Our father blessed us by writing his 381 page autobiography and giving us each a copy back in 2001 when he was 75 years old. What a treasure we have of all the old family stories and his life including some stories we never heard before! Here is an excerpt about a joke his grandfather Sanford Sager pulled on him when he was a boy.
Bill Sager in front of Sanford Sager family home 1397 New Scotland Rd, Slingerlands, NY. age 8
Pop seemed to always have a twinkle in his eyes and I’m sure the following just shows how he would go to great lengths to “set you up” for a joke of some kind. One beautiful day Pop asked me if I’d like to take the bus into Albany with him and we’d visit with some of the farmers he knew at the farmers market. I jumped at the idea and he put on his good suit, tie and I dressed better than if we were going in the field to work. We went on the bus (stopped right in front of his house on New Scotland Ave.) to Albany and the farmers market. Pop and I talked and talked to lots of the men there then he asked me if I’d like to have some lunch. That sounded good to me and after I agreed to what he he’d asked he said that he had an idea, “How would you like to take a steak out in the country and we’d cook it over an open fire?” Don’t think I had ever done that before and he made it sound like such fun. We purchased a steak and went over and got on a bus headed to I didn’t know where. We would look out of the window and he would ask if this looked like a good place to get off and go in the woods - if I said yes he would say that we should go on a little further. We finally got off the bus and started walking near some woods. “I’ve a great idea, why don’t we go up to some house and as them to cook the steak for us because it would be so much faster and we both were getting hungry by now.” What a salesman he was. He talked me into being the one who would go up to the house and ask the person if they would cook a steak for me and my grandfather. Then it was a matter of which house to go up to. We finally found one that was just the right one and we stood there and I knocked at the door and a nice little old lady came to the door and I started my spiel, in the meantime my grandfather had disappeared around the corner of the house, and when I finished the little lady said that she would be very glad to cook it for us but where was my grandfather? About that time he came around from the side of the house and the little old lady reached out and gave me a great big hug. Turned out this was Pop’s sister Alice and I’m sure she knew we were coming for lunch but he surly had set me up for a wonderful experience. We had our steak and I played her pump organ most of my stay there until guess I drove them both crazy with my playing and was asked to stop.
Sanford Sager, 1939 (b. 1863 d. 1946)
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