Early Days in Kansas

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.

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.

Grandma, Angie and Mary

Frank Sr.'s First House