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My grandmother Lilian kept fairly good records of her time here on Earth. They’re spotty, but there’s enough information to patch together a sense of her life. I know she was lonely. There’s plenty of entries that state just that. I also know she loved her family and us grandchildren, dearly and deeply. She missed her sisters and hated that my grandfather had to travel to worksites all over the North East staying in boarding houses or renting apartments.

I read through her diary’s emblazoned with 1941 and 1943 on their covers only to discover that she used those same two notebooks to document events that not only occurred during WWII but well into the 1950’s. Her frugality famous born from living through the Great Depression, she couldn’t bring herself to purchase new diaries as long as there were empty space into which to write in her current one. “Waste not, want not” was a common phrase in her household. Her WWII entries speak to shortages and rationing, as well as concern for our troops – even the Russians as the Nazi’s closed in on them in 1941.

I discovered that those empty spaces in her diaries were there because she went through periods where she wrote nothing at all, entire years even. Then there would be a flurry of entries about weather, canning vegetables, how many ice fish my grandfather caught and what he sold them for, her missed trips to church as well as my grandfather’s hunting trips. One endearing entry about driving all the way to L.L.Bean in Freeport, Maine (a five hour drive one way) to buy my Uncle Ted a pair of those famous north country staples, Bean Boots. They didn’t have his size in stock. Imagine. Life without Amazon Prime.

I also learned that sinus issues, asthma and allergies are a family heirloom that I share with my grandfather and father and have passed along down to my son. Funny because I was always told it came from my mother’s side.

The photos help fill in a lot of blanks in her story. Like the one above. I have no idea who Gary is, who Hildegarde is and can only assume that the Lanes Formen home was one of the places my grandfather stayed while he worked for Lanes Construction back in the 50’s. I think he was a foreman. Anyway, I sure look like a happy 4 year old. I know I thought my grandmother hung the moon. I still do.

I put my American flag out this morning, as I always do on National Holidays. I was thinking that this holiday, along with July 4th, as being one of the most appropriate times to display the Stars and Bars to show our gratitude to those who have put their lives aside to honor and protect it and us. We owe a lot to our veterans, those living and dead. I heard over the weekend that only 1% of the U.S. population is serving or has served in our nation’s armed forces. I’d like to thank all for their service. Some in popular wars. Some in unpopular wars. Some volunteered. Some were drafted. Thanks to you all.

It took three one week trips to clean and clear out the old house at 5 Bigelow Road in Westport over the past year. My brother Bruce and his son Kyle were there for the first week, I was solo for the second and my wife Kim with me for this third and final trip. Being vacant may or may not have caused the kitchen sink to burst and the 4 inch copper septic pipe to corrode and crack which led to a flooded basement. I swept, wet-vacuumed and fan-dried all to a satisfactory state. Kim packed up clothes and emptied and organized the file cabinet. We found the family silver(plate), Galen’s State quarter-dollar collection and several rifles, one a 100+ year old “gallery-style” Model 1906 Winchester .22 caliber repeater. From it’s age I suspect it once belonged to a youthful Theodore Roosevelt Bigalow.

Clearing out the old tools from the basement with local handy man and contractor John Sprague we also discovered a hidden metal box packed with Dad’s Korea-era Army insignia, nudie cards, dice, military pay script, spent bullets and casings. Pretty funny actually. Great job of hiding it from three sons while they grew through puberty.

There were at least another 100+ oil paintings that had been taken off their stretcher bars, rolled up, and numbered with descriptions. We carefully packed them up into bins purchased at the Ticonderoga Walmart, as well as an entire bureau dresser drawer full of labeled and cataloged photographs, many corresponding to the rolls of paintings. All of that now resides in off-site storage here in Atlanta. I have plans (and hopes) of unrolling and photographing all to post on this site should anyone be interested in owning an original Galen Bigelow in the future.

We also packed up the remaining stretched and barn-wood framed oil paintings in the house. We gifted the large historical copy paintings Dad did for practice to the folks who helped us empty the place. Hopefully the contract for sale will go through this week and the proceeds go towards my mother’s assisted living expenses here in Atlanta.

We were surprised (and pleased, albeit with mixed emotions) to discover that the old farmhouse had been demolished with mother nature retaking the property quickly. The place had stood for 200+ years and in recent years had been slowly decomposing, housing feral cats. Ruth was the last of the clan to live there. In less than a year it is now a mound of grass and stone, with little to no evidence of the 50+ Bigalow souls who farmed the land, raised live stock, bridled horses, rigged farm equipment, rode in carriages and sleighs, hunted venison, ice fished on the lake, canned vegetables for the long winters, drank Port and Canadien Rye, cut and stacked firewood, cuddled in the cold and slept for over two centuries.

My dad loved to garden in the Spring and Summer and oil paint all Autumn and Winter. I was a child when he first started the painting part. I faintly remember Bob Ross on the TV and “How To Oil Paint” booklets lying around. I remember the smell of Linseed Oil and wet oil paint. I remember coming home from college for the Holidays only to find my bedroom stacked with oil paintings and no place to sleep. It wasn’t until my parents moved into my deceased grandparents little house (with the million dollar view of Vermont and New Hampshire off Bigelow Road and NYS Route 9N) that the gardening part kicked in. He started with vegetables. Corn, potatoes, English peas, squash, string beans and tomatoes. And then bulb flowers. And then even more bulb flowers. Until the entire acre was completely covered in color. It was a beautiful sight to behold. “The stern but healthful climate” of the Adirondacks, as Burton Bernstein writes in “The Sticks”, his book about rural Essex County, New York, drove my dad inside in the colder months. And there he painted. Almost 1,500 paintings in all. The memorial site, http://www.gbigelow.com, exhibits a small percentage of his prolific output.