Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines

REMEMBERING PAPA
by Louise Dubrule

Years ago, the magazine “Reader’s Digest” had articles entitled “My Most Unforgettable Character.” Every month featured a different person whose story was told by a friend or family member. The magazine no longer carries these selections in their modern issues, and that is a shame for I would have submitted my own article. Instead, I would like to share this with you, for these things shouldn’t be forgotten.

My father, Ovide Joseph Philippon, was born in 1900 in Norte Dame de Beauce, the oldest son of the union of Victor and his second wife, Delina. Papa was, first and foremost, a farmer. He grew up learning from his father, and there was no doubt that he would follow in his steps. When the family moved to Berkshire, Vermont and established a new homestead, Papa was 19 and a grown man who pulled his own weight on the family farm.

As a farmer and farmer’s son, he knew about horses and was known to trade horses often, trying to find the perfect team. I remember the big dappled gray Percherons coming in from the fields, and if Papa sat me on one of them as they headed to the spring to drink, I felt as though I was on a mountain. Papa’s pride was a sleek Morgan mare that pulled the sleigh in the winter and a small buggy in the summer. One snowy winter evening, when Papa was totally lost in the white landscape, he gave the mare her head and she took them safely home where she knew a stall and hay awaited her. She got an extra measure of oats that time. Papa also raced the Morgan on the racetracks beside the Mississquoi River in Richford.

Papa kept up with the times. When the automobile became more popular, Ed Lariviere, who owned the only garage in Richford at the time, came to the farm with a Model T Ford. He convinced Victor that a car was a good investment. By then, Papa was a married man with a young son, and his younger brother Emile was 17. Ed left the car on approval, and the two brothers took turns driving around the farm and down the half mile or so to the country road, all the while learning how to operate the pedals and gears. Sale made! A few years late, they upgraded to a newer Ford. Then Ed brought out a Studebaker, a behemoth 9 passenger model. Papa found it very large and very strange, and he took it out for a long drive, finally ending up in Richford. When he pulled up in Ed’s garage yard, Papa told Ed that other drivers must have sensed his unease with the new car because they all gave him wide berth. Ed laughed long and hard and said, “You poor fool! You took up the whole road.” Sure enough, the back doors, which opened from the middle post back,, were standing wide like jug ears. Later, his brother Emile drove that Studebaker into a ditch and managed to rip its roof completely off. After that, Papa became a Chevrolet man.

Papa could be impulsive. In 1929, Papa took some surplus sweet corn to Richford to sell because they needed sugar for home canning and jam-making. After selling the corn at the farmer’s market, he passed an auction at a store on River Street. Papa got caught up in the excitement of the bidding and he purchased an impressive mantel clock for $1.25. He returned home, proud of his purchase, but without the sugar the women were waiting for. While today that amount doesn’t seem like much, at that time $1 was the going wage for a full day’s work. No wonder he got such a chilly reception! Mama took a great and instant dislike for the clock and refused to have anything to do with it. One of my earliest memories is of Papa winding the clock every Saturday night. The clock sat on the top of the china cabinet and kept the hours faithfully. When Papa died in 1967, Mother gladly sold the clock to the first person to offer her money for it. It took me several years to track it down as it changed hands, and I bought it back to keep it in the family. My husband hand-carried it back through all the airport changes from Vermont to El Paso, Texas, where the clocks still ticks proudly. Not bad for such a modest investment, and the one-year warranty sticker is still on the back panel.

The family farm was nearly a subsistence farm, and they grew or made nearly everything, including wine. I remember elderberry and dandelion wines for sure. This was just for family consumption, and an occasional bottle was given to a friend or relative. There was a hired hand who coveted the wine and asked if he could get a bottle as part of his wages, and a bargain was struck. That meant that less of the scanty cash was going out. At some point, the hired man became angry at someone or something, and he reported the wine to the authorities. Since this was during Prohibition, the authorities were very interested and hauled Papa into court. Pleading ignorance of the law and language didn’t cut it. Papa paid a fine and promised to cease and desist. My guess is that the enterprise continued but it was kept very quiet.

Papa was good at seeing the big picture, but sometimes the little details escaped him. The nearest doctor was in Richford, but there were yearly clinics in Berkshire Center where the farmers could take their children for checkups and smallpox vaccinations. When my sister Simone was little, he took her for the obligatory visit, and when she had been seen by the doctor, he took her home. Mama was shocked to see that Simone was not wearing her own clothes and demanded to know why this was the case. Simone explained that she tried to tell the people at the clinic, but nobody understood the French she spoke, so she had no choice but to put on what they gave her, even though the dress and shoes were too big. Papa sheepishly confessed that he hadn’t noticed, and he took Simone back to get her own things.

Papa could be practical when the situation demanded it. My brother John worked as hard as any man before and after school, and he and Papa delighted in going fishing. As a reward for his work, for his birthday, John received a pair of hip boots that he had admired. That year the family made a trip to the Lac St. Jean region so Mama could visit her own family. John took those boots along, sure that he would get a chance to use them on outings with his Levesque cousins and uncles. As luck would have it, the fishing expeditions were in canoes or boats or from bridges, so the boots never entered the picture. On the return trip to Berkshire, the cash began to run out. Papa stopped for gas and was able to trade his watch for a thankful of gas. That wasn’t quite enough to get them home, and when they stopped for gas again, the attendant wanted cash. Papa offered a check, which was refused, and he’d already parted with his watch. The attendant asked what else Papa had to trade, and when he spotted John’s still-new hip boots, he figured that those were worth a tankful. Papa apologized to John, but the boots were left behind and were never replaced.

In the fall of 1941, Papa’s health deteriorated from the constant irritation to his lungs from hay chaff, animal dander, and all manner of weeds. He sold out his half of the farm to his brother Emile and we moved to Richford into a three bedroom house that he purchased for $2000 cash. Wonders of wonders, this house had running water and electricity. No more buckets from the spring, no more kerosene lamps, no more chamber pots. Papa took a job at the Sweat Comings factory where he learned to operate a machine that made tenons for fine maple furniture. It was a hard adjustment for a man accustomed to the solitude and quiet of the country, but he had a family to support and he was determined to make the best of it.

Papa was mostly self-educated. His formal schooling wasn’t more than six years, and probably less. Nevertheless, he wrote perfect textbook French and became the recording secretary for the St. Jean Baptiste Society. His ability with math allowed him to figure out if his paycheck from the factory was correct, and he could add great columns of numbers in his head. When I was learning fractions in school, he showed me how he dealt with them. It was totally different from what I was learning, but he was faster and more accurate than I was.

Papa was a bit of a promoter. He learned English by listening to the radio, and he read the weekly newspaper carefully. Until I started school, I spoke only French but I learned to sing the song “Paper Doll” from the radio that played on the table by his chair. Of course, I didn’t understand the words, but I could certainly parrot them. For quite a while, Papa delighted in showing me off. I clearly remember standing on the kitchen table in Barnston, Quebec, singing the song for amazed aunts, uncles and cousins….who didn’t understand a word either!

Papa could make friends with anyone. We had one uncle, Henri, married to Papa’s sister. Henri had suffered from a great fever as a young man, and as a result he was totally hairless all over his body. He had two wigs: a nice brown one for “best” and a black horsehair one for everyday. However frightening a man he was, it was not his appearance that turned people off; he was also a periodic drunk who could be mean when he was on a tear. Papa was able to talk with Uncle Henri and they spent many hours swapping stories. The day came when Uncle Henri went on a real bender and decided that he needed to talk with Ovide. He left his rocky farm near Megantic, Quebec and hired a taxi to take him to Richford, Vermont. Along the way, he fell asleep in the back seat of the cab. When they reached the border the cab driver opened the back door, and Uncle Henri fell out, losing his wig in the process. He slapped it back on and proceeded into the Customs office where the officers, to their everlasting shame, gave him a hard time. Here he was, not close to sober, unable to speak a word of English, and to top it off, he had his wig on backwards. The officers did understand “Ovide Philippon” and they gave Papa a call. Papa not only went to get him, he paid the cab fare and brought Uncle Henri home for a meal and a bed until he was himself again.

Papa was a proud man and took care of his reputation. He also made sure we did nothing to smear the good family name. Discipline was simple. He didn’t raise his voice or his hand, but we knew from his eyes and the set of his jaw when we had reached the limit. His manners were of the old school, and he never failed to lift his fedora when he met someone.

Papa’s pride extended to his appearance, and Papa dressed as well as finances permitted. He had one good suit, but it was always clean and pressed. Photos taken of him in 1924 show him wearing pearl gray spats. His work uniform at Sweat Comings was denim overalls with his Hamilton railroad watch in the bib pocket, and a white dress shirt on which Mama had carefully turned the collars and cuffs. He shaved with a straight razor every morning, and it was magical for me to sit on the commode and watch his face, backwards in the mirror, as he unerringly guided the ivory-handled razor, carefully avoiding the mustache that graced his upper lip. At some point, Papa had an accident at work and broke a couple of bones in his left hand. He went on Workman’s Compensation for a while, and while he wasn’t fit for work, he felt he was well able to go fishing. Now Papa knew all the best spots, and many of them were “posted”, meaning that it was private land. On one of those days, Papa was fishing in a really sweet brook when a sudden rain storm came up and Papa scrambled for the far bank and shelter. He slipped and fell heavily, unable to catch himself with a broken hand. As a result, he came home with a break in the foot on the same side as the damaged hand, rendering a crutch impossible. During the convalescence, Papa paid a visit to Oscar Metevier, the one-legged barber on Main Street. Papa leaned back while Oscar lathered his face and nearly fell asleep until Oscar asked , “You didn’t want to keep the mustache, did you?” By then, half of it was gone, so there was no turning back. Papa came home with a clean upper lip, and it was a great shock to me and Mama. He never let it grow back.

Papa was a good provider. Even when Papa was no longer on the farm, the farmer in him didn’t die. In Richford he kept a large garden and grew all the vegetables we could possibly use. We picked berries of all kinds while Papa was fishing, and we collected wind-fall apples in the fall. The cellar was a veritable treasury of jars, shining like jewels, and the root cellar held the potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and squash. The only canned item I ever saw Mama buy was fruit cocktail for a company dessert.

Papa was a sentimental and emotional man. He figured that if a handshake was good, a hug was better. If a hug was good, a kiss was better, even if the recipient was a cousin who was a nun. New Year’s Day meant that his children asked for his blessing. He was sure to be in Church for the rites of the various seasons. He resigned from one fraternal organization when he learned that their insurance company didn’t cover pregnant women. He was totally entranced by his little grandchildren who could speak English without an accent. He kept all the greeting cards sent to him.

 

John, Simone and I had a reunion in October of this year, the first time the three of us had been under one roof in 12 years. We spent lovely hours, sharing stories with each other and with three of John’s children who joined us. It was agreed that Papa had been a remarkable man. I wish you all could have met him.

 

 

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