7.02.2003

Wonder what a Calvin Coolidge blog would sound like.

"The blog of America is blogging."

Grandpa Gould wrote him a letter once in the 1920s informing him we were related. Never heard back. Typical Gould. I mean Silent Cal.

Grandpa was Captain of Battery B in WW I. Fired the last shot of the war, he said. He had the brass casing around the apartment. I heard later that a lot of artillerymen did that - waited a few minutes after Armistice, then shot off one more, just for the memory.

He pulled out one of my loose teeth once. He said, "come over here, Henry, I just want to have a look." Then yanked it right out, & sat there grinning at me with his big front teeth. O, Grandpa. (He was good at that sort of thing, being an avid fisherman.)

He was City Assessor for Minneapolis for over 30 years. (Probably had to do a lot of fishing around there, too.)

When I interviewed him for my 6th-grade history paper on WW I, he showed me his prayer-book full of shrapnel. His tent had taken a direct hit while he was visiting the latrine.

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