22. Men (part 2)

A tintype of Charles Rush Miller, my great-great-grandfather. Another photo is here.

Inez says that the girls were always “a bit scared” of
Charles Giles, but they had a different opinion of their other grandfather, Charles
Rush Miller. My grandmother adored him and always described him as being
confident, happy, and not giving a damn about what anyone else thought of him.
He was a farmer and a skilled carpenter and cabinet-maker; at 70 he built a
beautiful heavy horse-drawn sleigh for his son, Wallace, which Inez said
“carried many parties of people, young and old, after it arrived in South Otselic.”

He was also a skilled woodsman and lover of the fields
and streams, and probably encouraged the little girls in what became a lifelong
interest of their own. When I was little, Inez used to tell me how he had once
found a den of baby foxes whose mother had been trapped and how the girls
begged him to tell and retell the story of reaching in and taking the cubs out
one by one.

He hunted deer in the “North Woods” and small game nearer
home. He was a trout fisherman of great skill, spending many summer days at his
son’s home, helping in haying and fishing the Middletown and other streams he had known all his life. With a granddaughter to drive him
in a buggy to the source of a stream, he would vanish for most of a day,
returning weary, with sagging shoulders at night, but never with empty creel.
He always fished with worms, carried in a little bait-box, slung by a strap
from his shoulder, his fish-basket, lined with ferns, on the opposite side.

Wallace Miller, my great-grandfather, as a young man

It’s odd, considering how large Libby looms in the family’s
history, but I don’t know much about Wally, my great-grandfather Miller. My
mother and grandmother certainly loved him dearly. He died suddenly, of a
massive stroke or heart attack, quite a long while before I was born, before
the war, I believe.

Wally in his late years

These two men – Charles Rush and Wallace – must have given
my grandmother an affection for men, even if she refused to kowtow to them. She
always told me, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that it was important to make
men feel that you thought they were indispensable, while being perfectly
capable of standing on your own two feet. She was very fortunate to find my
grandfather, who loved her completely and was willing to wait on her and put up
with her independent spirit and strong opinions; she, for her part, was devoted
to him as well, and they were an inseparable team for over sixty years, known
by everyone in our town. My grandmother had a fast mind and a tongue to match,
while he was tremendously patient.

My grandmother often quoted poetry, and also loved doggerel. One of her favorites, trotted out on appropriate occasions, was "Patience is a virtue, learn it if you can — Seldom found in women, and never in a man," but she had married someone who was the exception.

My grandfather and me in the woodworking shop, 1986

If my grandfather did lose his temper on a rare
occasion, you knew he must be very angry. Instead of lashing out when he got
frustrated with his wife, though, he usually retreated to his big woodworking shop in
the stone cellar, where he kept a bottle of gin to calm his nerves and could
saw or sand in peace until he was calm and ready to go back upstairs. He was an
excellent restorer of antique furniture, and taught my father to be a fine
woodworker as well; the two of them spent many hours in the shop as well as
working together in the real estate business during the day. My grandfather was
also just plain lucky – at life, and at cards. Learning to playing bridge with
him was quite an experience. He never got rattled, and like my mother could remember all the cards. He and my mother or grandmother would be partners,
against my father and me, and we would watch in amazement as he’d win the bidding at 3 No
Trump and calmly and confidently proceed to take every trick, then gather up
the cards and, smiling a little bit to himself, say something offhand like, “That worked out pretty well.”