You never know when it will be your final conversation.

I hadn’t spoken with my grandfather Bump for a few months when I called him in September 2014 to ask a random question about his family history in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. I recorded the chat so I’d have my facts straight.

He answered my question, and also told me about a recent visitor to Cole’s Transportation Museum in Bangor — where he volunteered as a guide — who had roots in Carbonear, just across the Avalon Peninsula from his native Harbour Grace South Side.

“We hit it off real well, then she had my picture taken with her before she left, and gave me a big hug,” he said. “That’s just a little story that happened last week.”

I laughed, knowing he enjoyed getting hugs from the ladies, and said I always appreciated his insights and hoped he was doing well.

“Yeah, I’m doing well, for almost 90,” he replied. “… Okay, well, we’ll talk with you later. And — have a good life, boy.”

I was shocked to hear the next day that Bump had died in his sleep. Even though I don’t think he knew the end was that close, his final words to me were nevertheless haunting.

He was four months shy of 90. This Tuesday, Jan. 28, marks what would have been his 100th birthday.

 

Born into a 19th century world

Raymond Grant Parsons was born in 1925, but it might as well have been 1825. The duplex in which he lived with his parents Harry and Rose, sister Eva, and grandparents Bill and Martha, lacked plumbing, piped-in water, furnaces, refrigeration and storm windows. Before bed in the winter, a stone was heated in the fireplace and moved within the sheets to warm them. Ray and Eva drew pictures on the frost that accumulated on the windows.

Kerosene lamps were used instead of electricity. Since fruit was a luxury, an orange was Ray’s big gift at Christmas.

Work was scarce in Newfoundland, forcing most men to seek employment elsewhere. Bill and brother Frank went to Labrador to fish; they got four cents a pound for cod fish and one cent a pound for salmon.

Harry began work as a carpenter in Maine the year his son Ray was born. He was gone from spring to fall, returning home in the winter to pull cash out of his long-worn coveralls to give to wife Rose.

Ray idolized his grandmother Martha, who he said could weave wonders from making medicine to building a table.

With the men gone, Ray’s father figure was his great-grandfather Henry Parsons, 81 years his senior. Each morning Henry drank a scoop of cod liver oil, which he credited to his longevity; he lived to 94.

The 20th century arrived in Ray’s life in the form of the radio. His uncle Freeman purchased a floor model, which folks gathered in the kitchen to hear.

Harry felt a better life awaited his family in Maine, so they moved there in 1935, settling in South Brewer. Before he left, Ray sat across the table from his great-grandfather and saw his Pappy cry, the older man knowing he’d likely never see his little pal again.

Ray didn’t return to Newfoundland until 1981, age 56, when all that remained of his family home was a pile of chimney bricks. He brought one home with him, which I proudly display.

 

A new country, a new life

Although Bump spent just one-ninth of his life in Newfoundland, that time did much to shape his personality. “Waste not, want not,” was one of his many sayings, which we all called Bumpisms. Another was that all he needed in life to be happy was a full belly, a roof over his head and clothes on his back.

“There’s no hope but Mt. Hope,” a nod to a Bangor cemetery by that name, was a less optimistic Bumpism.

Despite the relative primitivity of Newfoundland at that time compared to Maine, Ray started school well ahead of his class. His teacher, Margaret Hatfield, fondly remembered the woolen clothing from his native country the boy wore; several years later she became his sister-in-law.

Ray earned enough credits by January 1943 to graduate high school five months ahead of time and enlist in the U.S. Navy at the height of World War II. He served on a submarine rescue ship in the Pacific Theater, during which time his leg was badly injured while moving torpedoes amid heavy seas. His vessel was moored in Tokyo Bay in September 1945 when Japanese officials signed surrender documents aboard the USS Missouri.

I interviewed Bump in 2009 about these memories and many others; I enjoyed hearing these stories from one of America’s “greatest generation,” as Tom Brokaw put it. It was particularly fulfilling to watch “Band of Brothers” with him and be regaled by Bump’s recollections that the miniseries would stir.

We also watched a lot of “Seinfeld,” which Bump sometimes mistook as “Steinfeld.”

Filled with vim and vigor upon his return to the states in March 1946, Bump told me he “goofed off” for a couple months, spent $1,400 he’d earned toward the end of his time in the Navy, and took a job in the hardware department at Sears in Bangor. Several female high school graduates were working in the clothing department that summer, among them Betty Dixon, who Ray gave a ride home one night.

Across the street was the future love of his life.

“Your grandmother was up on the porch of the house,” Bump told me. That was Kaye Hatfield, another of the high school grads at Sears, and younger sister of his former teacher. “Something moved me to call her up,” and after they met, “my love, or affection, grew and grew and grew.”

They married in 1947 and had three daughters; each Valentine’s Day Bump bought four cards.

During the Korean War, which began one day before my mother Cynthia’s birth, Ray served in the U.S. Air Force’s 60th Fighter Squadron.

With two wars behind him, Ray went into the construction field and founded R.G. Parsons Builder in the late 1950s. Many Bump-built houses sprang up around Orrington, Bangor and Brewer, some in which his grandchildren were living even five decades later, a testament to their quality.

Before retiring at age 62 he spent 10 years as a construction analyst with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 

“That, and a dollar and a half, will buy you a cup of coffee.”

I knew Bump as a sometimes curmudgeon with unwavering ethics, a good heart, and a devotion to family. He had a Depression-era toughness but fretted if any of his grandchildren got hurt playing. His house on Friar Tuck Lane in Brewer had a workshop adjoining the garage where he fashioned crafts with us grandkids.

My grandmother Kaye’s death in 2008 hit him hard; he lived there another two years before moving into an independent senior community. Before he left, my future wife Lauren did a photoshoot of his museum-like home, memorializing all the pictures on the walls and the various furnishings he purchased that Kaye had picked out.

Weeks later Bump and I walked through there one final time, when the place was barren, save for a wooden carving he’d made of his wife’s name, appended above the kitchen sink. I pulled that “Kaye” off the wall before we closed the door, and I display that, too.

Bump was your typical salt-of-the-earth guy. He obeyed the law to a fault, once getting pulled over for driving too slow in a 25 mph zone. He mended his slippers with duct tape, even though he had more than enough money to replace them. He used superglue on his fingers when the winter cold caused his skin to crack.

Bump was a hard worker, as fair and honest as people come. He’d chide me one minute for talking too quickly or driving too fast, and the next he’d give a big hug.

He did enjoy hugs.

Bump was burned a few times, but he endeavored never to burn a bridge himself. He prided himself on being able to go back to anyplace he’d worked in his long and varied career and have a cup of coffee.

He downplayed a lot of things in his life, humbly saying in his Bumpism way that something he did, plus a small amount of money, would merely buy a cup of coffee. He was cut from a mold I believe no longer exists, and voices like his are largely gone.

On that note, I grant Bump the final word.

“I’ve seen a lot, and I’ve participated in a lot. And yeah, I’ve had a lot of experiences in life, clearly. That, and a dollar and a half, will buy you a cup of coffee.”

Alex Lear edits the Sun Journal’s Opinion pages.

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