Grandpa Pete

ORAL DAVID SHOLES

Yes, that's right. That's HIM. Oral David Sholes, alias Grandpa Pete. Say it isn't so! Pete was born in 1891. Look, I can't help what the fashions were in the 1890's. Evidently long curls and dresses for little boys. When I was a little girl and saw this picture, I was just sure it had to be one of his sisters, but " no" I was told many times, this is the real deal. Strange but true. Grandpa as a little boy. Cute though.

So I don't know how he lived this down, but he must have found a way because by the time I knew him he seemed pretty well adjusted, very mellow. Of course that was many decades later and he had lost the curls...and the dress. By then it was pants, suspenders, white sleeveless undershirt... and very straight, short white hair. And a pipe in his mouth most all of the time. The smell of the tobacco in that pipe was actually kind of compelling, reassuring. In some ways Grandpa reminded me of Santa Claus, but alas, no beard, no red suit, no black boots. But he did have an enigmatic grin on his face and a twinkle in his eyes, although that never escalated into any kind of an actual full blown Ho Ho Ho demeanor that I'm aware of. 

PETE BEING PIPE TRAINED BY LEONE, JOYCE & ERNIE

I don't know what Santa subsists on, but Pete would go to the refrigerator and help himself to cold hamburger patties that Grandma had earlier fried up for him several at a time, smothered in black pepper.  I was appalled by the waxy white layer of congealed fat that seemed to be a kind of haphazard icing on those patties. How could anyone actually eat that stuff? Then one day, after years of noticing them in the fridge and being duly repulsed, I impulsively grabbed one and took a bite. Not bad. Must have been all the pepper?

Maybe Grandpa grew up eating things like that. Or maybe they didn't have refrigerators when he was a boy. I never got around to asking him what it was like for him growing up. I think he may have gone through the 8th grade before he left school to work, probably to help more on the farm.

 Pete was the father of four children when he grew up. The house they moved to when their kids were still in school is the one my grandparents lived in the rest of their lives. And it was the house I loved to visit. I loved to visit the people there, for my Aunt Joyce never married and spent her life within those walls too, so we got megadoses of extra attention. But the house was a character on its own as well. Only six blocks from my house, 600 South Street beckoned me. The big old shade trees that lined the sidewalks provided a canopied welcome to another world, another time. The Victorian 1890's.

THE FAMILY ALL GROWN UP

It was two stories with nooks and crannies that enchanted me. At the top of the stairs, well almost, actually at the top of the second landing was a small wooden door, perhaps 18" square. We could quietly unlatch the door and look directly below into the kitchen and actually SPY on the adults who were preparing Thanksgiving dinner or cleaning up after Christmas Eve or whatever they were busied about doing. We thought we were invisible and would eavesdrop on real grown up conversation. The grownups never let on they were the least bit aware of the myriad silent little heads perched above, taking turns watching their every move. I still have no idea what purpose that littlest of doors was originally intended for, but it was the perfect peephole for some awfully nosey grandkids.

Upstairs was the only bathroom in the house. With a clawfoot bathtub, no less! To top it off, in Aunt Joyce's room was a huge record player where we listened to and fell in love with musicals. When we stopped dancing around to the music we could play in her strange closet, more of a crawl in than a walk in. The door was full sized, like the door to another room, but beyond that little area the closet shrinkydinked into a space half as tall, and we could nudge our way back under the hanging sweaters and have our own kid proportioned domain, where adults couldn't easily reach. So cool.

But it was the basement of Grandpa's house that was really alluring. The cement stairs curved and got smaller as you descended from the landing at the back door. The stairs were rough and odd sized and you couldn't just carelessly skip down them. You had to pay attention. Then there was the creaky old door, too, that had to be coaxed open to admit you to the basement. That done, you entered a large room which was surrounded by other rooms, a maze of unfamiliar musty things. In the main room was an old black water pump. It was fun to grab the handle and pump it up and down several times in order to get rain water from the cistern outside to rush into the sink.

The laundry was down there, and assorted storage rooms, one being a place where coal was stored for the furnace. It was exciting to me to have the coal truck pull up in the driveway, and stick a chute from the truck through the opened basement window, then have them shovel all that black, black sooty coal down the chute until the room was filled to the top. I was always a little bit scared in the basement, more expecting to find a skeleton or ghost in that setting, though logically it would have been a lot more realistic to find mice. From time to time, Grandma would! I never found anything at all though, which was quite a fortunate thing. The house was a wonderland to me.

So too the yard. The porch with its swing, from which we would fan out on a summer's eve to catch fireflies in the dark and do unspeakable things to them. The backyard with its small garden with chives and rhubarb, and the lilacs bordering the far end of the yard. Then a narrow secret passage hidden behind the fragrant purple, down a steep mini hill to a wide neglected path which led to the next cross street. Seemed like a foreign country, or at least tantalizingly forbidden somehow. The entire essence of the place in my mind was adventure. Maybe Grandpa didn't intend it that way, but at least that's how it worked out. He might as well have been Santa Claus in providing such a treasure.

ON THE JOB  ( PETE AT SPIESS CO. WITH FRIENDS)

And he was an ardent, diligent provider. He worked at it even when he was very old. My most indelible impression of him is his leaving in the evening to walk the miles downtown where he worked as the night watchman at Joseph Spiess Co., the large swanky department store. When I would watch from the porch his solitary figure slowly disappear in the dusk, it must have been concern that I experienced, wondering if he would be safe on his way, if he would be scared all night all alone in that big place. But he evidently was undaunted. It was his responsibility and that was a word he took seriously, so seriously. 

MARY JANE WRIGHT & ERNEST CEBA SHOLES

How seriously? Grandma died ten or so years after Grandpa and at her funeral, her family found out just how much responsibility meant to these two. Grandpa's father had been a well-to-do landowner with quite a bit of property in the area, and so when some of his son's friends needed someone to cosign on loans, Mr. E.C. Sholes was the guy who could do that. But somewhere along the line, things went awry and the loans were not repaid. I think they called that The Great Depression. And the bank came knocking. The land was lost, the father died, the accommodating son died, and still there was debt.

PETE & LUCY                MR. & MRS. ORAL SHOLES

So Grandpa Pete and Grandma Lucy spent the rest of their lives paying off this family debt, which was never theirs in any way to begin with. But I guess out of respect for his father and brother, this they did. And did it without telling anyone! Who does that? A lot of people might consider that a ridiculous thing. For the record, I am not one of those people. I hope I have just a fraction of that kind of integrity inside of me.

1 ROOM PIONEER SHOLES SCHOOL

What remains as a reminder of the better times is the Pioneer Sholes School, so named because sometime before 1860 this Great Grandpa donated some of the land on his farm in Burlington on which to build a school. A chance to walk in on some authentic history when in Illinois.

PIONEER SHOLES SCHOOL DESKS