When I was a kid, I swear that Grappa had a jar of rendered bear fat in his kitchen window. He said he could predict the weather with it :
* Clear for good weather
* Cloudy for bad weather
If conditions were right for a tornado, a cloudy funnel would form in the center core of the jar.
I haven't been able to verify this any place as yet. He may have been telling us one of his infamous stories ...
I do know that his machine shed was hit by a tornado in the early 1980s. Maybe he dumped the bear fat barometer after that?
Added April 7, 2008 :
I did come across this picture (or Gramma did). She had it on the kitchen table the last time I was there a few weeks ago. So there really was a bear!
My mom is the little girl looking so appalled at this dead bear, and pulling his ear. Gramma looks quite happy, and Grappa looks like the great white hunter (or something). My mom said that bear skin was in the closet of the upstairs bedroom for years and years. She hated that closet. That bear skin scared her to death! It wasn't tanned very well, so they eventually threw it out--the hair kept falling out of it. Makes me think of the episode from
Hotel New Hampshire where they stuffed the dog Sorrow after he died, but he was just never the same ...
Funny, I now have a bear quilt hanging on the wall watching me sleep. I don't think my mom has reclaimed that imagery for herself, though.
