Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: October 16th, 2013

I think maybe I have given an incomplete impression about Grandpa Sam. He was a very complicated person. He was self centered and what the children all said about him was true. On the other hand, I spoke with all three of the children and never could quite get a complete answer about him. Aunt Noma was the last one of the children to be alive and all she would say was that he was a strange fellow and that was about five months before she died. I have the feeling she was herself not sure. On the other hand, he could be very caring. Once when pop had cut himself, he got blood poisoning in his arm and the read arrows were shooting up his arm. In those days there was no treatment for it medically and was usually fatal. But grandpa stayed up all night with him, soaked his arm in hot epsom salts and massaged his arm all night. Toward morning, the redness went down and finally disappeared. After Uncle Arch no longer drove, Aunt Berchion drove. He pushed her awfully hard. But he tried also to make things easy for her as well. Once when they were driving along a dusty road, the car ahead would not let them pass because he did not want to eat dirt any more than they did. So, Grandpa pulled out his pistol, leaned out the window and fired two shots over the car. That car pulled right over and Aunt Berchion had an easier time driving and nobody ate dust from trailing the car any more. So, you can see that he tried. After he got back from Peru, he wanted to head back immediately and take over the property that he had bought. But the doctor said that Grandma Alice had to travel and so he put aside his dream and traveled. For the next twelve years, the dream was a live and then was dreamed out. I saw him only once and remember him very well. He came out to our house on the lower place in Kentuck. It was spring, there was still dew on the grass. He picked me up and smiled and said, “So this is little Ronny.” He was proud to have two grandsons. None of the other brothers in his family had had sons. I remember Aunt Berchion saying to me, “This is your grandfather.” I looked at him carefully and thought to myself: I know my grandfather. This man is not my grandfather. After that, he went back to Spokane. He died a year and a half later and I never saw him again. So, there were many sides to him, he was complicated.

So, the family in the fall of 1924 went back to Cheney. Grandma Alice was failing, the doctors could not help her, in late January of 1925, she entered the hospital in Spokane. The children were not allowed to see her. The children were more out of school than in school that year. Pop was in the seventh grade. In the end, he probably should have failed that grade, he really did not pass, but he was passed. He never quite caught up academically. Grandma Alice died in mid February of that year. She was 53 years old. The children mourned all their lives that they had never even been allowed to say good by. It always bothered them. It must have bothered Grandma Alice at the time. She died alone without her children. It was never known what she died of. I did show her death certificate to a doctor once and asked what she died of. You are supposed to give a reason for the death. He looked at the certificate and said it looked to him like the physician at the time also did not know and listed a number of things hoping that one of them was right.

She was buried in the old graveyard in Cheney overlooking the valley below. In those days, the casket would rot and the grave would fall. The grave would then be smoothed out. But grandpa could not bear the thought that the grave would fall and so he had a large hole dug and several tons of concrete poured. The casket was then lowered into the concrete. Her two brothers, George and Arch together with their wives and one of the children of George, cousin Wayne, attended the funeral. There is a picture of these people at the funeral and the weather looks overcast and cold, the whole atmosphere is grim and sad.
They went back to Cheney, finished out the school year and then moved up to Marcus, Washington. I have no idea why they chose Marcus. Grandpa was supposed to take care of them, but he was a miserable father. In the morning, he boiled up a big pot of oatmeal and for supper they had a big pot of stew. That was it. Lunches they had to fend for themselves.

Aunt Berchion was the first to bail out. She wrote Clifford Perry with whom she had been in contact for all those years and said, OK, Cliff, it is time for us to get married. Get up here. She had finished high school and a short course in secretarial/business school. Well, young Cliff did not have to be asked twice. He got on the train and headed up there from Coos Bay. That year was a particularly snowy year and at one point, he fell into a snow drift and would have died had pop not pulled him out. Berchion and Cliff married, it was a good marriage, it lasted thirty years until he died. Pop and Noma stayed on and Noma finished high school and pop the first year of high school. They had friends. There was no more talk of a career in music for pop, no more talk of Leipzig. But grandpa was not up to caring for anyone. According to pop and Aunt Noma, he had gone all to pieces. He brought them on down to the Perrys and headed back to Marcus to try to get his life back together.

 To be continued.