Memorial Day
May. 25th, 2009 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerMemorial Day is a day for soldiers who died in battle. Without any intention of disrespecting them, however, I am going to write about my grandfather, who served during World War II, but lived to old age.
My grandfather’s battalion never went overseas; they were stationed, inexplicably, just north of Mexico. He learned a very little Spanish while he was there, and once I started studying Spanish he liked to repeat it to me. ¿Como estás? Bien, abuelo.
I’ve always wondered if he learned some saltier stuff – this was the army – but Grandpa would never have used that kind of language in front of ladies.
He grew up on a farm, and was very much in the tradition of the innocent, old-fashioned farmboy with a hidden penchant for romance. My grandmother isn’t and never was a city girl, so they aren’t a couple out of that old story; but she did meet my grandfather when he climbed through the window at the courthouse where she was working. He saw her tap-tap-tapping away at her typewriter, and she was just so pretty that he just had to meet her.
So yes, he was old-fashioned. It wasn’t always in a good way. I remember one time he commented, in a tone of perplexity and wonderment, that the next county over had a colored man in the district council. But he sent both his daughters to college, along with his son.
I think he was sometimes a difficult father. My mother smoked for a year during college, evidently purely to rebel because she made a point of doing it when she went home for Thanksgiving. Her father sat at the edge of his seat, saying it was FINE, perfectly FINE, gripping the arms of the chair: it wasn’t fine but damned if he’d admit to being defied in his own house.
But he was also very kind. Maybe he’d mellowed by the time I met him. He used to till up a garden patch so my brother and I could run around in the soft soil. He loved to garden, and I found out at the funeral he used to grow so much produce that he’d just give it away, bushels of tomatoes to charity.
And there was always ice cream at my grandfather’s house. My grandmother would make cherry pies (she can’t anymore, her hands are too stiff), and Grandpa would get out the ice cream and say, “You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream!”—and we’d all have pie a la mode, and it was delicious.
We weren’t close, my grandfather and I. But I’m sorry he’s gone.
My grandfather’s battalion never went overseas; they were stationed, inexplicably, just north of Mexico. He learned a very little Spanish while he was there, and once I started studying Spanish he liked to repeat it to me. ¿Como estás? Bien, abuelo.
I’ve always wondered if he learned some saltier stuff – this was the army – but Grandpa would never have used that kind of language in front of ladies.
He grew up on a farm, and was very much in the tradition of the innocent, old-fashioned farmboy with a hidden penchant for romance. My grandmother isn’t and never was a city girl, so they aren’t a couple out of that old story; but she did meet my grandfather when he climbed through the window at the courthouse where she was working. He saw her tap-tap-tapping away at her typewriter, and she was just so pretty that he just had to meet her.
So yes, he was old-fashioned. It wasn’t always in a good way. I remember one time he commented, in a tone of perplexity and wonderment, that the next county over had a colored man in the district council. But he sent both his daughters to college, along with his son.
I think he was sometimes a difficult father. My mother smoked for a year during college, evidently purely to rebel because she made a point of doing it when she went home for Thanksgiving. Her father sat at the edge of his seat, saying it was FINE, perfectly FINE, gripping the arms of the chair: it wasn’t fine but damned if he’d admit to being defied in his own house.
But he was also very kind. Maybe he’d mellowed by the time I met him. He used to till up a garden patch so my brother and I could run around in the soft soil. He loved to garden, and I found out at the funeral he used to grow so much produce that he’d just give it away, bushels of tomatoes to charity.
And there was always ice cream at my grandfather’s house. My grandmother would make cherry pies (she can’t anymore, her hands are too stiff), and Grandpa would get out the ice cream and say, “You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream!”—and we’d all have pie a la mode, and it was delicious.
We weren’t close, my grandfather and I. But I’m sorry he’s gone.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 02:34 am (UTC)But it's the kind of thing Austria-Hungary might do, so I wouldn't lay odds on that.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 02:35 am (UTC)