C2 -- Photo contributed by Terry Dunkle

 


 

Above, Granddad (right rear) poses with some of his hunting-dog pals.  The fellow at far left is Charlie Elder.  Does anyone recognize the others?  (Who's that mysterious woman, and why is she smirking?)

Granddad, or "Tacky," as some of his friends called him (short for Hardtack)* is holding something in his left hand, which I at first thought was a cigarette.  I remember him smoking a pipe, though -- never cigarettes.

As you can see from the detail at right, however, the white stick is too large to be a cigarette; it is in front of his index finger instead of behind it; and it seems to be jutting from the center of a round, dark object of the same diameter as a dry cell or a large flare.  Was this a piece of paraphernalia used in field trials?  "I think it's just his hands folded, although it could be a pipe," Don says.  I'm not convinced.

-- Terry

*


How did he get this nickname?  Because he looked thin and leathery and tough?  Because hardtack was a favorite food?  (I never saw him eat hardtack, nor heard him speak of it, either.  The only military food he ever told me about was the flapjacks he made for his starving Army buddies by grinding flour from a mule's rations.)

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