Grandfather Fleas

Famous quotes containing the words grandfather and/or fleas:

    And then finally there’s your grandmother
    Sweeping the dust of the nineteenth century
    Into the twentieth, and your grandfather plucking
    A straw out of the broom to pick his teeth.
    Charles Simic (b. 1938)

    Farmers in overalls and wide-brimmed straw hats lounge about the store on hot summer days, when the most common sound is the thump-thump-thump of a hound’s leg on the floor as he scratches contentedly. Oldtime hunters say that fleas are a hound’s salvation: his constant twisting and clawing in pursuit of the tormentors keeps his joints supple.
    —Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)