Yesterday, I posted about one of the original Good Guys in my life, Mr. Sam Johnson, who changed my life and set me on a course that I never envisioned for myself. He wasn't the only one who met me at various crossroads and offered a light in this direction or that. The first tower of a man I knew was my grandfather, my Pappy. His name is Louis. And he's mostly gone now. Whether it's dementia or Alzheimer's or just plain craziness catching up to a man who's slowing down, my grandpa is all but gone. Oh, he's still here - mostly fit, older for sure, but, as we say, with one wheel stuck in the mud.
I know enough about my family's history and people, in general, to know that my Grandpa wasn't the same man who fathered my dad. He is my father's biological father. But in that way people have of changing when grandchildren and Jesus arrive, he wasn't the same person. No nominations to sainthood here...but to me, this guy was as close to God as you get without a really good ladder.
If I were very kind and very honest about my own father, I would say that we didn't care much for each other from a very early date. I could offer a handful of reasons why that is: he was football, I was choir; he was construction, I was reading; he was athletic, I was slight; he was good looking and able, I had a hare lip (as they called it in the old days) and was forbidden to play baseball or the trumpet. We still don't know each other all that well, but we get along pretty well. I enjoy spending time with my dad now that he's retired. But he's not the same person I lived with growing up. He's mellower now and, I think, more forgiving of our differences. And he'd be right in saying the same about me. But in that gap during childhood where we find SOMETHING to latch onto -- ANYTHING to hope towards --ANYONE to vaidate us, there stood My Grandpa.
Family folklore has it that my Pappy was a moonshine-making, cigarette totin', foul-mouthed lout who had quit school in the 7th grade, hopped trains and made a life out of practically nothing. My grandmother says she's loved that man since she was 14. And I'd lay my life on the table that My Grandma has never lied when it mattered. That woman.....she's as close to a saint, in my mind, that you can get and still have people want to be around you. Grandpa and Grandma Found The Lord, as we say in these parts, while my daddy was off in the navy. My dad tells the story that he returned on leave with a 12-pack of Bud to share with his dad and was met, instead, with a Bible and an invitation to meet Jesus. Imagine how stunned you'd be.
So the Pappy I grew up with wasn't the same guy my dad knew. But my grandpa was HUGE. He wasn't fat. He was just HUGE. He isn't tall. But he filled every room from the smallest crease in the floorboards to the slighest crack around a door. If he walked outside, outside got a lot smaller because he was in it. And my Grandpa taught me about Jesus.
We lived about 2 hours from Grandma's House. It was always Grandma's House. I supppose that's only fair since she did all the work around it. Pappy had his Machine Shop in the backyard where he'd supported his 3 kids and wife forever, it seemed. But the house....that was Grandma's. In a way, it seemed nice of her that she let Grandpa stay there, too, because it made things so much easier when we'd come visit. We visited every-other-week faithfully. Every holiday (whether it fell on the off week or not) we were there. And every year, we spent 2 weeks at Grandma's House. For fifty weeks of every year - and for a few years after I got too old to be invited - I waited for 2 weeks at Grandma's House. Taking nothing away from my Grandma, who I love beyond description, it was all about seeing my Pappy.
My Pappy took me fishing - in the strip pits. The strip pits are mining left-overs rife with snakes and snags and things that make fishing a pain in the butt. But Pappy was happy to take me. Just me. I was #1. I know because he told me. "Number One Grandson" He called me that until he forgot that he used to call me that - which is recently. My Grandpa would take me to The Donut Shop. I believe, outside of church and his Machine Shop, The Donut Shop was his happiest place on earth. My grandpa held court in The Donut Shop daily. And on the days when I joined him, I was introduced as "my number one grandson." I think he knew that I had some catching-up to do on the self-esteem. He wouldn't have called it that. But it had that effect. For two out of fifty-two weeks for a LOT of years, I was a prince on a soft pillow. I would sing out into a tape recorder with my cousins the songs we learned in Vacation Bible School. My grandma stopped me cold a few months ago when she produced from her pocket a yellowed cassette tape marked, I believe, 1972, and played for me the sound of children's voices - mine the most prominent - singing,
"The Lord said to Noah to build him an Arky, Arky. Lord said to Noah to build him an Arky, Arky. Build it out of
For as long as there was tape we sang at Grandma's kitchen table and re-affirmed that we had learned the lessons of Bible School. For two weeks out of every fifty-two, I was saved. "Saved to the Uttermost", as the old hymn says. That sort of thing did not play well the other 50 weeks. So I knew that being Saved was something best reserved for Grandpa. And I knew that being Number One and soft purple seats on little royal thrones didn't exist where I really lived. I have one memory of clinging hopelessly to my Grandma's legs at one visit's conclusion, throwing caution to the wind and begging not to be sent back to the land of hare lips and speech therapy and no baseball and violin-instead-of-trumpet. I wanted to stay here where swimming pools were for all day and the worst thing that might happen is Pappy "thumping" you on the top of your head for some misdeed. (Never a spanking. Pappy thumped. He'd take his seemingly massive forefinger and flick the nail-side on the crown of your head. The sting of having provoked him was worse by far than any pain it inflicted. But message received. I don't remember getting thumped for the same thing twice.)
When I went to college, I ignored a scholarship offer from the largest and most famous university in our state in favor of the one down the street from my Grandma and Pappy. I made the decision so late that I was excused from the requirement of Freshmen Live In Dorms and was allowed to live with family....naturally....my grandparents. Now for 7 days out of 7, for 52 weeks - give or take - I was Number One Grandson. It was all soft purple cushions. No hare lips here. I could sing...really sing. They told me so. And they never lied. I could speak, so I preached. I knew I could. They told me so. They showered me with what must be unconditional love and I ate it up with a spoon. You'd have thought they plucked me out of the ash room of an orphanage. I don't believe I was ever abused a day in my life. But in most families, I think, there is simply no competing with Grandma. I hope everybody had a Grandma and Grandpa like that. At least one.
I never heard my grandma or grandpa cuss, though I heard stories that they did once upon a time. I never saw them drink for all those years, though I heard stories that they had once upon a time. I never saw them fail to squeeze and kiss and shower us with rose petals and palm branches and hail us as conquering princes and princesses returned from far off journeys where we'd conquered dragons and demons. But I heard stories of when they hadn't done so. God forbid I should ever...ever...ever....do anything that might separate me from this position of prominence in the eyes of my Pappy.
Pappy ran a church. He wasn't the pastor. He ran the pastor. Sometimes - usually - he ran the pastor off. Once, he employed my cousins to haul the pastor off. Pappy ran a church. I played the piano, sang, led what we simple people called "The Song Service", preached on occasion. It was clear to everyone but me, perhaps, that I was being groomed to be the Pastor he wouldn't run off. All of the other ones - except for one, I think - were gap fillers. He was waiting until I was ready to take my permanent place on a real purple cushion at the top of the front of the church.
On the same day in 1987 that I met the first man I ever loved in a Gay Bar in Lawrence, Kansas, I knew that I had cracked the perfection of the reflection my Pappy saw in me. I knew, somewhere, that hare lips and skinny legs and lack of Little League Experience would never keep me from the love of Jesus or Grandpa....but this.... This was probably a different story on both counts. So I started keeping my distance from them: Jesus, Grandma and Grandpa. No sense stirring pots that didn't need stirring. No sense tarnishing the part of my childhood that gleamed like pure gold in my memory. When I met Jerry, I told my parents immediately that I was gay - mostly out of spite. I told everyone else because I just didn't give a damn. But I couldn't tell Pappy. That was a risk too great. So the gulf began.
A personal religious revival in my life at one time caused me to blurt out the fact that I had dabbled on that particular wild side of life, to which my Grandma replied, "I just don't believe that." And I believe her. I believe she sticks to that theory today. She's wrong, which makes her human...and a little less than what the 6 year-old in my head thought she might be. Pappy never referred to it. I think he knew.
Today, my Pappy is basically gone. Dementia, Alzheimer's, plain old age - whatever. He has delusions of being on the U.S. Border Patrol, being an Officer of The Court (permitting and all but requiring his input on all judicial opinions issued from every bench - can you imagine the sheer logistics?), believing that the Catholics and the Mafia and the folks at City Hall (one-in-the-same those three, mind you) are conspiring to kill him (most of those Catholics at City Hall are his grandchildren, married to his grandchildren, etc.). He issues profanity-laced tirades now at the woman who has "loved him since I was 14 years old." My pappy is gone. There is a very old man who lives where he used to live.
That old man knows who I am but doesn't remember that I once sat upon purple cushions and fished in the strip pit and spent all day long at swimming pools. That old man can't recall that I'm Number One, if not in sequence, then in importance. And he might never know that he showed me what God looks like and that sometimes God thumps you on the top of the head but never, ever stops telling the folks in the Donut Shop that you're Number One. He's not the same guy he used to be. If I'm to find out how I'm "Bad", as my therapist put it, I'm "Bad" because I disappointed my Pappy. I didn't take my place in the chair at the top of the front of the church. I liked boys. It's just that simple. And in a way, just that sad.
But my Pappy....he was one of the good guys, too. He was. And anybody who says different has never been to The Donut Shop or had a Dilly Bar after church or sat by the fire in the family room - not because there was fire, but because that's where Pappy sat.
I miss him already.......and he's not even gone.
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