I have recently been corresponding with some cousins about their immediate family, of which I have only very sketchy information on.  I looked up my cousin David Pierson in the Yahoo White Pages and found he and his mother in the southeast United States.  I gave him a call, left a message for him to call me if he was my cousin.  About an hour later he returned my call.  We visited a while and he said he would try to get some information to me in the next week or so.  He has since done that.  Thanks David.  I also found two of his sisters on Facebook and have communicated with them, also to request info.  Haven't gotten anything back yet, but I am hopeful. 

     Their father Wesley H Pierson was my father's older brother.  I only knew him as "Bud".  Here he is in a picture with my father Bill Pierson in about 1932.  Bud being about 12 and my dad about 6.  You can see it is a formal picture because they both have on the striped overalls.  The everyday working suit was the blue overalls.  You will also notice that Bud had graduated from the "Bowl" haircut that my dad was still enjoying.  Uncle Bud seemed to always be smiling and laughing, at least that is how I remember him.  My dad only had a few stories to relate about Bud and I will pass them along now.
       Bud could take a lot of electricity  (as a shock).  Dad told me that he could take the thumb and little finger of each hand, moisten them in his mouth and put them across the spark plugs of a Model A while it was running and kill the engine dead.  I don't know if you have ever felt the shock from a bare spark plug wire or not, I have... [When I was about 10, I was mowing the front yard.  With this push type lawn mower, you had to remove the spark plug wire from the plug, as the kill mechanism had broken off ( just a piece of metal that shorted the plug end to the engine block).  Dad was on the front porch and told me to come in for lunch and then finish the mowing.  I reached down to pull the wire off the plug and it "grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go".  Although the lawn mower was not self propelled. it drug me all over the front yard before it finally died and released me.....probably not more that 15 or 20 seconds, but a lifetime to me.  I don't think I ever saw my dad laugh so hard.  After that, he showed me how to kill the lawnmower with a screwdriver blade to short the motor out.]

     Bud was also a carpenter.  Before the advent of the grounded and double insulated plugs and tools, the tools had two prong plugs and in new construction most of the rooms had a two wire socket in the ceiling for light on dark days or if  you worked at night.  Bud carried an adapter with him that would screw into a light bulb socket and allow you to plug in a saw or other electrical tool.  To check the socket for power Bud would wet his index finger and stick it into the socket touching both the hot side and ground side... He would then say "Yep, this one's hot" and continue his work.   It's a shame that the old ones in the family are gone now because it makes it very difficult to verify what is true and what is not.

    There's another story that involves Bud and Snakey (Bud's sister's husband--Bill Ristau).  Supposedly, they operated a still in Snakey's barn.  They got wind of the "Revenuers" coming to arrest them and confiscate the still.  Bud got scarce and left Snakey to dismantle the still and store the parts where they wouldn't' t be found.  Apparently it was successful, neither of them had any consequences I could find.  I do know that Snakey had a appetite for liquor the rest of his life, as did his wife, my Aunt Bessie.




    There was another story my dad told about Bud being a Baptist preacher.  One summer he piled all his family, himself, his wife Bonnie, Kids - Buddy, Jerrie Ann, David, Jeanean and Gwen in a pickup with a camper on the back and went to Central America to mission people down there.  I also heard that was where he got some of the recipes for the restaurants he open up.."LOS CHARROS"
I remember the one he opened in Pittsburg, Kansas.  My wife and I would frequent it regularly and Bud would often bring me "extras" besides what we had ordered....stuff he wanted me to sample and grade as to whether or not I thought it would a good addition to the menu.....I was never disappointed.  He also had hired his sister to work in the kitchen...I don't know for how long.

   My dad's oldest brother Dan was 19 years older than mydad so they didn't hang around each other much.  Dan was always an avid hunter and this started in his youth.  He very much disliked crows for what they did to crops and gardens and was always on the look out for a good shot at them when hunting.  Once he spotted some across a corn field he was hunting in.  He was using his dad's shotgun (that already had one notch on it for Wes's failed attempt to blow his head off).  I was a double barrel, hammer action shotgun.  Dan had both hammers cocked and was walking very slowly down a row of corn to close in on the crows, as he was watching the crows and not his footing, he stumbled and discharged both barrels of the gun.  Obviously he scared off the crows.  He looked down at his shoe and there was a nice hole in the toe section of the boot.  He wasn't bleeding or in great pain but decided to go home and have a look.  When he unlaced his high topped shoes and removed them there was some bleeding and pain (that the tightly bound shoe had prevented) that ensued.  Also, there were two toes missing on his right foot.  He got treated and put the second notch on the gun.  Later in life, if you had seen his foot, it was quite interesting.  The human body is remarkable. His big toe grew to fill in the space where the 2nd and 3rd toes had once been.  That foot did give him trouble when the weather changed. 

      More later.