My grandfather Gilbert Haring was born on this date in 1900. He was the best Grandpa a kid could ever hope for. I used to go spend a couple of weeks with my grandparents in Clinton, Iowa each summer. He would take me to minor baseball games and wed ride around town in his antique car, which he built himself out of parts of various other cars. Chassis from one car, body from another, he made the roof and dashboard out of wood. He even got some of the gauges out of an old airplane! Not too many cars with a compass to show your relative position to the horizon or an altimeter! Back then Clinton was like Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show. Wed make the rounds and go pay the various utility bills in person! Clearly this was before the days of direct deposit and automatic bill pay. He built his own house too. First one in the area, so he had an extra big lot, on which he had an apple tree, a blueberry bush, a gooseberry bush, a grape vine and, best of all, raspberry bushes. Nothing like picking them yourself and then having them on your cereal five minutes later. He also did odd construction/remodeling jobs for people around town after he retired. You could hardly drive down a street without him mentioning hed finished the basement for that house or built a porch on the one over there. He lived well into his 90s, probably thanks to his absurdly healthy lifestyle of remaining active and… when my grandma would open a can of pears, hed drink the juice with his dinner or have the water the potatoes were boiled in! Perhaps thats where all the healthy minerals went? Whatever was in that juice or contained in the Potato Water, it worked for him.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 02:20:23 +0000