Great Grandfather Lewis and the Smokehouse Theft
I believe the story was about my father's grandfather on his father's side of the family – that would have been Lewis. Maybe the story is not true at all - maybe it's a traditional fable told with many variations by families all over the world; but the way we heard it was about our Great Grandfather Lewis. He, like many in rural Michigan in the early years of the 20th century, kept a small smoke house in his back yard. He would butcher a hog and smoke hams in the summer to provide his family with affordable meat through the winter. The smoke house had to be tended, often several times a day for weeks, to keep the fires smoldering. One early morning, while the rest of the household slept, great grandfather Lewis quietly exited the modest farmhouse holding the wooden, spring-loaded screen door until it closed quietly (a feat still not mastered by any of his 3 children), and entered the smokehouse to find all of his hanging meat gone - the heavy butcher's twine, tied to iron screw hooks fastened to the rafters, cut cleanly through.
What he felt or thought is a mystery and never survived the story's telling, but we loved the story and the intelligence and quiet restraint of a man we never met. These attributes of his personality were evidenced by his behavior following his discovery of the missing meat - and that is the real story.
Lewis kept this to himself, telling neither his wife nor children. The theft was never mentioned, not even to his friends and he continued to tend the fires on schedule in the empty smokehouse. Eventually he butchered another hog, and his family still had meat that winter, but the theft remained his secret and his behavior and attitude revealed nothing.
The next spring while milling about in the churchyard after services, waiting - while children played and the wives gossiped, exchanged recipes or waited to shake the hand of the pastor, his neighbor tipped his hat to Lewis, “Nice day,” he said. Lewis nodded in agreement.
“Hey,” he said, “Did you ever find out who stole your hams?”
Looking the man in the eye, Lewis replied, “Not until just now.”
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