Sometimes I went with him.
My grandmother, Anna Mae Langford Leigh and my grandfather, Wilford Webster (Dick) Leigh, probably 1950.
I lived for the moment when the doors of the livestock car opened and a -car full of sheep jockeyed each other for position as they bustled to get out.Â
The sheep made me so happy; it didn't take much to please a five-year-old.
I wanted to know if he bid on the sheep, where the sheep went and what happened to the sheep after they left the train.
I never really knew.
My grandfather had a thriving business as a livestock broker and distributor. Cedar City is in southern Utah, and there's not much grass in that part of the country. Cattle could never manage, but sheep found plenty of dry, sparse grass on which to grange. Sheep were everybody's business.
That year, on the 4th of July, the town was raffling baby ducks.
Buy a ticket and hope to win a baby duck, you could hear the carny call out to the crowd.
I begged my grandfather to win one;Â I was certain he would. Well, either he did win the raffle or he bribed the official because he came back to me with a live baby duck in a small shoebox.
Ducky Lucky, I so named the duck. Ducky Lucky was like all other ducks, but to me he was special. I was flattered he chose me to follow around, and I spoke to him incessantly; he quacked back at equally incessant intervals. Ducky Lucky and I were constant companions throughout the summer.
My grandfather, known as Dick Leigh, was born Wilford Webster Leigh. His grandfather and grandmother had crossed the Rocky Mountains with the Martin Handcart Company in 1856.
His grandmother, Elizabeth Ann (Betsy) Parsons, had been to boarding school in London, a rare advantage for a young woman of her time.
In crossing the plains enroute to Utah, during a bad snowstorm in Wisconsin, Betsy gave birth to my grandfather's mother, Amy Elizabeth Parsons. Betsy's long hair had frozen to the ground and had to be shorn.
Betsy's father had been the landowner, her mother the maid. Although Betsy's father couldn't marry her mother, he did a noble thing: he paid for her education, and that is how she spent 5 years in the fine London boarding schools.
So Betsy came across the prairie as a young woman who could read and write, cook and could sew dresses out of draperies. She made clothes for many in the tiny town of Cedar City.
Her dinners were legendary. She was a very popular hostess on the Pioneer front.Â
As I grew up, my grandfather grew older.
I barely noticed he forgot his own children's names.
Other people noticed, but to me he was still six feet tall in a ten-gallon hat and spurs. I liked to drive into town with him, so we could walk down Main Street, with me in a little dress, and he in his ten-gallon hat and spurs.
He took medicine for hardening of the arteries. As he grew older, the forgetfulness of his middle age became more serious. Premature senility, they called it. At times, he had hallucinations and imagined my grandmother was having affairs.
Everything became worse. My grandmother, patient as she was, could take it no longer. He had to go to the state hospital, where he would live out the rest of his days. He rapidly deteriorated from an older middle-aged man, to a geriatric 69-year-old man.
I waited in the car reading comics while my mother said goodbye to her father. She wouldn't let me see him.
He died later that year, in 1963, of tertiary syphilis, according to the autopsy report.
A few years later, my grandmother married a man she'd known for years. Uncle Bill, we called him. He was half Navajo, and together they were happy.
None of this matters to me, for my Gary Cooper Grandfather, six feet tall in his ten-gallon hat and spurs will always be with me.
Even though he was only five foot eight.
Â
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***
Revised from earlier postings on Gather in 2006 and 2007.
A follow-up toMy Valentine Grandmother
***Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
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Comments: 124
Write about your family as much as you can. It is your heritage, so pass it down.
My grandpappy wasn't a cowboy but rather a tiller of the earth with a sweet, gentle heart.
Great article Kathryn, I really enjoyed!
LOL....only five foot eight!!!!
Saw something on The Root.com about the heritage of African Americans - very very interesting.
I, too, had a tall grandfather with such grand style (he wore a bolo {sp?} tie and was always impeccably dressed in his fashion), although he certainly was no cowboy.:)
The syphilis issue is something that was missed in the old days and still is today, as it became less common with treatments. Although we know intellectually this is a disease like any other, previous generations viewed syphilis the way some people still view aids, through a lens of ignorance. Many communities throughout the United States have growing numbers of people contracting syphilis through unsafe sex practices.
A family I worked with in East Los Angeles had a member who had suffered from undiagnosed syphilis. She was the mother of 10 children and became mentally incompetent. As a child she had found a dirty condom on the Native American reservation where she grew up and was blowing on it like a balloon. Many years later she was a novice in a convent, but was kicked out for having contracted syphilis. She was treated but never fully recovered her mental capacity for other reasons.
Death and disease are always sad, but particularly when there is some sort of 'blame' by others.
I used to go and stay with my grandma and grandpa in their cottage at the St Croix river many times during the summer. My grandpa would wake me up early in the morning and we would go fishing together on the St. Croix in his motorboat.
My grandma would cook the bunch of fish that he caught for dinner. Those were some of the best meals I remember as a child!
Maybe, better than the food I remember feeling so special that they included me,not my brother and sisters, just me!!!
In a family of 4 kids that felt wonderful!
I so enjoy your writing Katheryn.
Thank you for sharing your memories.
Miriam
10 4 u
Sounds like a great atmosphere out there in Utah. The Rockies are beautiful mountains indeed.
Thanks for sharing.
I too had a duck and big Aylesbury when i ws 4 or 5. Beaky was his name. Even slept at the bottom of my bed!
Just the way it should be.
I have had connection problems again and couldn't get on Gather for a couple of days, and so I am glad to be on here. I came straight to this article, and I just loved it. TAlk to you later.
Continued Blessings to you!
Rene A.
Your husband Bill must have been a terrific impersonator...
Rene, thank you.
Georgie, Judi J, thank you.
Webduck: Yep !
Emma: Thanks
You Did Such A Wonderful Job of Letting Me Experience what it was Like to Be As You Loving Your Grandfather, Enjoying Your Ducky, Daily Life, Growing Up In those Days. Thank You For Taking Me There.
Jean, yes, so strue.
Shawn, thank you.
Marie, that is wonderful.
Anita Thank you.
Pamela, yeah, I've noticed that, too. But my father's side is REALLY revelatory.
Anne B Grote: He does look like Cooper. High Noon is my favorite, too. Westerns used to be filmed in Cedar City and the area. My father was an extra in Days of Glory. My parents were around when Henry Fonda and John Wayne were filming. My mom had a small old BW photo of John Wayne.
Maryanne
Thank you, Amanda, Sigiret.