"Busy Leading His Quiet Life": The Story of Pop Pop Timmons

Return to L American stories mixed story from a regular contributor and podcast listener Timmons labor and shares with us a story about his grandfather taken away 1949 to 1951.

My grandfather operated a gas station out of a small building erected in Millsboro, Delaware. He was known to us grandchildren this pop-up. The business was moderately successful, could have been more so pop up and not extended so much credit to his customer.

This doesn't surprise me, as he had a kind and compassionate heart. Things came to an end when the arrangement between pop-up and the landlord went sour.

He closed the doors and lost what he had been owed. I never discuss the venture directly with pop-up. Of course, in hindsight I wish I had.

But I do have my father's recollection, he worked at the station some and would have been about 16 years old at the time couple of years ago, I found the picture pop-up standing in front of that building. I got the notion to re-create the photo so our daughter Sarah and I headed down the Millsboro after Sarah posed me appropriately shot the photos and then edited them to resemble the original pop-up is about 40 years old in the picture I found. I'm 58 and I re-created picture pop-up lived a very different life than I have left hardly took its toll on his body and my very first memories of him had the appearance of an old man.

Even though children are a terrible judge of age.

This was in fact probably an accurate observation.

In addition to his age. Look pop-up had another peculiar feature sometime in his younger days. Perhaps his 30s. He was at one end of a long heavy pipe carrying it with someone else. The other man dropped his hand in the quick shifting ended up cutting pop-up's index finger got healed poorly and resulted in his inability to draw that finger closed.

It was always oriented in appointing direction that pointing was a factor in it being broken while starting his own tractor with a handcrank another round of poor healing resulted in his finger becoming crooked. My dad tells a story about riding with pop-up in his truck and having people frequently wave at them as they passed was that dad would ask. I don't know. Send pop-up would reply. It wasn't until sometime later that dad realized it was pop-ups finger stuck out from the steering wheel, which made people think it was pop-up waving to them they would respond with a friendly wave and return. I enjoy considering what traits are inherited from my family traits that came about naturally. Obviously, when you look at the picture. Sarah and I created you can see that I didn't get my bill from pop-up but there are parts of my temperament, which I'm sure came from him. Pop-up was quiet, gentle avoiding confrontation not prone to a lot of conversation he led a simple life and as long as he was making ends meet. He was content and that although those qualities were tempered by the Tingle influence.

I received through my mother. I can easily see the pop-up Timmons in my own life.

I am convinced that much of what I inherited from him was through genes which encourage those traits rather than through the relationship we had. He lived five doors down the road and I was in his house more than any other besides my own, but perhaps due to the age difference for his quiet demeanor.

I would not say we were close now, my relationship with my grandmother was a different story and she would eventually help me understand who my pop-up was pop-ups gas station was less than a big success. There was a venture which created much of his legacy pop-up bought a farm just outside of Jacksboro till the land mostly growing corn and harvesting at my hands. He also grew what my dad called truck crops, vegetables, which would be hauled to the market truck income from the farm was not enough to live on pop-up also held a full-time job at a local hatchery some years after he purchased the farm.

He did that thing which farmers tend to avoid. He had it surveyed into building lots and then began to sell them off. He continued to farm the land he hadn't sold this process started long before I was born and continued on until the last lot was sold. About the time I finished college.

Part of his motivation was to supplement his income with the sale of the land the part of what he really wanted to do was expressed to me by my grandmother. She said to me one day Vernon wanted to sell people and affordable lot so they could have a home that one idea said a lot about pop-up. In fact, they said about all I needed to know about him.

In order to make a judgment. My dad ended up with a couple of those slots. That's where I grew up that short ride down the pop-ups house went past homes built on lots which pop-up had sold to people. Many of the kids in our neighborhood where I grew up with lived in homes built on lots which had once belonged pop-up some of my parents best friends lived in homes built on lots which pop-up had sold. There was a dirt road which ran through the farm with lots on either side when I was young there were only a few houses built. I learned to drive a car on that road.

We will go carts and minibikes up and down it as fast as we can go.

My uncle pulled us down that road behind his truck on sleds in the snow. It was on one of these lots which pop-up cultivated his garden and grew potatoes which we help them dig out, which he then shared with us. I don't know the pop-up ever looked out on his farm in those lots with their little houses and said to himself.

I had a part in that it would not have surprise me if he never gave it much thought.

He was very busy leading his quiet life pop-up had an undeniable influence on my childhood simply by his purchase of that farm and by what he did with it. He had an undeniable influence on my parents and on our neighbors and on our neighbors, children, you would never have gathered that by talking to him about it. But if you saw him passing you.

You might assume from his unintentional finger wave that he was your friend.

You might assume correctly that it was part of his character to look out for his fellow man that pop-ups funeral our pastor Jim Burton mentioned something which I've been part of. But it never given much thought to. As far as I can remember, up until his death.

My mom and pop up had a standing invitation for anyone from the family to join them for Sunday dinner. Since we live just down the road.

Our family was there frequently. Pastor Jim pointed out that standing invitation and chalked it up to pop-ups generosity is kind heart and his love of his family had taken that for granted that is until that moment. From then on I never took pop-ups kindness as ordinary. It was with this in mind that Sarah and I truck down to that little building after work and I stood in front of it, try my best to look like pop-up and a special thanks to Brent Timmons for the story and it's a grandfather grandson story.

We haven't done a lot of those on a father-son mother-daughter but not a lot of grandfather grandson or grandparents and grandchildren stories.

By the way, if you have some send them to us their beauties. Be sure to check out all the prints other stories on the L American stories website. Also, special thanks to Monty Montgomery for the audio postproduction on the story and as he put it pop-up lived a hard life, even in his early pictures. He looked old. By the way, look at pictures from the 1920s people in the 18 they look like a 40 something and I farm the pop-up had a what he did with excelling off the lots in doing good with it, including two to his own son and then that eulogy and then the photo that followed a beautiful story, a love story between a grandson and a grandfather Brent Timmons story and his pop-up here on our American stories