What Grandpop Taught Me
Posted: Tuesday, September 20, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
I wasn’t allowed to get my tonsils out because of my grandpop. They laughed at me in fourth grade when the teacher read our kindergarten attendance records. I won the contest, according to my buddies, by missing 50 days. The doctor wanted to take them out so I would quit missing school with a sore throat, but my mom would not permit it, because of what her father believed.
He was abed for a long time. His legs were badly damaged. His right one was of little use. He refused to wear braces or crutches, though. He spent years strengthening the muscles that remained. Until he died, over fifty years later, he was never in a wheel chair and was proud of it. He used a walker most of the years I knew him, and had to crawl up stairs, though he refused to consider himself handicapped.
He instilled in me, by example and words, a never-call-it-quits, overcome all obstacles attitude.
I was ashamed that they laughed at me in school because of a fear and an idea he had.
My grandpop inspired in me an interest in American Indians. I enjoyed following his footsteps hunting for artifacts in local farm fields after they were plowed. He told me where to hunt and what to look for, being older and unable to do it himself any more. He didn’t have much of a collection, which made me wonder about his stories some times.
He knew quality artifacts when he saw them, though. When I proudly showed him a handful of jasper flakes I’d found, he told me it was worthless and that most people would have not even bothered to pick it up. I went back to the fields and continued to hunt until I found something he liked.
He taught me, through examples and words, to persist and to accept nothing but the highest quality.
I was embarrassed that I was so excited over the unsatisfactory stones I’d showed him.
I saw Grandpop watching out the back window as I shoveled a path to the barn through the knee deep snow. It was a long sidewalk and the snow was deeper than ever before. I thought they should pay me more than a dollar, but they were my grandparents. I’d made an agreement to shovel their walks for a dollar, and like he said, a deal’s a deal, regardless of the depth of snow.
When I came in he let me make hot chocolate. Then, Grandpop took me aside, patted me on the back and told me how good it made him feel to see a young man bending his back, throwing shovel after snow shovelful over his shoulder. It made him proud of me, but then it made him sad that he was so old and crippled and couldn’t do that sort of thing himself. He told me it wasn’t good enough, though. I had to go back out and make the path wider, so my grandmother could wheel the trash can out to the barn.
He taught me, through example and words, to keep my bargains and to always do the job right.
I was angry that what I’d done, for what I thought was too little pay, was not good enough to satisfy him.
He was looking out the side window when we were washing the cherries we’d picked from old Crazy Bennie’s tree. He called my mom and told her. She made us take the cherries back. She waited in the car when we went up to Crazy Bennie’s door and told him what we’d done.
He taught me, through example and words, “Thou shalt not steal.”
As I watched the rest of the cherries fall to the ground and rot, I was angry that he told my mother and called me a thief.
He blew cigarette smoke into a bottle and let me carry it around then let it out. I told him there was no more beer. He struggled up from his chair and slowly shuffled to the back kitchen with his walker. He got down on the floor on his hands and knees and pushed aside buckets and mops and boxes. He opened the tops to all the beer cases. All the bottles were empty. He struggled back up on the walker with his weak legs and his bent back. He frantically called the distributer and ordered more cases delivered.
But later, he had a bowl of chewing gum and candy on the marble topped table next to his chair. The cigarettes were gone. I brought him bottle after bottle of soda pop, first a Coke then a 7-up, until he didn’t need them anymore. The beer was gone.
He taught me, through example and words, about the demons and how a man could gain his freedom if he wanted it.
I was ashamed that he was so weak and pathetic, and crawled and groveled in his crippling addictions.
I ran in ahead of my mother. My grandmother was sitting on the couch looking sad. He was lying between the bed and the dresser. His head was resting on his right arm. His eyes were closed. When my uncle came, I helped him move the corpse out from beside the bed to the middle of the floor. We put a blanket over it.
We had to wait for hours for the van from the university to come. They wanted to study the effects of polio and gladly took the cadaver for the dissection room. By the time the van arrived the body was grey and stiff. We had to help put it in the rubber bag. We should have folded the arm when we could because it was hard to get the zipper closed. We helped put it on the stretcher and wheel it out to the van.
He taught me, through example, that a man can only be the man he is, and what awaits all men is worms. I learned it is only in the minds and memories of other men that significance is found.
I was ashamed that I’d been ashamed. I was sad that I’d been angry. I was embarrassed that I did not yet know about life and love and time. I was sad about the new reality, where he was gone. I could do nothing about it but live on and be this man.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Your way of telling this is remarkable, and makes the article, so interesting.Thanks for reading and commenting
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