In the spirit of Jams

Jams has gotten some mileage out of talking about long dead relatives here is my version.

My grandfather was from a long forgotten town on the Bug River. It was in what was known as the frontier region. Janover is most likely one and the same with the Yanovka that is said to be the birth place of human fecal matter Trotsky.

My grandfather was a short but very powerfuly built blonde man with green eyes. He was a Polish cavarly man for a short spell and hated horses. He was well known for his marksmanship
and a few Bolsheviks found this out the hard way in skirmishes shot through the head when they thought they were safe. War was not something he enjoyed, Bolsheviks were invaders and oddly for a man who hated business he described it in business like terms. Bolsheviks were foreign invaders and he had a job to do. Contrary to the Commie myth, Jews who practiced the relgion loathed Commies. Those who had some faith often drifted into the early Zionist movement. Zionism was seen as a competitor by Commies who remain obsessed with it today.

He was dead set against hunting for sport. However, if you were going to eat what you shot this was another story. However, old world people were much different than Americans. I remember dumping two Perch into a large fish tank and going out to play baseball. When I came back they were gone. Apparently, cleaning fish was a common skill that my octogenerian grandmother was well aquainted with. How she caught the fish in a huge tank remains even more of a mystery. My grandfather had his Yidish paper and complimented his wife on a great meal. I suppose keeping food in a huge tank seemed nutty to them.

My grandfathers family was localy prominent and owned several businesses. Yet my grandfather was more interested in building high quality furniture than accounting. He hated the fighting over the business and was devoted to his craft.

My grandmother was from a far less prominent family. In fact they were near the bottom of the social order. However, she had something more valuable than gold American Legal residence.
So my grandfather left the fighting and went to the USA. Of his family only one sister survived
as she emigrated to Israel. Another brother survived the Holocaust but was killed by locals when he returned home. This was not uncommon and is a seldom discussed part of the Holocaust.

My grandfather never considered himself a Pole. He would tell you we were Jews. He had no nostalgia for Poland and never wanted to visit. He sometimes would reminiss about his cavalry
days and the bad food. Shooting game was one way to avoid bad meals. His greatest pride was his children and his furniture. He also made the trip to Israel and proudly displayed pictures of himself at the Western Wall and Rachel's Tomb. Oddly his sister never appeared in any of the photographs.

My gradfather loved America and was oddly placed in the Navy. The Navy had great need for carpenters as the decking on aircraft carriers and battleships were made of wood. My gradfathers cousin served as a flight instructor. Before he was sent out a liver ailment sent him
to the hospital and out of the Navy.

He was known for his jovial nature and relaxed personality. He was a simple man who was dedicated to his craft. Yet the man who didn't say much loathed communists. They were ignorant, corrupt and uniformly evil. One of our cousins a nasty man was a big mouth Communist. However spending the war in Siberia under slave labor conditions cured him quickly, but he remained mean and nasty without the Marxism.

His wife was not nearly as well liked. In fact other than my grandfather she didn't have many friends. She ran the house and the budget and was not kid friendly. She was dedicated to produce and poultry. I'm still puzzled that she always seemed to know what to do with strange items. Yet the period after WWI was very rough and people learned to survive. Some of the advenures with the dreaded evil gourds were comedic. What is this????? I tried to explain that
the odd gourds were part of an art project. My grandmother soon found other uses for the gourds after my friends finished his photography. She thought going to school and photographing produce was dumb, and she was right.