My grandfather's name was Louis Albert Frank. I never met the man, but my mother described him as fastidious, an immaculate dresser who wore neatly tailored suits, Stetson hats and Douglas shoes - two quality clothing brands of 1900.
She said he held his lithe frame ramrod straight giving many people the impression that he was taller than his five feet nine inches. His slim body was crammed full of nervous energy. He was always on the move. Most called him Bert; Mom referred to him as “Pop“. He played the guitar, sang railroad songs, and could be charming. But the man was an enigma. Bert was literate and capable, possessing qualities we associate with success. “Pop” repeatedly displayed traits of an unprincipled scoundrel.
He had “Spells”. That’s what Mom called them. He was mean when they occurred, often beating my grandmother and terrorizing Mom and her two older brothers. The “spells”, usually associated with booze, came without warning; one moment he would be light and jovial, the next, dark and sinister. His erratic actions set the family on an emotional edge. His children grew up fearing him.
When Bert was about twenty he started hoboing. A hobo was an itinerate laborer, usually a male, who often hitched rides on trains. The term became popular in the late 1800’s when many were riding trains, but not all were paying - they were hoboes. Most of the time he traveled with his cousin Buddy Austin, or a friend named Howard Boner. On several occasions Bert jumped trains to Texas, worked the fields at harvest time, and moved north as the crops matured.
The railroads considered hoboes to have reached infestation levels by the turn of the century, and hired private security agents to keep them off the trains. The hoboes called them “Bulls”. One of them cornered Bert and his friend, Howard as they got off a train in Texas. The “Bull” carried a heavy railroad lantern that he used as a weapon, swinging it at their heads, and sending them to the hospital. Howard was a member of a family that could afford to have a silver plate placed in his skull. Pop didn’t receive special treatment, and folks wondered if the beating had anything to do with his crazy "spells".
Bert was born in Pendleton County, Kentucky in 1881. He was the middle of five children, three brothers and an sister second in line. His father, a French-Canadian named George Albert Frank, came into the county in about 1870. Family tradition held that George Albert was born in Strasbourg, France in 1849, immigrated to Canada with his family in 1855, and drifted south when he was a young man.
Mom possessed only a vague memory of him. Her old brother, my Uncle Charlie, said he had a full white beard, and wore a narrow brimmed hat that had a deep furrow lengthwise on top. He ran the Licking River ferry in Catawba. Mom claimed he spoke and wrote five languages, but she couldn't say which ones they were. She remembered him as brooding - a silent man with little to say. In those days children did not speak unless spoken to, and I expect Grandfather Frank had little to say, especially to a five year old girl.
Bert’s' mother, Mary I. Austin, was a local woman. Mom didn't remember much about her but Uncle Charlie said she was, “a mean old woman", and he never liked her. Her father, Henry Austin, born in about 1810, wandered into Kentucky in the 1830’s from Virginia. He appeared in the 1840 US Census as living in Fayette County, and was married to a Kentucky woman, Louisa Blanderham. By 1850 they had moved to Harrison county where Mary I. was born. The family had settled in Pendleton County by 1860.
Most people lived on farms, few had more than a couple years education. Grandma attended through the 3rd grade. There were probably no books other than the Bible in her home, and the family couldn’t afford them anyway. One didn't need much education to do farm work, and there were no electric lights to make it easier to read or study, or do much of anything after dark. It was a different type of life, simpler, but neither easier nor more difficult than now.
GO TO: Part 3b, Grandfather Bert Frank
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