My Grandfathers, the source of my genes.

Following is an “excerpt’ from a chapter of my life. - Werner.
My Grandfathers.
My paternal grandfather, Franz, or ”Franz Opa”, as we called him, at the time of writing this, has been dead for over 50 years.  But for me, he is never out of my mind, and that’ll be until I take my last breath. I’m now three years older than my grandfather was when he died and I hope that when I’m long gone, the future generation of the Schmidlin line that I have established in Australia find this story, as well as the many others I have written, interestingly – but sadly, I’ll never know.

Franz Opa was my mentor and my role model,  all in one; he gave me guidance, and he was my companion and my inspiration. Opa exerted great influence on me in my formative years, since at that particular time my father was away as a soldier in the war. I was fortunate to learn a great deal from him and luckily inherited many of his superb traits and characteristics.

Franz Opa was good at everything he touched.  He was an excellent wine and fruit grower, he was good with his hands and enjoyed tampering with all sorts of things, and he liked to make things from wood. He was an excellent letter writer; he was a man with a vision and always looking far beyond the horizon. Opa didn’t suffer fools lightly and his counsel was always sought and appreciated in our village.  He was a man of resolve and perseverance. But he was also immensely practical, mentally as well as physically. There was no doubt, that he was a real “do it yourself person,” able to improvise, skilful with his hands, always ahead of his time in his thinking. If we’d had computers then, grandfather would have been the first to have one.

Grandfather had three hobbies: growing vegetables, flowers and especially the latest roses. Beekeeping was another love; he had more than fifty beehives, which were kept in the purpose build shed in the garden, which we dubbed the “Bee House”. I was involved in all of those hobbies and it was like nourishment for my insatiable curiosity and appetite for learning practical things. He always had to have the latest nursery catalogues and when a new rose variety was released, he bought it. His pride and joy was a huge rose bush on which he grafted fourteen different roses and when they were all in bloom it was a wonderful colour spectacle – and a sight to behold.  Opa also had a great sense of humour and I must have received a large dose of his genes. I am forever grateful to Opa for what he taught me and I always look back to him with great admiration and will always hold him in high esteem.

Opa was also the president of the local rural bank, and was entitled to a fee, but he refused to take it; saying, “I earn money from the farm. I don’t need it”. Who would do this today?

 
In the summertime when the asparaguses were growing, Opa used a special long knife especially designed for cutting the asparagus plants deep down in their mound. It had a handle with a long shaft and at the end it had a slightly curved 5 cm long cutting edge. They were easy to find as they betrayed their presence by lifting the soil on the smoothed-out mound. The mound had to be patted smooth again with a board after every cutting. In their growing peak, they just kept on shooting and had to be cut twice a day. Sometimes, I was the victim of grandfather’s great sense of humour. One day he told me, with a serious mien, that it was too dangerous to go near the asparagus mounds in the garden. I fell for it and asked why, he replied with a broad grin: “Because the asparaguses are shooting.”

Opa taught me many skills and my inquisitiveness must sometimes have driven him close to despair, as I constantly badgered him to know how this and that is done and why that was so. However, I have recognised early in my life that by asking questions is an excellent way to learn. My gift of the gab was well known to everybody, and to shut me up could prove difficult. I remember well, Grandfather frequently remarking, “When you die, they’ll have to kill your mouth separately, otherwise it’ll keep on talking!”

I had known both my grandfathers and to distinguish between the two we referred to the paternal grandfather, as “Franz Opa.” The maternal grandfather, Albert Würz, we referred to as “Würz Opa.” However, Würz Opa died when I was only four years old and most of those years he was sick and bed bound with tuberculosis. It was him who I got in trouble over, because I helped the grave digger with filling in his grave after the graveside funeral ceremony. Picture: Würz Opa with his horse.

However, what I learnt about him in my later years was that he was also a practical, innovative man and also had a great sense of humour. It appears that I have inherited a double dose of humour genes from my two grandfathers.

Franz Opa was born on the 18th of January 1874 and died on the 23rd of August 1947. I never forgot the day he died. My parents and we three kids were up since 5 am in the morning to catch the 6 am train to Freiburg, where we had intended to go to the circus, which was performing for the last day. Oma came up to us on the second floor to inform us that that Opa had just died. Needless to say, we didn’t go to Freiburg. It was a great shock for me to lose my friend and my mentor, but nevertheless, death is inevitable, and what a wonderful way to go - going to bed to sleep and never waking up. He will never be out of my mind as long as I live.
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My thought for today: - Werner
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Albert Einstein