Granddad – May 14th, 2010
My granddad was ageless. From my earliest memories of him, to the last time I saw him, on Thanksgiving, he never seemed to age, never slowing down or growing older. My grandfather taught me many things. He gave me my first car & with that, my first instructions on how to be a good driver. While he didn’t teach me how to golf, he did teach me how to hit a golf ball properly down at the ole Tiger golf course. My grandfather was the finest card player I’ve ever been beaten by. He would craftily plot and calculate every play with the precision of a supercomputer. All the while keeping the steady hand of a spaghetti western gunslinger.
My grandfather had a knack for simplifying things so that people could understand them. I remember one time I asked him how was. He replied, “Boy, I’m in tall cotton” which meant, he was doing well . He always had a calming aura about him, something that made me feel good, he was solid as rock. He sat at the head of the table and said grace before every meal that my grandmother lovingly prepared. The grace always started like this: “Dear Lord, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies” whenever I say grace, I use that same line and think of him.
When in high school I interviewed him for a paper I wrote on WWII for history class. We sat on the couch upstairs in his office and he described to me his experience in the Navy. He had a brilliant memory, elaborating on the every detail if I asked him to. He spoke of the war as a proud American with reverence for those who gave their lives protecting our freedoms. He described to me the dangers of deck fires and kamikaze pilots. He described everything from his tiresome work schedule, to his meals at the officers’ table as a 1st Lieutenant. He showed me pictures of his ship, the SS Wilkes-Barre. He humbly showed me his war medals. But what I remember most about that day was the black and white photo of him in his Navy uniform with a beautiful woman by his side, my grandmother. He was a true American hero.
One thing I’ll never forget about my granddad was his voice. He spoke intelligently with a soothing southern drawl. He spoke slowly and calmly, as if he were talking you through disarming a bomb. He had a quick wit and a fantastic sense of humor. He was a vivid storyteller and a gifted orator, that is something I always admired about him.
Now that he’s gone, I am thankful for all of the quality time I spent with him. I never really told him any of this, but I hope he knew that I really looked up to him. I enjoyed every conversation we had together & took to heart every piece of advice he offered. He was the greatest man I’ve ever known and I loved him very much.
There will never be enough men like him in this world and I will always miss him.
Here’s the dilemma: I was trying to move a Queen-Size bed into my new room on the second floor. I get the mattress in the room and got the iron frame into the room, but the wooden-bedframe won’t fit up the stairs. I solicited my 19 year old brother Chris for help. We try pushing the bedframe, pulling the beframe, forcing the bedframe, but the stairwell isn’t wide enough to get it through. We were able to bend the mattress, but the bedframe is made of wood, so it wouldn’t budge; no way, no how. After many failed attempts and some scratches on the freshly painted hallway, we give up. I can’t just lay the mattress directly on the iron frame because it’s too soft and would fall right through. I know that I needed some boards, slats or pieces of wood, but didn’t have any. I was stumped! 
Then my brother nonchalantly suggested, “How about hockey sticks?”. At first I think he’s joking, but then I realize… he’s right! Chris and I have been playing hockey for the past 10 years and in that time, have cultivated a rather large collection of broken composite hockey sticks. $200 pieces of carbon fiber just resting in the garage. I measure the iron-frame, cut the sticks to scale, and lay them across broken sheet rock I found in the basement. I hesitantly placed the mattress on the composite slats and told my brother to lay down to test it out (I didn’t want to be the guinea pig). It worked! It was so simple and brilliant, even a caveman could have done it! But a caveman didn’t do it, my brother did. As my Granddad used to say, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes”. Thanks for the help, Chris.
