When I was a young tad, I liked to read. One of my favorite literary characters was Gunga Din. I guess I liked the part where Ruyard Kipling wrote “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” Obviously if you read the poem, you feel bad for Gunga. He received some rough treatment. I used to wonder why old Ruyard used the name Gunga Din, and a careful studious search led me to the reason,
It seems that Ruyard knew a real life Gunga Din, and this Gunga used to beat him constantly in Parcheesi – a Game of India. So the poem gave him a chance to get back at Gunga while admitting that Gunga was a better man – or at least a better Parcheesi player. I know how he felt because when I was a really small tad I used to play Parcheesi with my grandmother. As I was telling the Blonde in the house, she let me win as at that age I did not accept losing well.
My grandmother was a nice lady who lived at the top of North Hill in Sandy Lake, Pa. The house had no electricity, gas or running water. It also had the proverbial little house in the back. I never did know why bees, particularly bumble bees, liked that little house, but they did.
The point was you had to battle angry bees in the summer, and freeze to death in the winter just to use the thing.
However, the house did have a nice pump from which came clear cold drinking water. Of course, in the winter it was still cold when you had to wash up. You could heat some water on the coal stove (they had lots of coal in Pennsylvania) if you wanted to wait. The coal stove is what my grandmother also heated her irons on before pressing clothes. There was a fruit and vegetable cellar that was dug under the house and had two slanted doors covering it.
It stayed pretty cold all year long in that cellar for keeping canned fruit and vegetables. That was good for the summer. In the winter it didn’t matter as it was cold everywhere in the house. She had a pot belly stove in the center of the living room. It would be filled up with coal when everyone went to bed, but it would be out or down to almost nothing by morning. Luckily each bed had a little chamber pot underneath. She even had a mattress that was stuffed with straw. I begged her to let me sleep in it. Big mistake! You cannot sleep on a mattress filled with straw. Try it some time. There are mattress stores all over the place around here, and I imagine they can get you one.
As you can see, it was a fun house to visit when one was young. She even had a Victrola with big thick records that you could play by turning a big handle to get it up to speed. Obviously, she did not have TV, hi-tech games or even a radio so you had to do something while visiting there. We also could sit on the porch and try to guess the color of the next car. I do not know how we stood the excitement. I feel sorry for kids today.
Unfortunately, things change and my grandmother moved down into Sandy Lake proper in a house that had electricity, gas and running water. She even had a radio and when I visited, I had to listen to umpteen soap operas with heartbreaking stories like “Young Widow Brown”, “Just Plain Bill”, “Pepper Young’s Family” or worst of all “Stella Dallas”. Whoever played Stella had a voice that still grates on my nerves if I try to think back to those days – so I don’t.
I started out talking about Gunga Din. I also did some serious genealogy work to see, if Gunga had any descendants around. To my surprise I found that he did, and she lived right in this area. Her maiden name was Lota Din (she talks a lot). I visited her and we had a nice discussion. During our conversation, I asked if she played Parcheesi. To my horror, she said that she had never heard of it. I soon left, I can tell you!
Can you believe it, a direct descendant of one of the great Parcheesi masters of all time, and she knew nothing of the game? What is this world coming to?
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com