The "A Visit to Grandpap's Cellar" Story

It was an ordinary day. Carol and I were visiting my Grandpap who lived at 617 S. Prince Street. This is the same Grandpap that took me to Root's Sale many times when I was young and always brought me back with a new box of animals. Learned a lot about life from the animals as well as responsibility and budgeting time. Grandpap is my mother's father. The whole family was showing up today for chicken corn soup, his speciality. He always used yellow corn with small kernels. Went to market to buy the chicken and always purchased extra chicken fat to make the broth extra tasty. Any worms in the corn added, if nothing else, something to talk about. But, the best part of our visit to Grandpaps' was the trip to his wine cellar. Down the open wooden steps in the kitchen to the dirt floor in the cellar. He had two rooms in the cellar, separated with a thick cement wall with a big wooden door. There was one window in the one room, none in the other. Dark as can be in the one side of the cellar. That is where all the wine jugs were located. Wooden shelves supported with wooden braces. Grandpap made wine from peaches, wild cherries, dandelion, and rose petals. And he usually did it while wearing a tie. His entire backyard was covered with rose bushes. I often thought he loved flowers, but it seems he raised the roses for the wine. Always enjoyed catching Japanese beetles in his yard as a kid. He had huge crocks in the cellar that he would fill with the fruit or petals, add tons of sugar and water, put the cork on the crock, label it with the date and contents and wait. Sometimes for years. After time, he would siphon the clear liquid from the crocks into 5 gal. bottles. All this was in a small room in his cellar. It was packed! And tasty. Carol and I loved his taste testing sessions in his cellar. He would open a jug, put a small rubber hose in the jug, suck on one end until the wine entered his mouth and then fill the glass for us. They all had a delicious sweet flavor to them. Best part of our visits to Grandpap's house. One time we heard a pop in the cellar and discovered that one of the crocks had exploded. After he died, all the wine was poured down the drain in the kitchen. Everyone was afraid of what might happen if you drank the stuff, not knowing what was in all the crocks and jugs. I always loved my visits to 617 S. Prince. I lived there with my mom for the first year of my life while my dad was in the service and never outgrew my love of Grandpap and his house. And his chicken corn soup was fabulous. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - photo shows my Grandpap, William Cochran in the front row, far left. His mother is the 3rd from the left and all the rest are his brothers and sisters. I carry his name as my middle name. Some say I have a resemblance to him and his brothers.