Grampa Strope
Grampa Strope
I found this docuemnt in a directory called “autobio”. Obviously i meant to write more, preparing some topics for subsequent paragraphs. James A Strope was born January 19, 1899. He married Margaret Walters & had 8 kids, James (Jimmy), Pauline, John, Marianne, Gretchen, Bill, Sara (my mom) & Richard. He died on April 12, 1978 (thanks to fyoosh for your scholarship) He was a tool and die maker for the car companies. He had an amazing array of tools in his basement. He could basically fabricate anything he wanted in wood or metal. He had a lathe, drill presses, table saws, band saws not to mention hand-tools. He had jars with hooks in the lids hanging from the rafters throughout the basement. In those jars were all manner of screws, nails, and other little brickabrac. He had the little pieces of a piano: tuning pins, even some keys). Apparently back in the 40’s or so there were a lot of pianos being given away if you were willing to haul it away. I’ve learned since that pianos were really really common in houses before recorded music, I guess they fell out of favor when recorded music taught us all that music is best left to professionals. But the most amazing part of Grampa’s basement was the closet where the bear lived. There was a sun-porch on the back of the house, and there was a door to get underneath to fhe crawl space. Grampa used to tell me that there was a bear that lived there and the at when I tried to open the door, the bear held it shut. The answer, of course, was that you were supposed to push the door, not pull, but I didn’t figure that out for years. Grampa’s Buck - grampa used to give all us grandkids a “grampa’s buck”, which was a free xmas card from People’s National Bank. they were blank inside and grampa used to customize each one with stck figure reindeer, etc. UFO detector - Grampa had this device which had a few capacitors and LEDs (which were probably realy high tech when he put this together). It had three lights on the outside, and he told me that when all three lights were lit, there was a UFO nearby. Mounted wishbones - He had a “jackalope” trophy he made out of a turkey wishbone Cigars - grampa smoked. He didnt smoke cigarettes much but he smoked cigars quite a bit. It was always a safe bet to get grampa some cigars for xmas. Redman chewing tobacco - Grampa chewed, also. He’d spit up his chewing tobacco in the toilet. It was gross. World book Encyclopedias - I spent many times looking at these encyclopedias. The main thing I remember about them was the part about the human body, the clear pages so yuou could see the skeleten, muscles, etc. Better than “I am Jack’s Spinal Column” in reader’s digest. (yes those articles referred to in Fight Club were real.)