Grandpa Alexander was not the type to hug all over and kiss all
over you, but my siblings and I knew he loved us; I get warm fuzzies just
thinking about him. He was well known in
the community for his kindness and his adult-sized tricycle. He would ride it around town in the various
communities running errands, mostly, for my grandmother, Adele (Anderson) Summons.
My grandfather migrated to Baltimore around 1946 in search
of construction work to continue to support his wife and three sons. Alexander
made the trek up to Maryland by
himself, then he sent for my grandmother; she left the children in
Virginia. Before leaving Virginia
grandma sent my one uncle to Philadelphia to live with her sister Ophelia Anderson, and my dad and his
brother Carlton Summons were left
with my grandmother’s parents James and
Cornelia (Anderson) Towles in Goochland, Virginia. After my grandparents secured a place to live
they sent for my dad (he was about eight years old) and Carlton, the youngest
brother came later to Baltimore.
My encounters with my grandfather were at his home on Duncan
Street in Baltimore. Grandpa would give
us a loving pat on the head and ask us how we were doing. The conversations were not long since he was
either fixing dinner or going outside for a smoke in the backyard. I do not know what possessed us to do this,
but we would poke around their house looking for nothing in particular. My grandparents had a homemade bar-stand at
the bottom of the steps leading upstairs.
In our searching, we found our grandpa’s Lucky Strikes stash. He rushed to instruct us to not tell my
grandmother about his hiding place; this makes me chuckle as I think about it.
To a fault, my grandmother kept a clean house. My mom kept a clean house, but grandma’s was
SUPER clean. I watched my grandfather
prepare himself a plate of food for dinner; he would have to roll back the
layers of covering on the dinner table which included the clear plastic and
tablecloths. He then had to put
newspaper on the table to catch crumbs that fell from his plate. He was so meticulous, grandma trained him well.
Grandpa was much like the rest of my older relatives, they
never spoke about family. I had no idea
that his father (Monroe) was still living up to 1970.
I had a conversation with my oldest brother about three
years ago. I am speaking to him with all
this excitement about my ancestry finds, telling him about my great-grandfather
Monroe, then my brother breaks in and states that he met him. I look at my brother cross-eyed and asked, “How
long have I known you and you are just telling me this?” My brother went with my dad down to Richmond,
Virginia to Monroe’s funeral in the summer of 1970.
Grandpa Alexander was the ONLY grandfather I had the
pleasure to know because my mother’s dad died in 1954 before I was born. As I look back, Grandpa Alexander died too
soon in 1987; I needed more time to get to know such a KIND man.
