How would you describe your grandparents?

Image: Google Gemini

(This is the second in a series of essays that I wrote in early 2024 in response to writing prompts from Storyworth. More information)

I knew my maternal grandparents (Gowie and Grampa) better than I did my dad’s parents (Grandpa and Grandma Haney). 

Grandpa Haney died of a heart attack when I was maybe five or six years old. My only memories of him are of his thumb. I could push on the face of his thumb and make an indentation, like it was Playdoh. I also remember seeing him wearing a carpenter’s belt, he was at church working in a project with other men there (Pilgrim Temple, Oakland, California).

All of my other memories of Grandpa Haney were from photographs around Grandma Haney’s house, most taken on their missionary trips to Liberia, where my father was born.

Grandma Haney was rather reserved. I’d even go so far as to say she was a little uptight. She had silver hair and a well-kept home in Oakland. 

I recall that she had a contraption hanging on the back of her bedroom door. It had a harness that she’d where around her head that was attached by a thick cable over a pully near the top of the door and back down to a plastic bag of water. She says that she would sit in a chair, strap the harness around her jaws and the back of her head (occipital lobe?) then let the weight of the water bag pull on her skull to help relieve some of the strain and stretch her spine. I could only imagine what that looked like.

It sounded pretty weird. And she didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I never asked about it again. 

Gowie and Grampa were very different, and we spent a lot more time with them. They had The Ranch (more properly, Mountain Brook Ranch) in Cazadero, California.

It’s hard to separate my early memories of The Ranch from those of Gowie and Grampa. I know that The Ranch was our place of refuge. We would go there every summer. When there was a crisis, we’d pack in the car and go to The Ranch.

I could go hiking and exploring by myself, though I’d sometimes accompany Aunt Lisa or Uncle Larry on some errand around the property.

Grampa was usually puttering around the ranch house, in the garage, or in the tractor shed. He was a consummate do-it-yourselfer. And he saved anything that still had the potential for a practical use or repurposing. 

(I find that I often do the same thing. I call myself a third generation depression survivor. Gowie and Grampa grew up in the Depression and started their family under the rationing of World War II. They know how to scrimp and save. Never throw anything out that you can use for something else. The Ranch was awash in automobiles that need just a little work, old washing machines, lumber left over from someone else’s building project, and boxes and boxes of empty plastic jugs. Those boxes would come back to bite shortly.)

After my parents split up (Crisis! Drive to The Ranch!), my mom got a job in San Francisco as an office clerk. We moved to an apartment on Washington Street, about three blocks up the hill from the Cable Car Barn. I recall that one night, we three kids were hanging out on Mom’s bed when the phone rang. It was Grampa calling to let us know that the house at The Ranch had burned down. The general consensus was that a chimney fire in the smoke pipe from the basement furnace had spread quickly to the rest of the house. When the volunteer firefighters arrived, they couldn’t approach the house because the boxes and boxes of empty plastic jugs that filled the front porch burned so hot that they couldn’t even approach. All they could do was keep the fire from spreading.

The Ranch (house) burned down? That was the end of an era. Well, the end of a chapter.

After a couple of different office jobs and a move to an apartment in San Leandro, Mom realized that she couldn’t raise three kids on that meager income. She arranged to go to school and get a degree in interior design. While she did that, we three kids moved in with Gowie and Grampa, now at The Green House (as we called it), a bungalow just a short walk from Montgomery School.

Living with Gowie and Grampa for almost two years gave me a better understanding of who they were and what they did all day. Gowie had two jobs. She worked as a bookkeeper for Bob Schneider, a local rancher in Cazadero, but, a couple of days a week, Grampa would drive her in to Santa Rosa where she kept the books for Mt. Gilead Christian Bible Camp. Grampa would keep busy with this errand or that while she worked, then pick her up and drive her home, usually well after dark. That’s a lot of miles, almost an hour each way, plus the errands.

I recall that, no matter what Gowie was doing, she didn’t seem to mind the interruptions. She even seemed to welcome them. 

After a while, Mt. Gilead build an office on site and Gowie’s job moved there. (That, and the camp director had moved on to another job, so the camp office could be in his garage anymore.)

One winter, on Christmas break, Gowie and Grampa took us three kids to visit Mom and Lisa, who were sharing an apartment in Los Angeles. While there, Mom bought some fabric and foam to make cushions while Grampa (with my able help!) built a frame for a DIY sofa and corner table. We didn’t have a shop, but Grampa has brought his tools and we build them in the parking lot outside the apartment building. I got to see from beginning to end the kinds of things Grampa could create! (After Mom finished school and we moved to Fresno, that DIY sofa set was the center of our living room for years.)

After a while, Mom finished school with a two-year degree from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. She got a job managing the Merribee Needlecraft store in Fresno, were she bought a three-bedroom house (single mother, new job, wow!). But every summer, we’d visit Gowie and Grampa, at least for a long weekend.

We were visiting them in the summer after my freshman year at Clovis West High School. Gowie and Grampa were living in a house on campus at Mt. Gilead. While we were there, the Creighton Ridge Fire (1978?) broke out. Grampa’s dad, Grampa Tom, still lived in Cazadero in a house he rented at the top of Fort Ross Road. Grampa and I got into his pickup and we high-tailed it to Caz.

When we got there, the sky was full of smoke. We quickly go to the base of Fort Ross Road, but a CHP officer wouldn’t let us pass. Grampa as fit to be tied. He even maneuvered as if to play chicken with the officer, who stood his ground next to his patrol car, blocking the road. Grampa whipped the old Ford pickup around and headed back in to “downtown” Cazadero to use the pay phone. I waited while he made a call. I think he had a friend a the CHP office in Santa Rosa. After he got off the phone, we drove back to the base of Fort Ross Road and the officer let us pass.

I had never seen Grampa drive so fast. We drove through parts of the woods on a paved road that was often too narrow to let two cars pass, let alone a pickup and a fire truck. On two occasions, the flames were on both sides of the road. We could see trees

almost exploding in flames just a few dozen yards away. But we kept going, fast. Our mission was to evacuate Grampa Tom and get him to safety.

We got to the top of the hill, were Grampa Tom rented an old stage coach stop. It was a huge house for a small, elderly auto mechanic with a permanent stoop in his stance.

Shortly after we arrived we got word that the road was impassible. We couldn’t get down the hill.

The local fire crews (from several nearby towns, but mostly from California Department of Forestry) busily set about with bulldozers, cutting a fire break around the cluster of building that included Grampa Tom’s place. I was handed a burlap sack and bucket of water and told to stand on the south side of the house and beat down any flash fires from sparks that float down from the smoke-filled air.

I had never had such a strong sense of purpose in my life. I was by myself, among the tall dry grass. Smoke filled the air.  Ashes floated down and landed in the grass. Every now and then, one of those ashes was still smoldering and, when it landed in the dry grass, would erupt into a small fire. But I was on the job. None of those little fires survived more than five minutes under my relentless wet burlap bag.

I don’t remember how long I was there, beating down the occasional flare up. I don’t recall what we did next. But the fire crews stood their ground and the fire passed by. Grampa Tom was safe to stay in his home. But the fire was heading toward The Ranch. The house had burned down long ago, but there was still 320 acres of prime forest and timber land. Grampa and I got back in the pickup and high-tailed it to The Ranch.

It was getting late by the time we got there. The fire was burning along the top of the ridge, which was the back of the property from where the house was and other structures: the tractor shed, the garage, an old milk shed, and a makeshift cabin that Uncle Larry had built. 

We watched as the fire seemed to stay at the top of the ridge. I could image a small army of firefighters were up there cutting down trees to deny fuel to the hungry fire. Borate bombers (as we called them) had stopped flying in to drop their red payloads of fire suppressant. It was getting dark.

I couldn’t sleep. I think I had a sleeping bag on the ground near Larry’s cabin, but I don’t remember laying down. I watched for hours as trees would explode like fireworks against the night sky at the top of the ridge.

It took a week for the flames to die down and the smoke to clear. Grampa found me an old canvas camping tent amongst the detritus that he had collected at The Ranch. I pitched that tent at the far end of the orchard, passed the long-neglected trees that sometimes offered small, worm-eaten fruit.

When we finally went down the hill and collect ourselves back at Gowie and Grampa’s place at Mount Gilead, talk turned to what to do next. Gowie and Grampa had purchased The Ranch before I was born with the dream of building a church summer camp for kids. I listened with keen interest while Mom, Gowie, and Grampa wove a vision that inspired me.

But Mom hesitated. She didn’t want to move us again. I had just finished my freshman year and should wanted me to graduate from the same school where I had started.

“Phhhttt!” I said. “I’ve attended a different school for each year that I’ve been in school. Why stop that now? Let’s do this thing!”

She was convinced. Later that month, still with time before I started my sophomore year at El Molino, we moved up from Fresno into the cramped quarters at Mt. Gilead.

That was kind of a pivotal decision in the trajectory of my life, but it goes way beyond the original prompt to describe my grandparents.