Week 19: Bald

My GrandDad Scott stood six feet tall with a slim build, brown eyes, and—way before my time—auburn hair.  Like most men in the Scott line, his hair didn’t stick around for long so he wrote me this advice when he heard that he was going to become a great-granddad for the first time:

“I have only one very important bit of instructions.  If it turns out to be a boy—PLEASE be sure that he comes with permanent hair on his head.  I know that would be a violation of the old Scott trademark but it would be a good and legal violation.”

GrandDad was born Angus Cleon Scott on the cusp of the 20^th century on 10 May 1899 in Kosciusko County, IN, the first son of William Oldfield Scott and Mary Dubbs Scott.   For the next 89 years he was called A. C. or Cleon or Scotty but never ever Angus.  Angus only appeared as a first initial for the next 80 years.  

In the summer of 1977 when my husband and I and our six-week-old twins faced a cross-country move GrandDad wrote to me in his distinctive perfect penmanship to offer this contrast:

“When I was four years old my folks moved from west of Warsaw to Milford—16 miles—it took two days—three teams and wagons with three drivers—and my mother and I rode in a buggy pulled by one horse that was tied behind one wagon.  A move like you’re making would have required a year at least and the purchase of several fresh horses along the way.  Life on this world has made a lot of changes in the past 78 years.”

            GrandDad graduated from Milford High School in April of 1915, about a month shy of his sixteenth birthday.  In the five years following graduation he worked as the manager of a pickle station in the Libby, McNeill, & Libby factory, studied for a year at Purdue University, and worked in the family hardware and implement store.  In 1920 GrandDad married for the first of three times.

            Eva Mae Bird, my paternal grandma, became the first Mrs. Cleon Scott on 18 Apr 1920.  Together they had four sons in twelve years but in 1932 the couple separated.  About the same time, the Scott family hardware and implement store closed after struggling through several years of the Great Depression.  Eva filed for divorce in 1934 and was granted custody of the boys with a sum of $4.50 per week for child support and GrandDad moved to Dowagiac, MI, to work for the Rudy Furnace company.  By 1935 single motherhood became too hard for Eva so she gave up custody of her sons in order to marry another man.  

GrandDad hired a young housekeeper named Hazel DesVoignes to look after his four sons at home while he commuted to work in Dowagiac.  Within a year GrandDad was promoted to salesman at Rudy Furnace for a salary of $50 per week and a company car to cover a territory that included Indiana and western Ohio.   In 1937 Hazel the housekeeper became the second Mrs. Cleon Scott.  Unfortunately, this marriage was short-lived and ended tragically in April of 1940 when twenty-six-year-old Hazel suddenly died of a subdural hemorrhage, leaving GrandDad a widower with four boys aged 18, 17, 13, and 10.  He had to keep working so this time he hired a local farmer’s wife to cook and clean for his sons during the week while he was on the road selling furnaces. 

 GrandDad had much better luck his third marriage.  In 1942 he married Irene Shumaker, a 38-year-old school teacher.  Eleven years after their marriage GrandDad left the furnace business and put away his salesman’s suits and fedoras to become a farmer.  He and Irene bought a ramshackle farm in Steuben County, IN near where she had been raised.  For a year they lived in a shanty on the property as they fixed up the farmhouse and refurbished the barn and outbuildings.  By 1954 GrandDad was officially a farmer.

The Scott farm was a two-hour drive across northern Indiana for my family.  When my dad would pull off the highway and turn on the road leading to the farm I’d try to be the first to start singing, “I see—ee GrandDad’s house, I see—ee GrandDad’s house!”  We’d pull up by the big Cottonwood tree and pile out of the car.  There were cows to watch, eggs to gather, tractors to ride, a barn to explore, a dog to pet, and humongous soft sugar cookies with a raisin in their middle to munch.   When I was a little older GrandDad let me sit behind the wheel of his old Dodge pickup truck and let out the clutch to move it slowly forward while he stood on a trailer behind it.   

After twenty years of farm life GrandDad became a widower for the second time when Grandma Irene passed away in 1974.  He wrote:

“…the memories I hold for 1974 are not all pleasant memories.  The loss of Irene was quite a blow to a 75-year-old man…Enough of the morbid.  This is 1975.  I’m going to try to stay forked end down for the next 365 days.”

Not only did he “stay forked end down” but GrandDad lived for another four and a half years.  Too old to run the farm any longer, he developed an interest in genealogy.  His handwritten family trees are carefully recorded on large fragile scrolls of paper, showing the results of endless hours of mail correspondence, courthouse and cemetery searches, and conversations.  He would have been amazed (and probably confounded) by the internet and the billions of records to be found there.