Lately it is kind of depressing here. So how about a happy story. Hey, I got one of those.
I just don't know where to start to explain how cool he is. Did I mention he is 94 years young? Maybe my favorite story about him is this. As a kid, when my mother (his daughter) was pregnant with me he could often be seen placing headphones on her ever expanding belly. Mom was not a fan I hear. It would seem I needed, even as a fetus, to hear Jack Buck call Cardinals baseball games. He explains to this very day that the thought his first grandson wouldn't be a Cardinals fan just wasn't acceptable. 41 years later, well he was very successful. Here he is in July of '69 celebrating my birth.
I am blessed, he is blessed with a mind as nimble as it as ever been. We talk for hours and hours about the Cardinals. But more then anything, when I was like two, he did something that would to a large extent shape my entire adult life. He handed me a golf club. More below the fold.
The first time he ever left his small rural town, the town my family still lives in and has since 1867, was to fight the Nazis.
I have no idea what he did during WWII. When asked he just says his government paid for him to "walk around Europe." When he got back home he got a job working at a Snap-on plant. Entry level. He'd work there for 35 years until he eventually ran the place. Tool and die maker. Now I don't know, I need like a 10 page PDF to hang a picture, but I hear he made the best tools known to man. You know we used to make shit in this nation and be kind of proud about it. He was very proud of what he did for a living.
Oh did I mention he liked to ride motorcycles really fast.
Grandmother, who he was married to for 57 years before she passed away, put a stop to that. But I guess that is another story. He never graduated from high school, but put his three children through college. See my mother (to the far right below) and aunt ought to have the same opportunity as his son had. I don't know what it was like to be a women in the 50s, but thinking my grandfather was a little more progressive then most folks at the time.
In his free time he liked to play golf (we're getting there) and build stuff. I hear all the wood working equipment he has is worth something like $150,000. When as a kid in the 70s I wanted Star Wars stuff he made me toys. I didn't appreciate it at the time but I have them all to this day and it is like the coolest stuff you've ever seen. Something that could only be made with two skilled hands and a lot of love.
Bored in retirement he built each of his nine grandchildren a grandfather clock. Chopped down the tree, planed it (is that the right word?) and went to work. Still bored when he was done he started with his oldest grandchild (that would be me) and started making us a second one. Several of his grandchildren have more then one :).
His other hobby was golf. A sheer passion. Played nine holes a few times a week until he was 87. He is a healthy 94, would still play, but alas his eyesight has failed him.
I was like just before turning two. Barely walking and he handed me a golf club. We'd end up playing thousands of holes of golf together. He taught me a lot on those early mornings, maybe the best of which was how to not to a sore loser and later when I'd beat him, how to win and not gloat about it.
Eventually I became really good at hitting a little white ball. State champ. Full ride to a large Division I school. A school, if not for golf, I never would have gotten into. At this time in my life I came to realize books, reading, well learning stuff wasn't a bad thing. I realized I wasn't going to make a living playing golf and just learned shit and got a few degrees.
All because he gave me that golf club and spent countless hours working with me. You know that short, fat, awkward kid! If he'd never given me that golf club and set in motion the events that would eventually unfold, there is no telling where I might be. I've tried to explain this to him, but he doesn't seem to get it.
I talked to him last night and he told me he is giving my only niece, my brother's two year old daughter, a golf club for Christmas. He said he couldn't teach her, but maybe I could. I don't often cry, but through tears I let him know of course I would and I'd show her the same patience he showed me.
When my parents and I take him out for dinner tonight, just for a Whopper at Burger King cause that is what he wants, I'm going to hug him extra hard!