Grandpa Shorty Robison & Sons

Grandpa, Gerald Dawson Robison, aka Shorty, was a very avid outdoorsman, who loved fishing, hunting, and trapping. Grandpa Shorty also loved his children, as you will see by the pictures I post today.
Here is a very nice picture, of Hubert Eugene Robison, youngest son of Grandpa Shorty, and Grandma Lillie Robison. It looks to have been taken in a studio, when they were living in North Bend, Washington. Hubert was born February 4, 1933, in Seiling, Dewey Co., Oklahoma. He died October 8, 1944 in Seattle, King Co., Washington, at little under 11 years old. He was always full of smiles, and was a natural born story teller. He loved to tell tall tales, and play funny jokes. The tragedy is, his life was cut short, by an accident, which I don't think my father, Wesley, or Grandma Lillie, ever got over. It happened on this wise. One day after school, Hubert and a friend, went to play, after school, at Hubert's house, on the Cedar Falls Road. We will never know, if it was Hubert's idea, or if the neighbor kid put him up to it?! What we do know, is that his older brother Wes, (my father), had a kite. This kite instead of having a ball of string, as its flight connection, had instead, a large coil of thin copper wire. (Grandma Lillie never clearly explained, why Wes had his kite rigged like this?!) Anyway, the boys decided to go out and fly this kite, in the field next to the house. In the process of flying, it flew into the high power lines, and electrocuted Hubert very badly. He was rushed to the hospital, and survived the initial accident, but died after having been in the hospital for about a month.

Grandma Lillie always thought, that they gave him the wrong blood, on his final blood transfusion, for he had O negative blood. She said that they were in process of sending him home, when he died. It is hard to say whether this was actual the case, or if the electricity, had too severely damaged his internal organs. At this point, it doesn't matter. The sorrow it must have caused the family, is heartbreaking to even think about. You can see from Hubert's picture, what a happy child he must have been, and the light of grandma's eyes.
Here is a picture, Grandma said was of Wes, and it is a good thing she knew, because it looks very like his younger brother, Hubert. Wes was also given to good humor, and making jokes. He loved his younger brother very much, and the two were an inseparable pair of scamps, always getting into mischief, as active imaginative boys will do.
As I said above, Grandpa Shorty was into outdoor activities, of all kinds. As you can see, he has been off with the boys fishing, or at least he is having them hold the catch.

Grandma told a story, about how the boys, didn't like to fish with their father, because he was so particular about the proper method for fishing, that it spoiled all of their fun. He wouldn't let them tie their own line, or bait their own hooks, or even cast their lines into the water. So basically they got to hold the pole, until a fish got on, then he would take the pole, and set the hook, and barely let them reel in the fish. I'll bet he made them clean the fish tho.

Thank goodness step-dad, Richard, wasn't like that. He knew how to have real fun with kids, and when you went fishing with him, he taught you how to do everything yourself, and was delighted when you caught a fish, all on your own. I can remember, many a happy time, fishing for brook trout, in the creeks at the base of Mt. Si, with him, and the wonderful taste of those fish, we fried up later for supper.

He taught us how to sneak up close to a brush pile, or log in the creek, making sure our shadow was not cast on the water, to scare the fish away. He taught us how to tie line, and put on a small round lead sinker. He taught us how to put a worm on our hook, as well as how to search for native bugs, the fish liked to eat.

One of bugs we often used to fish with, was caddisfly larvae, which we didn't know the name of, so we called them, periwinkles. They lived on the rocks, in the shallows of the streams. They built funny tubes of teeny tiny rocks, around their soft bodies, to protect themselves from would be predators. The trout loved them, as well as the night-crawlers, we dug up from our garden, and barnyard.


Comments

Popular Posts