Grandfather was a sturdy little man with a voice that exceeded his size as Paul Bunyan towered over a pancake.
"Four--by goshens" is one of my earliest memories. It was Grandfather's bid that he proclaimed in a tone ordinarily used by a mule driver in discussing the problem of forward ovement with his braying subordinates. Grandfather was playing hasenfeffer in my father's store across the street, and I was being put to bed on a summer's evening in the front room upstairs, a very little boy.
The old gentleman seemed to have only two voice levels available, one like that of a public speaker addressing a large gathering, and the other was a soft puffing that was barely audible when he was dozing in his chair underneath the cool grape arbor in his side yard.
When I was older, my father told me that Grandfather and his partner Schuddie (Mr. Schuddemadge to me!) played hasenpfeffer almost every evening and that frequently a number of neighborhood idlers came in to watch the show.
But it was serious business to the old fellows. The contemporaneous events at Sarajevo and the following outbreak of war in Europe were of trivial importance compared to the gravity and significance of playing and winning a game of hasenpfeffer.
"Schudde, you dumb Dutchman," Grandfather would roar, "you bid four and didn't even have the left bower. No wonder these young squirts put us up!" (The "young squirts" were my father and my Uncle Will.)
"Abe" (but it sounded more like "Ape", my Dad said) you dump Irishman, you dit the same doodam trick yourself las' night," Schudde said with some heat.
"You're dam'right," Grandfather would bellow. "But the difference is that I made the dam' bid and you didn't! "
“Maybe dis iss because you got a better partner than I got," snapped Schudde.
Such an exchange of opinion was not uncommon between the old partners, but seldom seemed to diminish their loyalty to each other. As soon as they turned the tables on "the young squirts," as they usually did, they were once more thick as thieves.
It would be inaccurate to say that Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has been an economic failure. For two and a half centuries It has enjoyed relative prosperity, providing livelihoods for most if not all of its residents, and very comfortable livings to many. On the other hand, the community never achieved the economic superstatus among American cities that its entrepreneurs aspired to at various stages in its development.