GRANDPA STRAIGHT

My Great Grandpa, Francis Marion Straight, came to live with us when I was three years old and stayed until his death in 1938. He was a veteran of the Civil War, having enlisted at St. Louis, Missouri, in the 23rd Missouri Infantry, Company E, at the tender age of 17. I have vivid memories of him. He wasn’t very tall but stood ramrod straight. He had a beard and goatee. His hair was pure white. His eyesight was failing which caused him to do some funny things.
The house was lacking most of the paint and the rusty nail heads on the siding were easy to see. Grandpa would sit on the porch, raise his trusty fly swatter, Whack the nail head and exclaim, "I got ‘im"! He would also get ahold of the hoe and proceed to the garden where any thing he approached was a weed. Grandma had to replant vegetables a lot. He received a government pension for his wartime service. He chewed Sweet Mist chewing tobacco and smokee cigars. One time he sent my Sister and I downtown to get him tobacco and cigars and told us to also bring him some candy. We got the right tobacco and the right cigars but messed up by bringing him BB Bats, a candy on a stick which melted and stuck to your teeth.. He got the sucker stuck in the few teeth he had and Carolyn and I weren’t very popular with him for awhile.
As I look back, the fact that I knew and could talk to someone who was there about the Civil war was an education in itself. I can still see him, sitting in the living room, my Grandpa Abbott on the drum and my Aunt on the piano, playing Civil War songs like Marching Through Geoirgia and Tramp, Tramp,Tramp the boys are marching and others while Grandpa Straight would tap his can in time to the music.