My Grandfather Woodward

Put barbed wire on his front porch steps to keep people from coming to his front door.

Would shoot neighbor’s cats when cats entered his yard.

Once tackled a milkman early in the morning as he cut across my grandfather’s yard to make a delivery to another customer. In those days,  milk was delivered in glass bottles to your doorstep from milk trucks.

Mowed his yard with a rotary push mower (no motor involved) while in his 70s.

Never drove a car to my knowledge.

Was a very good horseman. Once saved my mother when a horse she was riding bolted when it heard thunder and ran away with her. He rode along side and grabbed the reins halting the horse. My great Uncle Joe was not so lucky. He was killed when a horse he was riding was spooked by thunder and lighting and threw him with Uncle Joe’s foot ending up caught in the stirrup. He was dragged through an area filled with tree stumps and died of head injuries.

 Once , my grandfather was told by a city bus driver to move along faster as he boarded. When  someone told him later that the bus driver was a light skinned black man, my grandfather  boarded the bus the next time with a pistol and threatened to shoot the driver if he tried to hurry him ong agai Planted a number of cedar trees in the front yard (1511 Winyah Drive, Columbia SC) and named each of them after a grandchild.

 Kept a pot on the gas cooking stove with vegetables simmering in it. Would go through his garden picking out beans, peppers, etc and toss them into the pot from time to time.

Once in his youth my GF got into an argument about the score of a baseball game that had just concluded. When the other party called him a liar, my GF told him he would have to kill him and went to get his gun. A relative managed to beat him home and packed a suitcase for him. When he arrive to get the gun, he was taken away and shortly put on a train to VA to stay with relatives until the matter was forgotten and he could return without having to kill the man who called him a liar.

WhilewewereColumbia, SC airport one  day, he told me he had  helped take the Kitty Hawk off a railroad car when it was brought to SC to demonstrate powered flight. He was still alive when we reached the moon though he never believed the moon walk was real.

 

 

 

 

   He was a policeman for the city of Columbia back when police walked a beat. His beat was around the University of SC campus and Maxey Gregg Park. He later was a SC state  prison guard.

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