Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hi Noey! Tell me a bear tale

My Great Grandparents,...Rene and Noey (Noah) Bristoe.

He had all kinds of bear tales that I liked to hear. He died when I was six, but I remember him very well. They lived in an old frame house that used a coal stove for heat.

We'd go visit him and I'd always say, "Hi Noey! Tell me a bear tale.

I recall one where he said:

"There was a young couple who was workin' out in the garden one day while their baby slept in the house. They had a big yaller dog too. They saw something pass by the winder a few times but they thought it was just that big yaller dog. Later they went in the house and a bear had et the baby!"

It's a wonder it didn't give me nightmares. But I never thought nothing about it. I always wanted to hear another bear tale.

He could also play anything with a string on it. The fiddle was his favorite but he could also play the mandolin, guitar and the banjo. Mom told me that they had old time fiddling contests back when she was a little girl. She said when Noey Bristoe showed up for one, everybody else was shooting for second place.

He sat me in his lap when I wasn't even old enough for school, played his guitar and taught me how to sing an archaic version of "Salty Dog". I still can sing it.

~~~I got a gal six feet tall, sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall,...ah hah, you're a salty dog,..ah hah-hah, hey hey, honey gal o'mine~~~

Rene's maiden name was Clark. Ancestry.com indicates that she (and I) are directly descended from The explorer William Clark. This is where many of my old folks are buried.

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/1610954/bald-knob-cemetery

Rene and Noey:

That's cool Bristoe. Having known great grandparents is not real common, I'm afraid.

I remember one of my own great grandfathers telling stories of his boyhood in Louisiana and how he and his brother sometimes were surprised by alligators. I loved sitting at his feet and listening to him talk.

I remember my great-great grandmother also. I was five when she fell and broke her hip and never recovered.

Good stuff Bristoe !
All of my Great Grandparents were still alive when I came along. The last living one died when I was in College.
One of my Great GrandDad’s was a great teller of “Bear Tales”
I haven’t heard that expression since I was a kiddo. Reminded me of him and his stories.
I’ve been doing a lot of Family Genealogy research here lately.
Wish some of them were still around so I could ask more questions for my research.

Thanks for that.

My grandfather was a carpenter when he wanted to be. In the wintertime, he'd go around his "neighborhood" and collect up all the old guitars, bangos, fiddles, whatever he could, and rebuild/rehab/restore them. When he passed on, all his surviving kids got a fiddle, and some of the other instruments. When my mother passed on back in November, my uncle presented a banjo to me (and we had Mom's fiddle already). Gramps would play those old fiddles, and Grandma would play her piano, and they'd keep us entertained whenever we'd visit with them.

Back then, when they were young, before radio, you had to make your own music and entertainment, and they sure did. It's amazing what kind of stuff you'll find in the attic of an old Missouri farmhouse.

I was 18 when my great grandmother passed. The only great grandparent I knew.

Her relationship with my great grandfather was nuts.

They split, he went back to WI and had a mistress. She built one business, he another and then she said "F-it" and retired. Traveled the world on his dime. Never divorced but got together for a massive 50th anniversary party.


She was a golf nut and my childhood was a constant "Be quiet, Jack and Arnie are on" and I'd have to go adjust the antenna for her.

Christmas was HUGE. 20 foot tree, 1000 lbs of tinsel and everyone got gifts.

Small in size but she set the tone for the family. Wicked smart person. I miss her.

Pretty darn cool. I hunted and trapped with my great grandfather. He was born in 1879. It blows my mind now, to think of all he had seen. He was a trapper and commercial fisherman most of his life, and ran away from home at 12, for a while. He hooked up with an old hermit, Joe Root, on what is now Presque Isle State Park, in Erie Pa. He was a darn tough, little wirey guy. Tough as nails. Best shot I ever saw.

My great grandfather retired from being an engineer for the Union Pacific. Always wore Big SMITH overalls and his railroad cap. Smoked a pipe. Crusty old bastard, bit he loved us great grandkids. Grew an acre garden every year, had apple trees, basement was full of bushels of potatoes, turnips, apples, sweet potatoes, beets, etc. Walls lined with hundreds of mason jars full of vegetables and pie fillings, jams, and those blue tinted sweet pickles my great grandma always made. I remember eating those until I was sick. They had an old black Cadillac with the big fins in the garage. he had bought it for her, and she hardly ever drove. They went everywhere together in his old blue Ford highboy. He died when I was 17, at 93 years old, sitting in his chair looking at the mail. Had a big garden going even then. I remember tagging along with him to gather pecans and kill geese in the river bottom. My uncle lives in their house now. I miss the old days, more and more. I would go back in a heartbeat.

Thanks Bristoe!

Cherish the memories.

I only knew one grandparent, the rest passing before I was born. To have known more of them, much less a great grand parent would have been surreal.

Super cool!

It's funny how much detail I can recall from my visits with Rene and Noey, (neither of them cared about that "grand-pappy and grand mammy" stuff. Both of them wanted to be called "Rene and Noey",..even by us kids)

,....but I can't give you details about things that happened 3 months ago.

Noey kept an old coffee can about half full of smooth pebbles that he shot out of a slingshot (he called it a flipper) that he whittled out of the fork of a small limb. I'd get it out and play with it when we were over there.

My hand wasn't strong enough to hold it properly so once I looped my thumb into the crook of the fork so I could grip it tight enough to pull the rubber bands back far enough to make it shoot hard.

I found out that wasn't a good way to hold a flipper. That pebble *hurts* when it smacks against your thumb knuckle.

I recall dropping the flipper, grabbing my thumb and hollerin'.

I was standing there rubbing my thumb and looked at the window. Noey and my Mom had been watching me from inside the house and waiting for me to shoot myself in the thumb with the flipper. They were both having a knee slapping laugh.

I was just a little boy and it *hurt*.

But I started laughing too.

Great memories.

Paternal grand father was a Civil War baby. Paternal G. Grandfather was born in England in 1808. Needless to say, all of my grand parents had passed before I was born.

Reversing the trend, to-date, I have 7 grand children and 7 or 8 great grand children... We are blessed !

This Seth Thomas clock was bought with money my great, many greats, sent home from the Civil war.

He died from typhoid fever, and did not live to see it.

Great story B. I only new one great grand parent, Grandma Verna, she passed when I was 10 or so.

I remember my grandparents although they passed when I was young. It is one reason I’m mindful of what I say and how I act around my own grandchildren. I can tell they set a store by what I say.

Good stuff, Bristoe.

I was fortunate enough to know and spend a lot of time with both of my maternal great grands. What they accomplished in life amazes me to this day.

I had the opportunity to know and spend time with my great grandmother and four of her brothers. They lived in western Oklahoma near Hinton. Her youngest brother would take me out to the pond with a 22 rifle and a bucket. He would sit on the bank smoking his pipe and chewing Prince Albert tobacco. I would walk around the pond shooting bull frogs. Told me watch out for the cottonmouths. When we had enough for supper we would take tnem back to the house and skin the legs. My great grandmother would fry them up in a skillet and we all sat around eating and talking about how good they were. Good times for a 10, 12, 14 year old kid.

Remember my maternal great grandmother telling about 'Pant'ers' and wolves "stalking'" them and climbing around on their cabin at night back when she and siblings were kids. Cabin had a stick and mud chimney and they'd build a big hot smoky fire in the fireplace to keep the critters from coming down through the chimney. Chimney got so hot sometimes that they'd have to tear out replace sticks and mud. She was blind her last 20 years or so but still kept house, cooked, washed clothes and did pretty much what she ordinarily did when she still had her sight. Everybody, family, close friends and anybody that knew her called her "Maw". She gave birth to a houseful of kids. My grandmother (one of her younger daughters) was born in 1889 so "Maw" must've been born sometime between the mid to late 1860s to early 1870s at the latest. She passed when was around 10 - 12 years old.