Horton Forbes Tompkins

Horton Forbes Tompkins - Grandpa

When I was a little kid in the early years of the 1940s, my favorite thing in the entire world was trailing along after my Grandpa like a puppy. Much to the chagrin of my mother and grandmother, all I wanted was go with him on his mysterious trips into the verdant and dense forests that since gave way to the I-95, spanning the East Coast from Florida to Boston.

My grandfather was a Tompkins, a name still seen all over New York State. His family settled in Westchester County, just to the north of the city and fronting on Long Island Sound. Westchester is the home of New Rochelle, founded by the Hugenots and named for their beloved La Rochelle they had to leave for religious freedom. Rye, White Plains, Mamaroneck, and Larchmont are images of suburban housewives meeting the 6:02 from Grand Central Station. It has become a place of sprawling corporate offices, rolling lawns, elegant country clubs, pricey boutiques and homes averaging in the million dollar range, if you can even find one at that price. Annual real estate taxes are now more than the original cost of many of the older homes.

In those long ago days it was considered to be the country and it had been the home of my family for generations. My aunt’s names were emblazoned in brass on the plaques in the middle of Tompkins Square commemorating those who served in the great wars to end all wars.

We had the third vice president of the United States in our lineage. The family went back to the founding fathers, but my sister and I couldn’t be members of the DAR since Pops was Jewish. This was not acceptable in an era when Jews and “vowels” (names ending in vowels were generally Italian or Spanish) were not accepted in polite Anglo-Saxon society. Grandpa couldn’t have cared less. He was something special, an old timer interested in farming, building furniture and houses and playing with his grandchildren. He loved to hunt, fish, and trap, and knew the woods like a Senaca guide.

Westchester was mostly primeval forest then, starting just around the corner from Grandpa's house. He set lines of traps for the multitude of small animals that once filled the dense northeastern forest.

He and I would take off with his big burlap bag, his shotgun and lines of traps. He wore an ancient canvas coat a size or two too large for him, but it had pockets that were filled with strange and mystical implements. He always had a little spade for digging up herbs, wild garlic, fennel and onions. There was a net, knives, metal hooks, bits of string and a large metal spike with a hole at one end he used for tying game. His big pockets could hold grouse, small rabbits or birds. Larger game was tied on the strings and slung over his shoulder or stuffed in the burlap bag. Anything he couldn’t eat was passed by or let go. I remember him sadly stroking the fur of a little kit fox that had blundered into one of his traps. He took the little critter home and skinned it so it wouldn’t be a waste, but he was upset for the rest of the day. He didn’t like to kill for fur, especially the young.

He knew a lot about nature, and I'm sorry I was too young to learn the lessons he tried to teach me. I tagged along for the fun of being with him and held on for dear life to the hem of his big floppy coat. His corncob pipe was firmly tucked into the groove it had worn in his teeth and he would keep up a running commentary around the stem about what we saw as we made our way carefully through the woods. Whatever juices escaped from the pipe when he talked stained his otherwise white handlebar mustache.

There was a hermit’s shack we always passed, and he would tell me time and again the story of how the ancient black man had escaped to the north as a runaway slave. He said the old man came on the underground railroad and I would always wonder where it was. I knew of the aboveground railroad, we picked my father up there when he came home from work. Still fearful of being sent south into slavery, the old man kept to his shack where the locals would drop by and leave milk, canned goods, blankets, sugar and flour and other necessities from time to time. He was harmless, and greeted all who passed, if he knew them, with a friendly smile.

The shotgun was for protection as much as hunting. Grandpa never forgot the time he went out to milk the cows and found a man hiding in the woodpile with a handgun. He made Grandpa take him into the barn where he drank some fresh milk right out of the cow.

After some conversation and putting away the gun, he gained Grandpa’s trust. There were a lot of Italians in the area and this man explained he was from a local family. Grandpa dressed a gunshot wound in his side with herbs and gunpowder, fed him and gave him a bag of food before he sent him on his way. When Grandpa recounted the story, he said the man was a member of the Black Hand Gang who had done something to anger one of the “bosses.” The Black Hand Gang was a competitor of the Mafia in those days. Nevertheless, it was not good for your health to get involved in gang squabbles so the shotgun was “just in case” we met a bear or “something else.” The last said with a meaningful inflection and wink so I knew it meant someone with a black hand who wasn’t a black man.

Grandpa was particularly fond of possum and muskrat. These would be removed carefully from the traps, taken home and skinned. He would take the meat and the herbs he had stuffed in his pockets down to his cellar where he had a little kitchen set-up with a hand pump sink, an old wood stove, his still and his “toys.”

That old stone cellar was his special retreat and we were only allowed there by invitation. It was a real honor to visit and us kids would stand quivering with anticipation as the old green painted double basement doors were lifted to reveal the cellar steps. I would stand at the top of the stairs and smell the vivid perfume of stale wood fires, musty rot, tobacco and damp, mixed with grease and herbs, before being ushered into Grandpa’s lair with its smoke-blackened field-stone walls. A forbidden aura of all those smells always caused a shiver of fear as I descended the steps into the near darkness. Shelves filled with all sorts of odd bottles and jars of herbs, dried “things” and strange looking brews lined the walls. Whenever I read of a wizard or sorcerer in their cave, I picture Grandpa’s lair, nothing could be more mysterious.

There were barrels of apples and potatoes, crocks for pickling and fermenting, all size traps stacked in corners or hung from the ceiling. A miasma of smoke created a constant cloud veiling the fishing poles and nets of various sizes hanging above his head.

He would brew concoctions like dandelion wine, elderberry wine, something I think was a vodka from potatoes, and a foul smelling fermented corn drink. A stone shelf held old mixed odd bottles, all filled with fluid and corked. I was convinced the soft singing and laughing we would hear at night when upstairs with Grandma was brought on by something or other out of those forbidden bottles. I always wanted to explore the mysteries of what he kept on the stone shelf in his cellar and what he had brewed in his still.

His cooking was something else. He loved muskrat and possum stews. There is little I have found in my life smelling worse than what he used to cook. Whenever I hear the word “rank” it immediately brings back Grandpa’s stews. They were greasy, seasoned with the herbs and vegetables he found on our trips and he loved them to distraction. He never had to worry about anyone horning in on his gastronomic chef d'oeuvres. My sister, the cousins and I all fled at the first sniff of Grandpa firing up one of his stews.

He was special to all the family, a man of endless knowledge, love, and patience. The only adult in most of our lives who actually enjoyed us as kids, spending time with us, talking to us and teaching us about life, survival and companionship in his own way, sometimes garbled when he forgot to take out the pipe to speak, but always filled with the pleasure he showed to us. His lap was a prize we cherished when at home. His hand, calloused, hard and strong, always there to guide us through the depths of the forest we explored together, was an introduction to life and the joy one can experience in the company of another. A lesson I silently learned but really never understood until many years and other life lessons later. Thank you Grandpa. I love you, wherever you are.