i remember…
My grandpa’s name was Lawrence. The only person I can ever clearly recall calling him by name was my grandma. She always called him Larry.
My grandpa was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. He was Catholic. I’m embarrassed to say I’m not sure if he had any brothers or sisters. He was an avid MN Twins fan, he drank Pabst Blue Ribbon, and he’d listen to the baseball games on his transistor radio at night in the garage sitting in a woven lawn chair, wearing his undershirt and baseball hat set just on top of his head, drinking his beer.
My grandpa worked on the railroad. He was father to five children, the oldest, Mary, lived just over 24hrs.
My grandpa smoked a pipe for years until one day his lungs collapsed. To this day the smell of pipe smoke in the air grabs hold of my senses, wraps nostalgically around my heart, and holds on, transferring me to a place only found in my memories.
My grandpa was a soldier in the Korean War. His second child, my uncle Jer, was just a toddler when he finally returned home after the war. My grandmother has told me the story of his first day home time and time again. Grandpa came back from the war and Jer didn’t know him. He didn’t like him and when it came time for Jer to go to bed he said that that man needed to go home. Jer told his mother to tell that man to go home, that is was bedtime and he needed to leave. My grandma always laughed then and said, he didn’t know who grandpa was! He was so angry this stranger was in our home and wouldn’t leave!
My grandpa was a member of the local VFW. He would go down to the VFW clubhouse and have drinks, watch sports, play the numbers. Then he would stop at the Bridgeman’s dairy and pick up the milk my grandma had requested on the way home.
From as long as I can remember my sister and I would go with my grandpa to the VFW at Christmas time for their annual Christmas party. We would be dropped into a huge room full of metal folding chairs arranged in rows with so many loud and screaming children we didn’t know and left there for some unknown length of time. I never once can clearly recall any of my other cousins attending the party with us. Santa would eventually arrive and hand out presents and then, at the end, on the way out, we went through a line that stopped at a window in which was a little old lady or man who would hand me and my sister each the biggest bag of candies we’d ever seen. The bag also included more in the shell peanuts than I was ever allowed to eat. By the time I’d get home the bag had been thoroughly examined, swung round and round, twisted and untwisted so much that a good foundation of peanut shell dust had been produced at the bottom.
Oh the grand prize of the glorious bag of candy!
My grandpa had a Poloroid camera that he took pictures with on every occasion in my life. He would adjust the camera, he would re adjust, he would study it, he was adjust again. Approximately 3 seconds before your face was about to fall off for holding your smile and pose he would snap the picture. Then it was the agonizing wait to see if it had turned out.
Every year in the Spring my grandfather would get out the mysterious boxes of cards with handwritten names and letters on them. They were so interesting and so off-limits to me. I’d sit and watch him play with those cards for weeks.
Then one day the cards were gone and I wouldn’t see them again for another year.
My grandpa had a stroke in the early Spring of 1993. He went into what I understood was a coma and never woke again. I’d visit him at the hospital and read the Twins game highlights from the newspaper to him. I’d hear the beeps of his heart rate monitor sound faster. I’d jump up and run to the nurses desk where my mother was chatting and exclaim he could hear me! He was listening and surely he was going to get better!
I can still clearly recall the day. My mother and I were shopping for a bra for me to wear with my formal for my prom. My first prom. We’d had a fabulous time, giggling, spending too long shopping, arriving home later than expected yet victorious in our quest.
We walked up the steps my mom ahead by 3 or 4 steps. By the time I’d gotten there and opened the door my mother was sobbing in my father’s arms. My grandpa had died.
My mother asked me if I wanted to go with her, to the hospital. Yes. Of course. I didn’t know what I was going to or why but absolutely I had to go.
Much later, when I was given my mother’s car I found out that when my mom got into the car to go to the hospital her coat caught on the blinker and when she struggled and yanked it snapped off. It took me three years to replace the switch.
Today I know the mysterious box that fascinated me as a child was a card catalog of soldiers. It was his guide to the fallen, their reference card for their tombstone in one of the cemeteries in town (I think there are 4? 5?) He would take those cards out each year and make sure every new resident was accounted for and counted.
I was lucky enough to learn about each and every card. I was lucky enough to spend the days before Memorial Day with retired vets and their children and grandchildren as we would each be given our assignments and sections and quietly and seriously without pomp or circumstance with the utmost respect and pride poke a hole in the ground at the foot of each soldier’s final resting place. I’d been instructed to take care to keep the line straight. The flag was never ever to touch the ground. The flag was to be inspected before it was planted. Faded, ragged, worn flags would not be used.
It tooks days to complete the task of honoring each soldier. It was hard work, sometimes in unseasonably hot or cold weather, in rain, in wind. And every year the first to arrive and the last to leave were the old retired vets. Their VFW baseball caps adorned with military pins, their stories of the old days, the transformation of their faces and expressions when the task was at hand.
Even 10yrs ago many of those retired vets had gotten too old, sick, or had died and the number of volunteers have dwindled. Its not a common realization, how those flags come to appear on the graves of every soldier. Every soldier. From the confederate to last week. Even the grave of the men and women whose burial was so recent their stone hadn’t arrived yet and there was merely a paper marker noting who lie in peace.
I remember my grandpa with the smell of pipe smoke in the air. I remember my grandpa with every bag of unshelled peanuts, every broadcast of baseball, every Pabst Blue Ribbon can I see. I remember my grandpa with every mention of a little girl’s high school prom. And I remember my grandpa in every flag placed at the foot of every soldier.
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