"Busy Leading His Quiet Life": The Story of Pop Pop Timmons

And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, a story from our regular contributor and podcast listener, Brent Timmons. Today, Brent shares with us a story about his grandfather.

Take it away, Brent. From 1949 to 1951, my grandfather operated a gas station out of a small building he rented in Millsboro, Delaware. He was known to us grandchildren as Pup Up. The business was moderately successful, but could have been more so if Pup Up had not extended so much credit to his customers. This doesn't surprise me, as he had a kind and compassionate heart. Things came to an end when the arrangement between Pup Up and the landlord went sour.

He closed the doors and lost what he had been owed. I never discussed the venture directly with Pup Up. Of course, in hindsight, I wish I had.

But I do have my father's recollection. He worked at the station some and would have been about 16 years old at the time. A couple of years ago, I found a picture of Pup Up standing in front of that building and I got the notion to recreate the photo. So our daughter Sarah and I headed down to Millsboro after work one day.

Sarah posed me appropriately, shot the photos, and then edited them to resemble the original. Pup Up is about 40 years old in the picture I had found. I'm 58 in our recreated picture. Pup Up lived a very different life than I have lived. A hard life that took its toll on his body. In my very first memories of him, he had the appearance of an old man.

Even though children are a terrible judge of age, this was, in fact, probably an accurate observation. In addition to his aged look, Pup Up had another peculiar feature. Sometime in his younger days, perhaps his 30s, he was at one end of a long heavy pipe carrying it with someone else. The other man dropped his end and the quick shifting ended up cutting Pup Up's index finger. The cut healed poorly and resulted in his inability to draw that finger closed. It was always oriented in a pointing direction. That pointing was a factor in it being broken while starting his old tractor with a hand crank. The other round of poor healing resulted in his finger becoming crooked. My dad tells a story about riding with Pup Up in his truck and having people frequently wave at them as they passed.

Who was that? Dad would ask. I don't know, son. Pup Up would reply. It wasn't until sometime later that dad realized it was Pup Up's finger stuck out from the steering wheel which made people think it was Pup Up waving to them.

They would respond with a friendly wave in return. I enjoy considering what traits I inherited from my family. Traits that came about naturally.

Obviously, when you look at the picture Sarah and I created, you can see that I didn't get my build from Pup Up. But there are parts of my temperament which I'm sure came from him. Pup Up was quiet, gentle, avoided confrontation, not prone to a lot of conversation.

He led a simple life and as long as he was making ends meet, he was content in that. Although those qualities were tempered by the tingle influence I received through my mother, I can easily see the Pup Up timens in my own life. I am convinced that much of what I inherited from him was through genes which encouraged those traits rather than through the relationship we had. He lived five doors down the road and I was in his house more than any other besides my own.

But perhaps due to the age difference or his quiet demeanor, I would not say we were close. Now my relationship with my grandmother was a different story and she would eventually help me understand who my Pup Up was. While Pup Up's gas station was less than a big success, there was a venture which created much of his legacy. Pup Up bought a farm just outside of Dagsboro. He tilled the land, mostly growing corn and harvesting it by hand. He also grew what my dad called truck crops, vegetables which would be hauled to the market in a truck. The income from the farm was not enough to live on.

Pup Up also held a full-time job at a local hatchery. Some years after he purchased the farm, he did that thing which farmers tend to avoid. He had it surveyed into building lots and then began to sell them off. He continued to farm the land he hadn't sold.

This process started long before I was born and continued on until the last lot was sold about the time I finished college. Part of his motivation was to supplement his income with the sale of the land, but part of what he really wanted to do was expressed to me by my grandmother. She said to me one day, Vernon wanted to sell people an affordable lot so they could have a home. That one idea said a lot about Pup Up.

In fact, it said about all I needed to know about him in order to make a judgment. My dad ended up with a couple of those lots and that's where I grew up. That short ride down to Pup Up's house went past homes built on lots which Pup Up had sold to people. Many of the kids in our neighborhood who I grew up with lived in homes built on lots which had once belonged to Pup Up. Some of my parents' best friends lived in homes built on lots which Pup Up had sold. There was a dirt road which ran through the farm with lots on either side. When I was young there were only a few houses built. I learned to drive a car on that road. We rode go-carts and minibikes up and down it as fast as we could go.

My uncle pulled us down that road behind his truck on sleds in the snow. It was on one of these lots which Pup Up cultivated his garden and grew potatoes which we helped him dig out which he then shared with us. I don't know that Pup Up ever looked out on his farm and those lots with their little houses and said to himself, I had a part in that. It would not have surprised me if he never gave it much thought.

He was very busy leading his quiet life. Pup Up had an undeniable influence on my childhood simply by his purchase of that farm and by what he did with it. He had an undeniable influence on my parents and on our neighbors and on our neighbors' children. You would never have gathered that by talking to him about it.

But if you saw him passing you, you might assume from his unintentional finger wave that he was your friend. You might assume correctly that it was part of his character to look out for his fellow man. At Pup Up's funeral, our pastor, Jim Burton, mentioned something which I had been part of but had never given much thought to. As far as I can remember, up until his death, my mom and Pup Up had a standing invitation for anyone from the family to join them for Sunday dinner.

Since we lived just down the road, our family was there frequently. Pastor Jim pointed out that standing invitation and chalked it up to Pup Up's generosity, his kind heart, and his love of his family. I had taken that for granted. That is, until that moment. From then on, I never took Pup Up's kindness as ordinary.

It was with this in mind that Sarah and I trekked down to that little building after work, and I stood in front of it, trying my best to look like Pup Up. And a special thanks to Bren Timmons for this story. And it's a grandfather-grandson story.

We haven't done a lot of those. A lot of father-son, a lot of mother-daughter, but not a lot of grandfather-grandson or grandparents and grandchildren stories. By the way, if you have some, send them to us.

They're beauties. Be sure to check out all of Brent's other stories on the Our American Stories website. Also, a special thanks to Monty Montgomery for the audio post-production on the story. And as he put it, Pup Up lived a hard life, even in his early pictures. He looked old. By the way, look at pictures from the 1920s of people in the 18. They look like they're 40.

It's unbelievable. And that farm that Pup Up had and what he did with it, selling off the lots and doing good with it, including two to his own son. And then that eulogy. And then the photo that followed. A beautiful story, a love story, between a grandson and a grandfather. Brent Timmons' story and his Pup Up here on Our American Stories.