Grandma Called Him “Joe,” and Sometimes Called Him "Józef"

Our new baby grandson with his parents came to visit us during Christmas. It was so precious to watch him, to hold him, and to play with him. He is our very first grandchild. Lately I have begun to reflect on what it may have been like for my grandparents when I visited them with my parents so many years ago.

My grandfather Joseph married my grandmother - already a mother to seven children - after her first husband died. He instantly became a father to a big family. My Mom, though, was his own firstborn child, followed by two more girls.  He eventually became the genetic grandfather to two boys and a girl. Since I am his only genetic granddaughter, I like to think that this was kind of a special relationship.

I saw my Grandpa during the summers when my parents had vacation from work and we would “go up north” to “Grandpa’s farm.”

My Mom would say Grandpa could do most anything, and that it was amazing that he would marry a woman with seven children and become their father.

I’ve learned that when he was just sixteen, he left his hometown of Berent, present day Kościerzyna (a town in Kashubia in northern Poland), to come to America in 1904. He settled in Milwaukee and became a streetcar conductor.

He met my grandmother and they married in June 1918.

They moved – with all seven children - to a farm in central Wisconsin.

He became a farmer. My first memories of him are of watching him, and a little kitty, when he was in the barn near the creek milking the few cows he owned. He gave me rides in a wheelbarrow.

He was an organist. I listened to him practice on a foot-pedal organ in the living room before going to church.  I felt privileged to be with him in the choir loft when he played the organ for Mass on Sunday mornings. Mom said his favorite musical instrument, however, was the violin.

He was an electrician. I remember going with him when he installed wiring in new homes that were going up along the highway leading into town. He drove a very old black car that had that old car upholstery smell. When I sat in the front seat next to him, all I could see was the blue sky because I was still very small and could only look up out the window.

He was a town health officer and Town Clerk. He collected taxes for the town. He figured out everything on his adding machine with the handle on the side. In my memory I can still hear the “tap, tap, tap, barumph” sound of that machine as he worked in the evenings or on a Saturday morning. Sometimes he let me play on that adding machine: “tap, tap, tap, barumph.”

He liked ice cream, and he enjoyed Canada Dry ginger ale. For breakfast he liked to cook his own oatmeal in a big pot on the stove. At the time I wondered how anyone could eat that stuff, and I was impressed.

I remember going up to Grandpa’s farm during a very, very cold winter season. That was not our time of year to visit, but Grandma was dying.  Early in the evening my Mom drove by herself in our ‘49 Chevy to get the parish priest to come to the house so he could pray with Grandma and the family. We were there when Grandma died. I recall Grandpa sitting by himself on the green couch in the living room near their bedroom. He was teary-eyed, just kind of staring ahead, and looking so very lost and alone. In another bedroom was his daughter, the one who never married and who stayed on the farm, and who was then very ill in the final stages of cancer. It was a very sad time.

During the years that followed, my Grandpa developed dementia, could no longer care for himself, and moved in with Grandma’s oldest daughter and her husband. They cared for him until he died in 1967.

My Grandpa was very tall with soft blue eyes. He was a caring, gentle person of many accomplishments, a man of strong character and faith. He spoke both Polish and English. He liked to laugh, as did my Grandma.

I hope that some of his strength of character and gentleness and faith can be part of my life and that I, in turn, can pass this on to my family and grandson. I do have blue eyes, and I am tall, just like him, and...

my first name for him - I called him “Pumpa.”