Page:The Family Album.pdf/77

Rh all the dandruff on his coat collar back on the folks in the stern.

He said the world was full of blixxes and tibbens, and that he was going back into the woods where there wasn't any gumbos. It seems that blixxes and tibbens were people who ate with their hats on. A gumbo was a lady who put bluing into everything she washed on Monday, including her face.

Most of us never heard of people who did those queer things, but grandpop was a man who did some odd things himself. He would shave in front of a mirror and put the lather on the looking glass instead of his face.

Then he would go out into the woods and talk to the ants and bees and said that he got better answers from them than he did from any blatt, which was a man who put hair tonic on a toupee.

He used to wear gloves made of thimbles and drum on kitchen tables when people were talking and claimed that he was an ipper. In grandpop's language an ipper was a man who slept with his shoes on. His explanations never matched anything that he was trying to explain and the neighbors used to put their fingers to their foreheads whenever grandpop started to talk.