Some Observations from the Hill
by Hub Brown

 One time shortly before the US got involved in the first World War, our Grandpa Burgess was asked to go and visit his adopted daughter. As kids, we always called the couple that had raised our mother "Grandpa and Grandma" even though they were no relation Our mother's father had been killed when a sawmill boiler, which had been condemned twice, blew up and killed him and another worker. Our grandmother had three small girls at the time and the Burgesses who were childless but had adopted a little girl. They never adopted our mother, but raised her as their own.

 As a young man, Grandpa had been involved in an accident with a team of horses and a load of hay. The team ran away, he was thrown to the ground, and the wagon wheel ran over his leg, breaking it. When they set it, they didn't get it right and the ends of the bones healed without joining, so that for the rest of his life he wore a heavy metal brace and had to have the heel and sole of the shoe on that side built up a couple inches. He was always in pain and was limited to doing gardening and taking care of some of the neighbors' furnaces. He was janitor of the Baptist Church and when Grandma died and he had to go to Berwick, he asked Dad and Mom to move into his house in town. When he had to leave, the folks thought Bob and I should take over his job of janitor of the church. This was different from any thing we had ever done, for Dad always took care of the fires at home. Grandpa had to leave right away so he didn't have time to break us in to our new jobs.

 We started in when the weather was warm so the matter of heat was no problem. When the weather began to get cool he would build a wood fire to warm the church for services and Sunday school. When the weather got colder he had to keep a coal fire going all the time. Must be we weren't the firemen that Grandpa was for when we wanted to warm up the building, it would smell like we were going to smoke some hams or bacon. Neither of us had watches so we would wait til we'd hear the bell in the Methodist Church ring then we would dash in and ring our bell. 

 At Christmastime, some kindly soul had donated a big round pine tree. It was more tree than we could handle so we straightened it up a little in the corner and left it there. We cut off some of the lower branches to hide the trunk with and also the fact that there was no stand. Some of the ladies knew where the trimmings were and they trimmed the lower part of the tree that they could reach. We draped some ribbons on the tree and tossed some balls and toys above that. There were no rich people that belonged to that church. Bob and I each received $4 a month for our services so no one was too picky. Besides every one of them thought too much of Grandpa to complain.