Notes for Buren Galbraith

GAYLE AND MARTY GALBRAITH GENEALOGY

Notes for Buren Galbraith

When Dad was a handsome young man of 18, he married Mom at the tender age of 15. Such marriages weren't unusual at that time and place. Somehow I never did hear the story of how they met, but I guess they just grew up together. His folks lived only 1/4 miles from hers, and they went to the one and only school in Thompsonville. After they got married, they lived with Mom's parents in the house that her grandfather, GS Jones had built.

Dad and Mom's brother, George spent a lot of time together in the years before Mom and Dad married.
George told me how he and Dad became trappers one year. They found a lot of old oak lumber in the loft of an abandoned barn that year and carried it piece by piece over a mile to Dads Folks place. There, with a handsaw , hammer, and nails they built over a hundred box traps to catch rabbits. In those days there were no coyotes, and few foxes in that country, so there was a plague of rabbits. That winter they caught, dressed and froze their rabbits. On Saturdays they would walk or hitch-hike a ride to Benton, Ill, about 10 miles away, each with a sackfull of rabbits . I suppose Benton was about 10,000 population, a thriving metropolis by the standards of the day. They sold their rabbits for one dollar apiece, which was a day's pay in 1933. It seems strange to me, but city folk in those days knew very little about hunting or trapping. They were eager to get wild game, and a fat cotton-tail rabbit was at the top of the list. On the way back to Thompsonville, Dad and George would buy tobacco and booze, if they could get it, and smoke up a storm all the way home.

When I was little, Dad and a few of his friends would get together at the home place once or twice a week and make music. They had guitars, banjos and fiddles, and were all pretty good pickers. I never got tired of listening to them sing and play. They sang songs like, "When my Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again", "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine", "It Makes No Difference Now", "Seein Nellie Home", and a host of others both old and new to them. These were good times.

I remember going bullfrog hunting with Dad in the numerous ponds in the Thompsonvill Area. He started taking me out when I was three or four. I'm sure he had to carry me home several times, because a little boy's legs will carry him fast, but not far. Dad would carry the bullfrogs home in a burlap sack, and one time he let me carry the biggest one. I had a death-grip on that frog's hind feet, and he dangled down, almost touching the ground. I was so proud!

Dad had a couple of fox hounds, but I didn't get to go fox chasing until much later in life. That was an all-night sport the way it was practiced around Thompsonville, and not for little boys. He had an old bitch named Hazel. In her prime, Hazel was on of the top fox dogs around town, and everyone wanted a pup from her. He had another young female named Flossie, that he dearly loved. One night Flossie got caught in a barbed-wire fence and wasn't found till late the next day. One leg was badly mangled, and Dad doctored her for days. Finally, Dad saw she wasn't going to get well. He took her across the road to the neighbor's pasture and dug a grave. He stood Flossie by the grave, backed off 20 feet and raised his rifle, all the time talking softly to Flossie. He would sight down the barrel for a while, then lower the gun. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He raised his gun for the third time before he finally shot. As he shoveled dirt onto the grave, I saw tears streaming down his cheeks. At the time, I was just a little boy watching his dad. I didn't really understand, but I never forgot. As I grew older and remembered, I realized that my dad was a compassionate and tender-hearted man.

Dad seldom explained things, but I got my ideas of what it was to be a man by watching him. He thought that a man whose word was no good or a man who would steal wasn't worth a mouthful of spit. He was brave. I know that because, when he cut himself, or hit himself with his hammer, he didn't cry. (I'm only half-joking. I thought that very thing in my tender years). I never heard him utter a racial or ethnic slur. When such things were spoken of in his presence, he refused to respond to them. He taught me, without saying a word, that it was wrong to look down on others that were different from you.

To any young man who may read this: Don't tell your son how to be a man. Show him! You will, you know. Whether you mean to or not. He may pay little mind to what you say, but He watches everything you do.

Dad taught me to love the outdoors, to fish and hunt. He took my brother and I hunting and fishing with him every time he went, and we keenly anticipated these trips. He taught us how to handle a gun safely and how to behave in the field with one. On handling firearms, he DID explain things carefully and was harshly uncompromising when we made mistakes. He wanted us to understand that the way you handled a gun was the difference between life and death. These are lessons I will never forget. Imagine my pride when he let me go hunting alone on my thirteenth birthday. I knew that this meant, "You have learned well, son and I trust you to be a man."

When I was twelve, Dad, My Uncle Henry, and I started to build our home in South Rome, Illinois. Dad was a real jack-of-all trades, and knew how to do everything it takes to build a house. He let me help in every phase of the building, and when we were finished, I knew how to do it all, albeit not very expertly. Somehow I got to do all the digging of trenches for the sewer pipes and holes for the cesspool and grease trap, and the other miscellaneous digging. During this time, I was transformed from a sickly city boy to a husky 14 year old. I can think of no better learning experience for a teenager than to help build his own home.

Over the next twenty years, we had a lot of good times together, hunting and fishing, but his alcoholism was always a cloud hanging over our relationship. He retired on a disability pension at 59 with heart trouble and died peacefully at the age of 61.

BG Galbraith