He taught me to crochet at the age of 6, 7 and 8. I come from a long line of needlewomen and one needleman.
He was a farmer with short, stubby, calloused fingers. Back in the days he was selling Pioneer Seed Corn to his Iowa farmer neighbors, he spent his evenings, summer and winter in his moth eaten recliner and crocheted by the hour. His smooth crochet motions were only broken by spitting tobacco juice into a can because his other constant habit was Copenhagen chew. He would accumulate stacks of his favorite doily pattern. He liked to do this creation in three colors. He would give each one of the farmer's wives a doily and a paring knife with the words "PIONEER" seed corn on it. I have one his doilies and one of knives.
He fell on a filthy tool in his shed and cut himself. He used bag balm on it and never thought anything of it, till gangrene had set in. He had his leg amputated below the knee and his hours in the recliner became his days. He took to yarn then and knitted us kids sweater vests in whatever pattern suited him at the moment.
The man who could stick a twig in the dirt and have it grow, died at age 84, one cold November day when I was nearly 9. Today, I am honoring him by make a doily. Not his "pattern", but one out of a book. He could read on his fourth grade education, but understanding written crochet patterns was out of his depth. His daughter, my now 93-year-old grandmother who was once a teacher, cannot understand them either and she marvels at me being able to reproduce a doily out of text.
Most of my generation in our family can crochet, although I am the only one with his skill and smooth, even work. I learned it by watching my grandma crochet on an afghan. When the phone would ring, she would pop up in the middle of a row. I would sit down while she was talking and finish her row. She would come back, comment on how she THOUGHT she was in the middle, but I guess not.... When I was 13, she caught on and gave me a brass crochet hook that her son, my uncle, had made for Great-grandpa. It is not a very good hook, not for my long fingered slender hands, but it is a treasure. She handed me a box of crochet thread odds and ends purchased from a garage sale, all pink, yellow and white and I was off. I have been crocheting ever since.
Thank you Great-grandpa for the many hours of pleasure you taught me to have!