery and short nickel beers to go with it.

All the old settlers, Gottlieb included, learned to go to the water when food was short, to treat the sulfurous stench of the tide flats as a comfort that could be relied on in tough times. Gottlieb no doubt smelled the tide flats of Bellingham Bay and took comfort as he calmly lit his cigar and took a few puffs, feeling very satisfied that September afternoon.

The horns honked and a few more fists were raised, but John Schaefer pointed out that Gottlieb Waschke was known to have four sons and six sons-in-law, three or four of whom were always ready and eager to take offense, possessed fists like stones, and had arms as hard and tough as a vine maple trunk. This thought kept the crowd in check as Gottlieb got the fire burning nicely in his cigar, started his Plymouth, and drove on.