Grandpa

My memory of Grandpa Conrad is short and intense.

I have heard stories about this German carpenter.

Father of eight

Intense drinker he must have been, sending his children

to the tavern for buckets of beer.

Probably in part, due to Grandma, found dead in the house by Dad's sister Anita much before child rearing was complete.

Five boys and three girls. Grace took the youngest Earl east, to New York. Connie also went east.

Anita, Walter, my dad, Ted, Richard, and Larry stayed in Stearns County, my birthplace, for the most part.

The one time I saw my Grandpa Jacob Conrad happened when dad took me to St Cloud,18 miles east, his birthplace, in our family car, for shopping.

We walked to a hotel building on St Germain street and stepped into a dark cavernous room and slowly walked along the long bar counter, lined with the backs of its Saturday afternoon patrons.

Dad patted the back of a small man hunched over his beer at the end of the bar.

As an eight-year-old boy standing in a dark bar room filled with shadowy forms,

I became terrified as Grandpa Jacob slowly turned, his one glass eye pointing outward, asked my dad

WHO ARE YOU?

Dad replied, I am your son Walt, and put a silver dollar on the bar as we turned and left.

This was my one and only meeting with my Grandpa, however I assume I viewed him in his casket at the Daniel funeral home, for I do remember my uncles, dark complected men with jet black hair in dark suits, talking together. I know little about them as well.

I want my grand baby to have different memories.

Postscript

There may well be more information about Dad and Grandpa for I know my sister Marion has a collection of letters Dad wrote around 1920 which I have never seen.