Interview with Gramps

00:00 Go.

00:04 Oh, okay. Hello, my name is Lauren McCargar and I am 10 years old on this day, Saturday, November 30th. No, not 33, just 3. 20, 22. I will be interviewing my grandfather, Ronald McCargar but we call him Gramps. Gramps, can you tell me a little about yourself?

00:35 Okay. Oh, I'm supposed to talk now. Tell me about it. Well, I got married in 1970, had four kids, three boys and a girl. Worked for the CNW, Chicago, Northwestern and then the UP Union Pacific for 33 years. Retired at 65. And I sit around, play fortnight most of the day and then work with Grammy up at the land we have out in the country and about 11 acres. Run a chainsaw for about two years, cutting down most trees. Trees out there. And lately we. Oh, we installed the culvert. That was quite a project. Yeah, that's ton of work. We're still working on that. But yeah, there's always something to do out there.

01:39 All right, so thanks for taking out some of your day to let me interview. First question, where did you grow up?

01:56 I was born in Osaloosa, Iowa and we. My dad was a teacher in Dayton, Iowa until I was seven. Had a heart operation about that time at Rochester and where you live. And I moved to Boone and I lived here ever since.

02:21 All right.

02:23 I guess I should say Boone, Iowa. Yeah, people wouldn't know what I was talking about. There's more than one Boone in the United States, but it's Boone, Iowa.

02:31 All right. Did you have a nickname?

02:36 Ron?

02:37 I never go by Ronald.

02:40 All right. As a child, what was your family like?

02:50 I had a brother and sister, mom and dad, of course. And I'd say my early years were in Dayton. I can still remember living in a big brown house and then we moved across the street to a little kind of a pink covered colored house. And I remember it had a goldfish pond in the back backyard. I have. Those are my early memories. When I was about 6 or 7 living in Dayton. I still don't remember that far back. Then we moved to Boone and I can remember.

03:35 I'm thinking I was first grade or second grade when I started.

03:38 Going to school here.

03:41 And oh, other than that heart operation, I guess that was the biggest. I remember laying on my back for seven days in the hospital and I never have been able to sleep on my back. That was pretty bad, but still kicking because of it. I was supposed to live to about 30 and here I'm almost 75, so I guess it must have worked.

04:12 Yeah, as. Hold on. I Skipped one. Can you tell me how my dad was growing up?

04:27 Oh, your dad was a good kid. He was always. He was a hard worker. Grammy was telling me about a lot of stuff. I don't remember, but he would come home from school and start working on his programming with these old cassette tapes, you know, which. This is like dinosaurs nowadays. But when I went to college, we had computer programming and he had these punch cards, you know, that's another thing that's 50 years out of date. But, yeah, he was always a good kid. Never gave us any trouble. Always a hard worker.

05:08 That's good. As a child, what did you want to be whenever you were growing up?

05:19 I don't remember really wanting to be anything. I don't think I ever really had a job in mind when I was growing up. In fact, I had lots of jobs when I was working. I was never very good in school and. But the Vietnam War was on, so I went to college to stay out of. Out of that. And I actually flunked out of college and went to the. Oh, the place where you take your physical in Des Moines and spent the night there and went through all the tests. And at the very end, they said I didn't have to go because I'd had a heart operation. And there was a captain in the Marines. It was a doctor, and he says, well, if you really want in, I. I can let you. We can let you go. You know, I can. I can go on off to war. And I told him, well, I'm getting married Saturday. I want. I kind of want to stick around. So that was in 1970. Got on Valentine's Day. That was your. Another one of your questions. What's my favorite holiday? So I was going to say Valentine's Day because. Got married on that day.

06:42 Okay. All right. What was your proudest memory?

06:52 Well, my proudest memories are of having my kids. I can. I can still remember, like it was yesterday when your dad was born. I was really proud that day.

07:03 That's good. Yeah. That's something that you would be. I assume you would.

07:09 He was. He was born at home and there was a doctor there. But then the next two kids, I didn't have any help. It was just me delivering Sean and Steve. So we had talked about having about 14 kids, but when I had to deliver him one of them and grabbing and I both. We always argue about which one that was. But anyway, one of the boys had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck when he was born. And I remember Steve, he was kind of Blue. And he wasn't breathing, and I had to massage his chest to get his heart gone. And that was tight stress for me to happen to take care of these kids. And, you know, so we. I decided we weren't going to have any more. I know when we. The first one was born, it was a girl, Judy. And I told Grammy I didn't. I didn't care how many kids we had. Just so I had three sons, and that's. She. So then she immediately had three. Three boys. And then she was done.

08:21 All right.

08:22 But I. I would have had more kids if I didn't have to deliver from.

08:27 Oh, okay.

08:28 And it's.

08:31 All right.

08:35 Looks like you got that sun. You got your sun in your sun in your face there. Yeah, tell. Tell mom to shut the blind or something.

08:43 There's a window right there. How many kids did you want?

08:53 Well, like I say, we wanted 13 or 14 when we first got married, but, like, it was too much responsibility to. I mean, we could easily lost one of them.

09:04 Tell me if I'm in the right spot.

09:06 Yeah.

09:07 One of the guys I went to high school with, he did the same thing. He had a baby at home, and he had complications. He had to run to the hospital here in Boone, and they wouldn't even touch him until he had to sign a bunch of papers that, hey, this is my fault. You know, I'm strictly responsible for whatever happens here. So, yeah, it's. You can have babies, you can have them at home, but, boy, it's. It's high stress.

09:33 Yeah. So what's your favorite ice cream?

09:39 I used to always love Butterbrickle, but lately there's Alden's Sea. Let's see. What is it? Salted caramel. I think it is. Oh, my gosh, that's good. I think my favorite food is ae. Eggnog. I always say that's nature's most perfect food, but this. This salted caramel is close second. In fact, I bought a Ninja Creamy that you can make ice cream with. And I just ordered some caramel. I'm not sure if it's pronounced caramel or caramel. I think it's. Both are correct. Caramel sauce and then some chocolate cocoa powder to mix into these drinks. So I can have malted, you know, chocolate shakes or malts or make ice cream with stuff. So, yeah, I'm big into ice cream. That's probably my favorite.

10:47 What is your favorite? Animal?

10:51 Boy, that's a good one. I don't really know. I never thought about it. Huh. Well, I'll say dog. We had a Norwegian el camp for 14 years. He really had a mind of his own. I take him pheasant hunting. And he was pretty good dog, you know, when he wanted to, he. He could really. He'd start jumping when he smelled the pheasants. He jumped like a kangaroo. He'd start jumping up and down, up and down. And I knew, boy, there was a bird in here. But he would run off by himself, too. I remember being out in public hunting, and he just disappeared for an hour. And I was looking for him. And there was a field of corn, and I was walking on one edge of it, and he came around the other. And he looked so surprised that there. Where you been? You know? And like I say, I hadn't seen him in an hour. And I remember that same place might have been a different time, but he. We were walking along, and all of a sudden he just stopped, sat down, and he wouldn't go any farther. And I looked and he'd got a big thorn in his. In his front paw. And I. You know, I'm lucky he didn't bite me. But I just picked it up and pulled that thorn out and he was off ready to hunt again. So I'll say dog.

12:28 All right, this is the most important question.

12:34 Okay.

12:37 What came first, the chicken or the egg?

12:41 Well, it depends on your definition of chicken because there had to be. There had to be an animal at one time that laid an egg. But if it, you know, if all those animals before never laid an egg, were they really chickens? So that's a good one. I'll say the egg came first. Well, now that. Now that. Wait a minute. The animal had to have laid the egg so soon as it laid an egg. I guess by definition it was a chicken. So. No, I'll say a chicken came first. It depends on your definition of what a chicken is.

13:25 Yeah, interesting answer. Very important question. Well, that's the last question. So thank you again for this interview. Yeah.

13:47 Well, Fortnite 7, this is the last day of their.