Chapter Fifteen

 

OL' MITCH

 

Grandpa, Reluctant Hero, No Time for Hypocrites,

Eighty-Five Alive

 

          It was brother Richard's enthusiasms and anecdotes about Grandpa that decided me to include his story in these reminiscences of Vermont boyhood.  Most of the factual information was supplied from the inexhaustible memory of brother "Chich."

 

          My father's father came down to Vermont from St. John's in Canada in 1877 and married a Canadian girl, Emma Martel.  Michael Poulin (he was always called "Mitchell" around New Haven) was a blacksmith in Charlotte for eight years in a shop about half a mile from where my brother now lives.  While there he was badly kicked by a horse, gave up the blacksmith trade and moved to New Haven where he bought the family farm in 1888.  At a time when Gramp became ill, Dad left the cheese factory where he had been working and came to New Haven to help with his dad's farm and eventually stayed.

 

          Gramp had been industrious and moderately successful.  He had acquired and paid for the many items of farm machinery and had accomplished much in a relatively short time.

 

          I remember a small man with a big moustache that covered his whole upper lip and circled down around the corners of his mouth.  It was especially notable in wintertime on freezing cold winter days when his visible breath would form long dripping icicles on his eyebrows and mustache and he would accept their presence as completely normal.

 

          My mother told me that he had a softer side than was apparent to us boys.  She said that when I was small he would take me on his lap and sing little French nursery songs with many verses.  She told me he was very proper with the ladies and undemonstrative in their presence.  He had kissed her on only three occasions in her life -- in each instance after the birth of her three boys.

 

          He was stoical in most instances and showed an austere indifference to pleasure or pain, a characteristic which we boys took as mean and ill-tempered and reacted accordingly.  In today's terminology we would have called him a "hard-bitten little Frenchman."

 

          Despite all that, he was a sort of reluctant hero figure.  Richard tells about a time as a boy in the hayfield when he stumbled across a swarm of bees which began stinging him.  Gramp came running across the field, striking with his straw hat while bees stung him on his bald head and face.  He dragged Rich away and sent him up to the house and took himself back to his tasks with nothing more said.

 

          Rich describes another situation that same summer that was saved by Gramp's extraordinary spirit.

 

          He was 85 years old.

 

          At the peak of the haybarn above the second mow was a track upon which a hayfork ran with ropes attached, so that hayloads could be lifted from a wagon, transported along the track and then tripped in a desired spot in the loft by a remotely held trip rope.  The operation was powered by a horse and driver outside the barn and supplied through pulleys at the base of the barn and one suspended from a beam at the very top and end of the barn.

 

          It had become detached from the large hook that normally held it there.  The working crew obtained and positioned a ladder intending to reach and replace the pulley.  After several attempts by the tallest men, none were successful in reaching the pulley.

 

          Gramp walked away and returned with a long board, a hammer and some nails.  He climbed the ladder, and reaching upward, nailed the board to the side of the barn, and then scrambled up the board to retrieve the pulley and replace it on its hook.  It would not have occurred to him that he was too old or too small.

 

          Richard reminds us of another Ol' Mitch incident that demonstrated his reluctance to admit to injury or pain and enhanced his reputation as a hard little man with a will of cast iron.  One day in the woodshed he was splitting chunks with a double-bitted axe (as was his custom, there was no idle time; when there was no work at hand you went looking for it).  Above him was a frozen quarter of beef from a recent butchering.  He didn't see it and as he lifted the axe it struck the carcass and came down on his head, cutting through his hat and piercing his scalp.  He took his hat off, looked at it, replaced it, and started chopping wood again with blood running off his head.

 

          Rich ran for Mom.  They came out of the kitchen and persuaded him to return where they could examine him.  He was losing blood and it was apparent that he would need stitches.  Against his protests the doctor was called and when offered an anesthetic to reduce the pain he refused and sat without flinching through the whole thing.  He did concede that he would accept a dram of brandy and not return to the woodshed that day.

 

          Rich tells of another instance when Gramp, early in the morning and lost in thought, milked his cows, hitched up his team and headed to the milk plant to make the daily delivery.  As was his mien, he sat as usual, erect and looking straight ahead over the horses' ears until, arriving at the plant, he drove up to the unloading platform and waited for the crew to take his cans.  They asked, "Mitch, where are your milk cans?"  Lost in some mysterious thought, he had left without them.

 

          The last story Rich tells about Ol' Mitch is about his swimming experience.  Gramp's oldest son Louis was an expert swimmer and could easily swim across Lake Champlain and back and then float on his back in the water with a lighted cigar in his mouth.  Gramp must have thought if swimming could be that easy anyone could do it and decided to give it a try.  He jumped in and went down a couple of times before they realized he was in trouble and pulled him back in the boat.

 

          I don't recall that Rich and I conversed much about Ol' Mitch as boys, but I think that despite our common raillery Rich held more admiration for him than he let us see.  It was with a sense of pride that he told about the visit of Grandma's relatives from Montreal.

 

          Grandma was a small, neat and refined French woman, affectionate and polite and with never a hair out of place, even in our rather primitive environment.  We sometimes wondered about how such a union came about with this taciturn man, but I'm sure when young he must have had some appealing qualities.

 

          In any event, Grandma's folks were prosperous business people in Montreal with a distinguished lineage going back to French royalty.  They drove down to Vermont in their liveried chauffeur-driven automobile of such size and elegance as to set three small boys gaping.

 

          All went well until dinner time.  Though it was Saturday, Mom and Grandma had prepared a farmer's Sunday dinner and extended the table to accommodate everyone except us boys who had our own small table set apart.  Plates were set for everyone.

 

          Madame Martel drew Mom aside and said quietly, "The chauffeur doesn't eat with us.  Perhaps you can prepare him a plate in the back kitchen."

 

          Mom was nonplussed, but not Gramp.  He jumped to his feet: "Not in this house!  If he eats in the kitchen, I eat in the kitchen!" and he grabbed his plate and the chauffeur's plate and led him out to the back kitchen where they undoubtedly shared a pitcher of hard cider as they ate.

 

          The next day was Sunday and when they loaded up the big automobile for Mass, Gramp refused to go, saying he wouldn't ride to church with a "bunch of stuck-up hypocrites."

 

          When I was in disfavor with my older brothers they would derisively call me "Ol' Mitch."  Now that I'm the age that he was and can recognize some of the common attributes, I can understand it -- but how did they know then?  Perhaps a common trait of stubbornness and wanting to do things my own way.

 

          I was still quite young but clearly remember when Gramp died and the wake was held at Uncle Raymond's, his other son who lived on Town Hill.  We three boys and our favorite cousin, Paul Conroy, slipped away from the adults and reminisced and exchanged stories about Ol' Mitch.  It was a sort of sad, fun time.

 

          I think now, who was the man within?  Did we misinterpret his silences?  Did his habitual reticence conceal a private world of high expectations, fancy and disappointment, or were his arduous days only what they appeared, a country man performing to his best ability the daily tasks required by the land and animals of which he was master and servant.

 

          Ol' Mitch was a man of his times -- and Everyman.