Early Days in Kansas
Grandma with Russell & Frank
From the recollections of Mary Jo (Anderson) Grano:
Grandma would be up every day at 4AM making the bread for the day. She baked it in a traditional outdoor Italian bread oven that Grandpa had built on the farm. She would shuffle the loaves into and out of the oven with a long handled wooden peel with a wide flat end for placing the dough and removing the loaves when she knew they were perfectly baked
Grandma would string a dozen for more chickens up by their feet to be slaughtered. She would walk down the row of squawking and flailing chickens and cut the head off each one with a knife and let them bleed out.
Grandma would make cheese and cure it in the smokehouse and they would make sausage and let it hang in a special barn on a certain part of the property.
Grandma with the girls on her 90th birthday
Grandma was louder and impatient. She was tall and commanding, likely demanding much from her children.
Back in Italy she would carry baskets of grain on her head from the fields (as was the common practice)
Canning and preserving food was a big part of life on the farm. Grandpa would grow it and Grandma would can it.
Kathleen remembers some type of sausage links being preserved in a barrel packed with pure white pork fat or tallow. Grandma would simply plunge her hand down into the barrel of fat and pluck out a handful of sausage links.
Vincenzo (James) Grano
Grandpa was always patient with children and would frequently let Mary Jo pretend to cut and fix his hair as if she was a barber or beautician.
Grandpa was a gentle and kind man and often extended cash loans to others in the area, much to Grandma’s frustration.
People in the area greatly trusted and respected him.
He was close to his son Frank and would frequently retreat to Frank & Mary’s house to escape for some peace and quiet or to confer with his son regarding the farm or business matters.
There was some additional family of Grandpa’s that lived with them for a while but eventually moved to West Virginia and apparently there are descendants of the Grano family still perhaps living there today. This could have been the Nephew Russel whom appears in a couple of photos.
Family & Farm
They got electricity on the farm sometime in the early 1940’s. Prior to getting electricity, light in the house was provided by oil lamps at night. Kids had to read and do schoolwork by the light dim yellow light of these smokey hurricane lanterns.
Grandma & Grandpa gave their farm to Russel Grano (second son) after he and Harriet married. After which they moved to a house in Arma.
Grandma, Angie and Mary
Russell, Joe C. & Frank Sr.
Uncle Frank at some point left Kansas and moved to Chicago to work at the American Forge (with Mike Arabia) for about one year just long enough to save the money he needed to purchase the 160 acres of farm land next to Grandpa’s farm.
Frank Sr.'s First House