My grandparents will always hold a very special place in my heart. Everybody else called them Hopie and Gladys, but to us, they were Granddaddy and Grandmother. (She was always Mother to her children and Grandmother to her grandchildren — never Grandma).

Granddaddy always tried to keep us well-behaved by threatening to whip us with a razor strop he kept hanging on the back porch. He would say: “Now, don’t you kids be climbing on that sycamore tree out there in the backyard or I’ll have to take that razor strop to you.”

He’d point at it hanging up there on a nail and we’d nod our heads, knowing all the time that we’d be right back out there playing in it as soon as he was out of sight.

My daddy always claimed Granddaddy used that razor strop on him every day of his life whether he needed it or not. You see, Daddy was the oldest one in the family and he said he always got the blame for everything that happened. He said his younger sisters especially seemed to love getting him in trouble. Their favorite saying seemed to be: “Clarence did it; Clarence did it.”

Granddaddy was a farmer and he also trained hunting dogs. It seemed like men were always coming to his house from out of town so he could take them on a hunting trip. Of course since that was before the days of fast food, there were always several extra mouths for my grandmother to have to feed at lunchtime. I’m sure over the years she had learned a few tricks on how to stretch food out so it could feed more people. After all, she had seven children to feed, so she was experienced at doing it.

When I was a teenager though, I was really surprised to see Grandmother use a boxed cake mix when she was cooking for some of those hunters. That cake mix was a modern convenience I had not expected my grandmother to use. Somehow she managed to make it taste just like homemade.

Looking back now I wish I had learned a whole lot more about cooking from her while I had the chance. My husband has always told me that he sure wishes I had learned how to make her deer hash because it sure was mighty good.

Granddaddy didn’t work too well with “new-fangled gadgets” as he liked to call them. I can remember when Grandmother wanted to have a bathroom put inside their house. Granddaddy just did not want to have that done. My soft-spoken grandmother just went right ahead and hired somebody to come in and do it.

For any of you out there who ever had to use an outdoor “johnny,” you know why the rest of the family was thrilled to have indoor plumbing when we went to visit Grandmother’s house!

I’ll be honest with you though, I don’t believe Granddaddy ever took a bath in that bathtub. Instead, he still took a bath down in the branch behind their house. I can remember my brothers and myself taking large rocks and making a dam in that branch of water. That was one gift we gave Granddaddy that he really made use of and the rest of us also used — that nice, deep pool of water to paddle around in.

Another “new-fangled gadget” that Granddaddy didn’t want in his house was that little black box that people called a television set. Again, Grandmother just went ahead and got one anyway. After Granddaddy discovered wrestling on that little black box; however, we didn’t hear any more complaining from him about it. He would have that TV turned up so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think, much less hear anything else anybody else said in the same room with it.

He would also yell instructions to the wrestlers, but they never seemed to listen. None of us ever had the heart to tell him that wrestling was rigged. Anyway, it was way too much fun to watch him watch them!

Sometimes I sort of realize how Granddaddy felt “back in the day.” It seems that there are “new-fangled gadgets” being introduced almost daily. There are smartphones and then even smarter phones that leave us dummies in the dust.

It’s a sure sign that you are getting old when your grandchildren have to show you how to use all this modern technology and you still can’t seem to be able to use it!

Azalea R. Bolton is a resident of Richmond County and a member of The Story Spinners of Laurinburg, Richmond County Historical Society and the Richmond County Writers Club.