My Grandpa Moore and his Family 1875-1967

This picture is my Grandpa Moore and me in front of his house in Springfield, Missouri.

Grandpa was always really loving to me and kind. I was pretty lucky to have so many grandparents growing up, really. Grandpa was Daddy Roy's Dad. I never met my Grandma Moore, (Lena Mae) as she had died during the birth of their 11th child many years before.

Grandpa was of the 'old school'...the really old school. He never left Missouri after he settled there. He never traveled anywhere, either, except to family reunions or to his sister's homes in Arcadia, Kansas. I loved going there to Aunt Lidia & Aunt Martha's homes. Aunt Lidia made gorgeous patchwork quilts, all quilted by hand, not tied. Daddy knew she didn't have much money so he would buy one of her quilts when we came, to help her out. (I gave one to my cousin Kelli, Uncle Harold's granddaughter, that she has now.) They each had wonderful "porch swings" and they always had time to swing on them with me. Both of them also had outdoor toilets way in their back yards. In fact, I remember a very embarrassing moment one time when we were visiting Aunt Martha. I was about 5 and I needed to use the bathroom. I noticed she had a shiny, brand new toilet right there in her dining room! What a find! I just sat myself down and away I 'went'. Uh oh...no toilet paper...I called for my mom and it was then that I got the news...it wasn't connected yet and that WASN'T the bathroom...Mom was horrified...Me too! Aunt Martha just got a rag and cleaned it up laughing all the time. Mom tried to help her but she just acted like it was 'no big deal', but I never forgot it, believe me.

What a great little town Arcadia was. It looked like something out of the "Sweet Tomatoes" movie. We had many 'feasts' at Aunt Lidia's house with the Arcadia relatives. No one could cook like those Moore girls! Always, and I mean always, we would have cobblers to die for...blackberry, apple, strawberry, and peach with vanilla homemade ice cream on top. They would have tons of fresh, right out of the garden, huge perfect sliced tomatoes and just picked corn on the cob that almost didn't need any butter or salt & pepper...at every gathering we ever had. They knew how to cook for a crowd. They always had a house dress on and a cute old fashioned apron. Their hair was always the same, almost white and done up in a bun on the top of their heads. Laughing and telling stories were always a part of their lives there. The grown ups would congregate to do the dishes & clean-up after dinner and the kids would go play in the fields next to the house.

I remember Dad decided to take Grandpa Moore home with us after a reunion one year. He actually took the trip pretty well...but he seemed very confused to me. He would dose off in the car and every time we would come into a town, he'd raise up and say, "Hey, what CAMP is this???" As a child that was something that sounded a little foreign... Daddy just would tell him the name of the town and Grandpa would talk about how much things had changed from 'before'. "You'd never recognize the place" he'd say. "My, how things change...." Then he'd stare out the window for awhile, examining the town asking a question here and there and remarking again and again how things had changed. He was so interested in everything there was. Then, as we would leave the town he would drift off to sleep until the next.

Through the years, I heard that Grandpa was a tough Dad. I always looked at him and found that hard to believe. My thoughts on that are that every generation probably could say, that the one before was tough on them...and even site examples of the toughness and raise an eyebrow or two. But the truth is that discipline has de-celerated over the years to the point that no one is allowed to do much without a child getting a child abuse suit on them or, even as bad or worse, a divorce from their parents. In that and many other valuable ways Grandpa, things in this world really have changed, and I can see now what you were talking about then, more than ever.