One of my most prized possessions is a book of poetry written by my great-grandfather — my mother’s mother’s father. His first name was Stidger, but I don’t know whether anyone actually used it. Mom and her sisters called him “Granddaddy Wise” (Wise was his last name), and they adored him. With his white mustache and goatee, he looked like Buffalo Bill and was, by all accounts, quite a character.

Granddaddy Wise was an “old country doctor” in Parkersburg, West Virginia, driving his horse and buggy into the countryside to treat his remote rural patients, and being paid in chickens and produce as often as in cash. Throughout his adult life, he wrote what he called “rhymes,” and these verses reflect his experiences. He used dialect to bring to life the Germans, African Americans, Italians, and other people he encountered in the course of his medical practice. His subject matter ranges from pastoral imaginings to moral musings to cautionary tales about car accidents, premarital sex (Beware the spirochete!), alcohol, and most especially tobacco.

That Demon Tobacco

In his medical practice, Granddaddy Wise saw many cancers of the mouth and throat and lungs and eventually came to attribute them to the widespread use of tobacco in its various forms. He kept an album of rather gruesome photographs of some of these cases — my aunt has this — and he wrote many rhymes warning of the dangers of cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Here’s a short one:

Cigarette

Fie! Cigarette! Thou foe to health!!
Destruction of the young man’s wealth!
No more vile fumes from man arise!
‘Twould seem some demon’s paradise
Had thus been robbed of its fairest charms,
Which he embraced with open arms.
When once embraced — held in its vice,
It plays with men like cats with mice.
And when they struggle to be free,
It laughs, with hellish ecstasy!!!

Not surprisingly, Granddaddy Wise was unhappy to learn that his eldest granddaughter’s husband was a smoker — something my father only revealed after the wedding — and he tried very hard to persuade Dad of the health hazards of smoking. Dad eventually quit when I was born, and our family folklore explains how this came about. He and Mom made a deal: he would quit smoking, if she would rub his head for an hour every night for a year. She did — and he did!

Rhymes

Toward the end of his life, Granddaddy Wise bound his collected verse into three books, one for each of his granddaughters. I am lucky enough to have custody of my mom’s copy. It consists of more than 150 typewritten sheets, some of these carbon copies in blurry blue, many typed on his professional stationery, and some with his elegant copperplate signature at the bottom. Here and there additional sheets have been glued in or simply tucked between other pages. He even made an index!

The Bear and the Skunks

I have read through my copy, and my intention is to publish some of his poetry here. It seems fitting to begin with what was undoubtedly his most famous rhyme — famous in our family, that is. Here it is, very slightly edited to update Granddaddy’s idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation:

Three Little Skunks

A skunk was on the mountain — she and her babies three;
All playing at a fountain, as happy as could be;
When a bear came up behind them, to frighten them away;
The Mother, to remind them, said, “Children, let us spray!”

Well, she had a sense of humor – in fact, she was quite wise;
She said, “Watch me, and never spray till you see the white of their eyes.”
She arranged her skunks in a crescent — their heads were slightly bowed,
Their tails turned up to Heaven — and then, that awful cloud.

Well he turned ten somersaults backward — he stood upon his head,
He made a whirligig on his nose, and this is what he said: WOOF!

Then he said to a friend in a casual way,
“What’s the hottest thing in the world today?”
Whereupon the friend replied, “Hell’s Fire!”
And the bear very promptly called him a liar!
Because, if you’re caught with a skunk in a very tight place,
You will pray for Hell’s Fire, just to cool off your face.

S.D.H. Wise (Parkersburg, West Virginia, 1936)

Here’s a toast to Great-Granddaddy Wise and other such “characters,”
who in all their quirks are fully true to themselves.

Connections

• Skunk photo reference from Animal Facts Encyclopedia: Skunk Facts