A little history about granddad knoll. He was forty seven years old when he married grandma and I think she was eighteen and had a child 18 months old from another man. This shows that he had compassion as in those days to have a child out of wedlock was a no no. They lived on a farm north of Bloomington Kansas and were blessed with nine children. She accidentally cut herself one day and got blood poisoning and past away at the age of thirty five. This was very hard on granddad and with nine children from eighteen years old and down to a baby a few months old. What is really sad is that the County decided to take the kids away from him and place them in different homes in the area. Some of the boys went to farms where they could help with chores and others were placed with relatives and the baby was adopted by a family north of Alton Kansas.
This was during the depression and times were hard. Granddad was working the farm and also working for the WPA a program which put people to work from the government. He would walk around eight miles to work on the Dam just west of Osborne Kansas. When grandma passed he was off work for a couple of days for the funeral. When he went back to work they was going to dock his pay and when the other workers heard about it, they threatened to go on strike so they paid him for those days he was gone. The pay wasn't that much but that was all that was available.
Just recently I heard that when mom graduated from high school he walked from Osborne to Downs and back for her graduation. This is twelve miles so it shows his love he had for his family.
Even though I was very young when Granddad Knoll came to live with us I remember him dearly as a quiet man who read his bible daily and a very proud man. We had just move into the house on 5th street in Osborne when he came to live with us. Some of what I write about I remember and some of it are stories I have been told by my mom.
When we moved in, there was just an outhouse and no inside plumbing. Dad added on a bathroom and I remember I tried to help even thought I was quite small. After it was all completed it was so great to be able to not have to go to that old outhouse out back. Well Granddad knoll wouldn't use the inside plumbing he still made that trip out back. So Dad had to tear down the old outhouse because he was afraid that in the middle of the night granddad would slip and fall and freeze to death on those cold snowy winter nights. Granddad wasn't very happy about it but he started using the inside bathroom.
One night after we had gone to bed, Mom heard granddad and it sounded like he was crying. She asked dad if he knew why granddad was upset and he didn't recall any reason. So the next morning at the breakfast table she asked him what he was crying about. He said, "I wasn't crying I was just laying there and finally got the meaning of that joke I had read the day before." He was snickering and it sounded like he was crying.
I remember as a child the old trunk that he had with some of his keepsakes in it. There was a lot of old family pictures and an old kaleidoscope which had the double pictures and when you looked through the lens, it was as if you were there. This was a great adventure to go through his trunk of memories. He even had this razor sharpener which would sharpen a double edged razor blade.
After he lived with us for a while he moved in with Maxine and Alvin until he past away in 1950. I must have been around 7 years old and I remember Dad and Mom discussing if I was old enough to go to his funeral. They decided it would be the right thing so we went to say our goodbyes. I remember they explained that granddad wasn't there and that he was in heaven. He looked like he was just sleeping there in the casket. I think it was a good thing for me to be there, since then I have been able to except a loved ones death even if it is hard to let them go.
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