Licking County: FarmGrandp's Blanekt Lined Wammus

Licking County Farm
Chapter Two: Grandpa's Blanket-Lined Wammus

In 1980 Lois and I lived in the parsonage on Swamp Road across from Beaver Chapel, the little country church I pastored at the time. It was before any of the children had come into our lives. Before the Thanksgiving Eve service we packed the car and as soon as the last parishioner drove away to finish Thanksgiving preparations, we left. We would cross the state in our powder-blue VW Beetle to spend Thanksgiving Day with the family. The car never did heat well, so we had to stay bundled in blankets as we drove through the night. A light snowfall began and added adventure to our trip.

The cold and snow and lap robe gave our Thanksgiving trip an over-the-river-and-through-the-woods feel of an old-fashioned sleigh-ride. It was a happy time for a very young couple enjoying their second Thanksgiving together. For the next two and a half hours we listened to the AM radio some and talked. It was almost midnight when we arrived at the bungalow in Newark where my sister Melony, her husband Jim and family lived.

We hurried in the house through a light dusting of snow and were soon warm again. My sister had made all the arrangements for a meaningful and relaxing time. There was a fire burning when we arrived in their big, warm bungalow-style house in Newark. Scented candles were burning in our room, their fragrance blending with the aroma of pumpkin pies baking. The quilt was turned back and we were soon sleeping warmed above by a thick comforter and beneath by an electric pad.


In the morning the rest of the family drove in for the day, some from around town and others from around the state. Mom and Dad, Kevin and Nathan came from Battle Creek. The day was filled with laughter and conversation, one sentence stepping on the tail of the next.
The centerpiece of our weekend together was of course our family feast at noon on Thanksgiving Day. It was a wonderful meal with our family spilling out into two or three rooms of the house. Grandma was there. It was the first time in my life Grandma was there without Grandpa.
In October of 1980 Grandpa went out with his bow early in the deer season. It was cold and wet and he knew enough to come in but had no intention of doing so. Grandpa did not want to die in a nursing home. He contracted pneumonia and died of congestive heart failure before the trees were bare of leaves that fall. So it was Thanksgiving without Grandpa for the first time in my life.


After our feast, the men decided on a little exercise as an aid to digestion. We all went to the Roosevelt school lawn for an all-out game of tag football. It was a little cold and I needed a jacket. On the way out the door grandma said; here, wear this. It was your grandpa’s. She handed me a Carter’s denim farm chore jacket with a corduroy collar.


When Grandpa was alive he kept his coats on the enclosed back porch of the farmhouse. They hung in a row on pegs over the basement door. Underneath them, in the corner he kept his shotguns. He had a small variety of the coats. Some were unlined for early spring and late fall. Others had thick flannel linings that looked like old horse blankets. Grandpa always called his chore coat a "blanket-lined wamus."


It was one of these unlined coats Grandma handed me on the way out to play football. Memories flooded in when I put it on. Grandpa was a big man for his time and I was proud to be able to fill the coat. After the game I reluctantly gave the coat back to Grandma. To my delight she said; "Why don’t you keep that, I think your Grandpa would want you to have it." I remembered Grandpa coming across the yard on the old farm, from the milk house with the collar of his chore-coat turned up against the wind.


I still have the coat, but it no longer fits. A couple years ago, in the fall I ran across it and gave it to Kyle, his great grandson, born a year and a week after Grandpa went to be with Lord. It pleased me to see it on him. Grandpa would have appreciated how quick Kyle is to pick up on things. He would have liked his serious nature.


Someday the coat will wear out or it will be removed from the back of his closet and sent to the second-hand store by someone who does not know its history. It may be lost and forgotten some day. But there are stories about my Grandfather’s faith and the values that God was growing in him until the day of his death that should be passed down like valuable family heirlooms.


It would be wonderful to pass stately homes and valuable lands down through the generations, but that’s not always possible. It would be a treasure if the farm was still in our family. It is not. But Grandpa’s God is my God. His faith is my faith and when this earth as we know it is no more and a new heaven and new earth replace it, that heritage of faith can still be ours and our children’s forever. I would like to leave a gold watch or a beautiful mountain lodge to my grandchildren that will come, but I would rather leave an heirloom-quality faith.


A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children… (Proverbs 13:22 NKJV)






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