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roger.pape · Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:43 am Post subject: Pape Family Tales

Every family has its share of oral history that gets passed down from generation to generation. The following are several stories about Grandpa Jacob Pape that I've heard repeated a number of times.

The first involves Grandpa's dislike for watermelon. Being from Germany, he was not familiar with watermelon when he came to America. Working long hot days in the fields, one can imagine that he longed for some cooling refreshment. As the story goes, his coworkers told him that watermelon was just the thing. They described it to him as long green things that grew from a vine. So one evening he sneeked into a garden and picked something that fit the description. He bit into it but was not pleased with the taste. Turns out, he picked a cucumber and the taste of the raw "fruit" was not at all appealing to him. Ever since that incident he never ate any watermelon because of the memories of that first bite.

The second story relates to Jacob's days in Washington state, where he worked in the wheat fields. His boss and some other hired hand's went hunting to the south on the mountainous area on the border of Oregon. He bagged a big deer but had no way to get the big buck back home. So he carried back only the head as a souvenir of the adventure. He must have been quite proud of his prize because he brought the antlers with him when he moved back to Concordia. I remember those antlers very well. They were used as a hat rack, mounted over the kitchen door that led into the sitting room that had a low wood stove in the center and a Black Forest cuckoo clock hanging on the front wall. I never found out what happened to the antlers or the cuckoo clock.

My favorite picture of Grandpa Jacob, as I remember him puffing on one of his favorite White Owl cigars in the rubber cigar holder, is attached below.

roger.pape · Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:14 am Post subject: Camera-shy Grandma Pape

My grandmother Mary Pape was very camera shy. Dad was never able to take a good picture of her. Whenever he pointed a camera in her direction, she would cover her face. However, one day he got his chance. He caught her leaving the outhouse next to the barn. Notice that she still had a little bit of newspaper left.

roger.pape

As I was growing up, we never took family vacations. However, Dad would regularly go on week-long fishing trips for a much needed break from his busy schedule. His fishing companions included Prof. Emil Weis, Ed James, Fritz Schulze, and Dr. Brady among others. Initially, they would go to the Lake of the Ozarks, but eventually they would travel to Bemidji, MN and International Falls on the border between Minnesota and Canada. There they would fish for Northern pike, muskies, and an occasional walleye.

My father was a bit sensitive about his baldness, particularly because he became bald at an early age. When kidded by others, he would reply “A busy street gathers no moss.” To which some would respond “But an empty barn needs no roof.” Dad was envious of Ed James' full head of hair. On these fishing trips he noticed that Ed James would brush his hair vigorously every morning. So Dad always told me that the secret to retaining one's hair was to brush regularly, not accepting the inevitability of genetics. To this day, I brush my hair vigorously every morning.

The purpose of this posting, however, is a favorite story of my father involving one of these fishing trips. As they were returning to the U.S., a border official stopped them for identification. He asked each of them about their occupation. First, he asked Doc Brady who told him he was a medical doctor. Next, he queried Ed James who responded that he was an undertaker. The official then looked at Prof. Weis and said “I suppose you are going to tell me that you’re a preacher.” Prof. Weis (an ordained minister) simply replied “Yes, I am.” A complete package. Rub-a-dub-dub…

roger.pape · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 9:02 am Post subject: Grandpa's favorite cigar

I recently ran across an old cigar box that reminded me of Grandfather Jacob Pape. It was a White Owl cigar box, Grandpa's favorite. (See the photo below.) I can always picture him pulling out a cigar, trimming the end of it with his pocket knife, and putting it in his cigar holder. (My dad's favorite cigar was a Roi-Tan, the one with a hole in the end. No trimming required.)

One day, Grandpa pointed to the cigar box on his shelf and said to Dad "Why do they call the cigar invisible?" For years, he had misread the label 'invincible' as 'invisible'.