We Called Them Bummie and Bumpie.

Florence Marie (Berchtold) and Charles Randall Poppleton  were my great-grandparents on my maternal grandmother's parents. Here they are standing by the garage behind their Ellison Avenue home.

As mentioned before, Charles worked for Bell Telephone and Florence was a stay at home mom.

My mother, Gail is credited with giving them the nicknames 'Bummie' and 'Bumpie'. When queried Mom stated that she doesn't recall why or how those names came about. 'It was probably something that just came out of my mouth.'

As a child I thought we called her Bummie because of the way she dressed. Not that she dressed badly, but because most of the time when I saw her she had been working in her flower beds. More than likely she had dirt on her hands or pants.

Bumpie was born 15 January 1891 in Irvine, Pennsylvania. Bummie was born on the 2 April 1894  in Erie, Pennsylvania. Both came from relatively large families. Bumpie had seven brothers and sisters; Bummie twelve. Bumpie's family was primarily English; Bummie was of German descent.


The world they were born into was much different than today. 


In the 1890's the United States was comprised of only forty-two states. According to the US Census Bureau, total population at the 1890 census reached 62,979,766. [The 2010 census was 308,745,538]. The Women's Movement was still in its infancy and at the time only men could vote in either national or local elections. Benjamin Harrison was president in 1891, replacing Grover Cleveland, who then was voted back into office in 1894. [Won via Electoral College vote; Cleveland had 100,000 more popular votes. The voters reversed their stance in the next election. 1 ] A dozen eggs cost twenty-one cents; a pound of coffee fifteen cents. Butter was twenty-six cents a pound. 2


I don't remember a lot about Bummie and Bumpie - they were in their 60's when I was born. I remember that we (Gran, Grandfather, Aunt Judy, sister Debbie and I) would usually go to their house on Sunday. In the early afternoon, the grown-ups would play Pinochle or Hearts. Later on the men-folk would stroll down to the river. The women would be in the kitchen making dinner and gossiping. 

In those days children were meant to be seen and not heard, so we were sent to the basement to play with the box of toys that had been there since time began [or so it seemed to a small child]. The duck on a string that 'quacked'. The top that sounded like a train whistle when you wound it up. The jack-in-the-box that would stick closed from time to time. Real Lincoln-logs and blocks of all sorts and sizes. Or we'd play with the dolls we brought with us. If we were lucky we'd get to play outside on one condition: we had to stay clean. 

Back then if we wanted to play in the same room as the grown-ups we had to either read or color in one of the many coloring books kept for such purposes. But we didn't seem to mind too awful much.

We used to all gather around the television together and watch Marlin Perkins on the "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" and Walt Disney's "Wonderful World of Disney". Lots of times we would fall asleep in the car on the way home from their house.

I remember Bummie babysitting Debbie and I a couple times. She had this little yellow flannel dog that she let us cuddle up on the couch with. Her house always smelled good. It was always clean.

Bummie was one of the better cooks in the family when it came to meat. Her roast chicken dinners were amazing. Mashed potatoes with nary a lump. Giblet gravy. Her secret was slow-roasting until it was ready to fall off the bone. Her liver and onions was top quality too.

Bummie also had beautiful flower beds all along the side and back borders of their property. Along the side front she had Bridal Wreath that has such a lovely habit when flowering in the spring. The rear of the house was mostly in shade, so it was planted with thick, lush ferns that grew to waist-high and rustled in the slightest breeze. A small six-foot purple lilac bush bordered the neighbor's garage. A white hydrangea anchored the right corner of their two-car garage. Along the drive to the front were peonies. All around the rest of the perimeter danced flowers of every description. Columbine, forget-me-not, poppies, zinnias, sweet alyssum, snow-on-the-mountain, primula, sweet william and so many more. She definitely had a green thumb!

I remember she used to boil water in the tea kettle and pour it over the ants by her front sidewalk to get rid of them. Effective and economical.

I remember too that she loved soap operas. I think she watched "As The World Turns" and "General Hospital". They were part of her daily routine. That and a cup of tea and a simple game of solitaire to pass the time.

I remember that she had excellent taste in clothing and home furnishings. Simple and tasteful. 

I remember someone telling me that Bummie and Bumpie designed their house. 

I remember she knew how to tat and that she tried to teach us children how. Debbie learned, but I thought it was just a fancy way to crochet and stuck to my knitting and embroidery.

I always thought that it was weird that Bummie and Bumpie had separate bedrooms, but when I grew up was told that they did that because her doctor strongly suggested that she not have any more children. Wouldn't that be horrible? 

What I remember of Bumpie is very short, faint almost picture-memories. I can see him sitting in a brown chair in the corner of the living room. Positioned so he could see up the road to the traffic going by and the cars that would stop to for gas at the corner [where Dan's Creative Portraiture is today.] I remember he had glasses and was wearing a checked flannel shirt. I can also see him standing on the porch in a navy blue zip-up-the-front sweater with a jumping fish pattern. He liked to fish and seemed to do that a lot when we children were around. Perhaps he didn't want to stick around to listen to a bunch of hens talk. 

He was handy though. I remember that. He made some outdoor furniture and a couple little things for Bummie. His had a workshop on one side of the garage.

I remember how, after the cancer surgery, he would wear a little paper bag over the tubes in his throat so no one would get grossed out by it. I remember sitting on his lap and the smell of pipe tobacco. Cancer of the throat is what he died from.

I think Bummie died from loneliness. She started going downhill after her friend, Mrs. Cox passed. After that Bummie stopped working in her flower garden.  She broke her hip in a fall and was put in the Sweden Valley Manor in Coudersport. Never came back out. I visited her in the manor a few times when I was in town, but toward the end I'm not convinced she knew who I was.




1 Exerpted from The White House web page on presidents. Read more here.
2 1941 Commodity Year Book, prepared and published by Commodity Research Bureau.