Dave Wood

Last week I revealed that I discovered my great grandpa’s 57 years of diaries, but found them not very revealing of his character, so resolved to discover his acquaintances still alive who knew him and remembered something about what he was really like.

I began with his nephew in New York City, Clark Getts, who became famous as a journalist in Asia, married prominent wildlife photographer Osa Johnson and later became a publicist for Winston Churchill. Miraculously he wrote me a very long letter, which I’ll quote from: 

“Space science, then dominated by the Pharoahs and Galileo, fascinated him and he tried to stretch our minds around the universe and to explain what is now called the Big Bang. As for the earth itself, what could be a more tantalizing or useful study? If you wonder, Dave lectured us at school one day, how mountains, now 12,000 feet high, once under the sea and hundreds of millions old, came to be.

“’Here is a possibility.’ Dave drew from his pocket a big red apple. ‘Now hold this up to the fire for a few minutes and you know what happens. Ridges and valleys rise and fall…it makes you dizzy, but also enables you to appreciate what the Divine has done.’”

Next on my list was Joe Emerton, who always talked to me as the old man’s namesake. He obliged me with a meticulous note, which I’ll quote in full:

“When I started teaching in Whitehall in 1923, your great grandfather was an old man, more than eighty, I’d guess. But he was always up and around at his ‘office’ downtown. And he liked to talk, or, more accurately, to argue. Most of all he liked mathematics. I was trained as an industrial arts teacher but was also required to teach algebra, which I knew rather well. Nevertheless, once in a while a student would bring in a problem I couldn’t solve. So, after school I’d go downtown and look up Dave Wood. And he’d always come up with the answer. Only problem was he had never heard of Algebra!”

Next came my grandmother Martha Johnson Wood, who was still alive when I was researching her father-in-law. Grandma, as usual, had plenty to say, but one story stood out:

“When I married your grandpa in 1906 and moved into the Wood home, let me tell you that was quite an adjustment to make! You see my Pa, Charlie Johnson, was a Swede immigrant and an atheist to boot. And when he got going, you could hear him all over Hale Township. About a month after we were married, Dave and his wife Mary invited Ma and Pa to Sunday dinner. It was real ritzy—Haviland China, white table cloth, everything. And a typical Yankee dinner--mostly vegetables, little meat and no ost [ cheese] for Pa. Dave kept passing platter after platter to Pa, and Pa just passed them on, never took a spoonful of lettuce, beet greens, chard or parsley. Finally, Dave said to Pa: Mr. Johnson, are you feeling indisposed?” “I feel fine;” Pa replied. “But you’re not eating anything—

“’I’m not a goddamned COW,’ he growled. I guess I should be glad Pa didn’t wear his barn clothes to the party.”

Last week, I mentioned that I later discovered the diaries of Dave’s second son Jim Wood. Jim’s uncle, Elmer Wood, a retired accountant living in St. Paul obliged me with a letter about his uncle that revealed a lot about the Wood family’s relationship as the offspring grew to manhood:

“Grandma and Grandpa Wood were quite a pair. They went to church three or four times a week. So did my parents. Jim never went to church as an adult. When I was twelve, I quit attending. It just wasn’t for me and none of them ever held it against me. I guess they thought it was my decision. They weren’t like some of your holier than thou types running around today….Anyway, Jim, a rugged farmer and carpenter married his grade school classmate Olive Tull, a really elegant lady, a music teacher, a hell of a mismatch I guess, but I’ll say one thing for Jim and Ollie: they ran the only Wood household where you could get a good drink of whiskey.  And Ollie smoked cigarettes!”   arold ood, my own father