nostalgic
laurie_robey and I had dinner with my parents this evening, and since I was still thinking about this post from the other day, I started grilling my dad about my grandfather (who my parents always refer to as "Pap"), and in turn his father (my great-grandfather), Early Robey.It turns out I had some of my facts wrong; while both Granddaddy and Granddaddy Early were farmers on the side, neither of them did that as their primary profession. Granddaddy Early was a huckster -- in the true, original sense of the term, not the way it's used these days. Back in those days, the role of a huckster was to go around from farm to farm and pick up vegetables, wares, and whatnot and take the goods into town to sell -- basically a distributor.
My grandfather was primarily a machinist and a mechanic. He worked on the rails, he made artillery during WWII, but mostly he worked on the D.C. transit company (i.e., Metro) buses, working his way up to the regional shop foreman position before his retirement.
-The Gneech
