A Word About My Grandfather

My maternal grandfather's birthday was July 24. I thought it was today. Oops.

I called him Granddaddy but his name was Claude Lewis Harris, Sr. He was born in 1918 in Botetourt County, VA, to James Thomas Harris and Sarah Newton Painter.  He was one of seven children.

Grandpa and Grandma married on September 16, 1942, when he was 24 years old. For a while they lived in an apartment above a store on Front Street in Salem.

Here's a Google street view:

 

 

My mother was born in the upstairs apartment, or so I was always told. Later, I'm not exactly sure when, my grandfather purchased this home on East River Side Drive in Salem. It is one of the few still standing along that area, which tends to flood. It looks very small now, but when I was a child it seemed plenty big.

 



My grandfather worked for Kroger in its Salem warehouse until he died on January 2, 1976. He was 57 years old when he had a heart attack. I'm not sure what the deal was with him and his pension, but for some reason Kroger refused to pay my grandmother whatever it was she thought they owed her. Nobody in the family shopped at Kroger for a very long time after my grandfather passed away.

He smoked cigarettes, and worked on television sets in the basement. He had a workshop where we were never supposed to go (of course we did), and we definitely were not to mess with his tools (we generally did not). I remember him as being mostly rather gruff, probably wondering who these kids were that were at his house all the time.

He always drove a big white Ford car with a blue interior. Occasionally he took us on day trips to Hillsville, where there was a big store called Hills there that had all sorts of trinkets, and to a place called Sunset or Sunnybrook or something like that up near Floyd. That store also had all sorts of intriguing items.

Once he raced us kids in a foot race, I remember, laughing all the time he was running. He also, after I reached about the age of 9 or 10, let us mow the yard. At the time he still had two boys at home - my uncles, one who is four years older than I am and the other who is a year younger than I am. He'd pay us each a quarter and we'd split the yard-mowing up for the privilege of earning that quarter.

Then, quarter in hand, we'd race off to Orange Market on Apperson Drive to purchase comic books, candy, and a soda (yes, a long time ago, you could buy all of that for a quarter. Or maybe we put our quarters together, I don't really remember).

Granddaddy came home from work every day at 4 p.m., and we ate dinner when I was there at 4:15 p.m. My mother worked about a block away, so if I stayed home from school because I was sick, I stayed with Grandma, and by the time Mom left work at 5 p.m. I was fed and she could take me home to Botetourt and put me to bed.

I have a single photo of my grandfather here somewhere, but I can't find it to show it to you. The family wasn't big on pictures so I don't think there were very many photos of him around.