The summer I was seventeen, I received sage advice from my grandfather. My grandfather was never much of a "talker". He could, when called upon, "BS" with the best of them, but he preferred, more often than not, to be "doing something".
Usually, it was my grandmother who, with the patience of a saint, would sit and listen for hours to the constant chatter of the hoard that typically meandered through their house on any given day. In between this chatter was the constant cooking of gigantic pots of food, coffee and tea. Enough to feed the small army that was our family that routinely encamped at the kitchen table.
My grandfather would be out in the garage or down in the basement fixing, building or planning the next thing he was going to fix or build. When he did come in to refresh the endless cups of coffee he imbibed and take a moment at the table, he always had a paper napkin or scrap of paper at hand, scratching out some plan for the next thing he was going to build or fix.
I would watch in fascination because I had seen more than once these crude drawings turn into actual working devices, furniture or expansions on their house. Sometimes these items were less functionary than amusing or entertaining. Like the time he used scrap wood & left over piping to build each of us grandchildren a "machine gun" so we could run through the barns and fields to play "war". Accompanied by the strict admonishment from my grandmother that we were not to use them as clubs and to stay out of the field where Ida, a large and mean spirited Black Angus, would watch with one steely eye on us and the other on the clover she was munching. I can't say we always followed either of those directives.
Even in the functional, my grandfather would often include the "whimsical". Like the time he built a drinking fountain in the dining room next to the kitchen door. He said it was to give my grandmother a break from having to jump up and get constant glasses of water for the twenty children running in and out of the house on any given summer's day.
The drinking fountain was covered in tiny blue, red, yellow and green tiles. The tiles created a mosaic that looked like red and yellow flowers floating in water. The mosaic spilled from the fountain and across the adjacent walls appearing as if the "water" had trickled away. I asked my grandfather where he had gotten the idea and he told me that he had seen it in a book about Moorish architecture.
A prolific book reader, I immediately went to the library and checked out ten books on the subject. That led to other books that led to other books. And, so it went. I could eventually see the influences of historic architecture and art in the many things he built. It made me realize that this oft times quiet man who preferred tinkering in his work shop had another side; unplumbed depths.
My grandfather held a variety of jobs and owned a few businesses. Not all of them successful. His most successful venture was as a private contractor remodeling houses or doing piece work for new builds. He could do anything necessary except the electrical or major plumbing. Even that he could "tinker with". He was in high demand, receiving calls from some of the better known firms in the city and many individuals who had heard of his work "word of mouth".
It was a "right of passage" into young adulthood amongst his grandchildren to be asked to go help him on these many jobs. I learned some very practical lessons on using a plumb line, T square, setting tiles, laying carpet, etc. Most importantly, I learned the definition of "hard work" and the importance of "reputation".
These things, my grandfather taught me, kept the work coming and the money flowing. Money he invariably spent on my grandmother, his next "project" or helping out either close or extended family members and, sometimes, complete strangers. Money, he told me, was good for getting what you need and sometimes what you want, but money wasn't everything. It's best use was in making someone else happy or helping them along. "Put your last dollar in a poor man's cup. You'll get it back tenfold one day."
It was an idea my younger self didn't quite comprehend as most of my "dreams" centered around the idea of doing something fantastic that would invariably lead to being fantastically wealthy. I dreamed of traveling, staying in hotels, having a career that did not include back breaking work inside sweltering, unfinished houses carrying ten gallon buckets of mastic. Even as exciting as it seemed to go to work with my grandfather, it was hard and dirty work. I wanted a career, complete with nice clothes and carrying a brief case, not a tool box.
The best parts of these excursions seemed to me the times we would finally sit down to drink a bottle of water and eat our bologna sandwiches. Most often in the silence of exhaustion, but, sometimes, when grandpa would sit and talk to us, providing his take on the world and life in general. Looking back, I'm not sure any of us actually recognized the lessons we were given so much as we enjoyed the prestige of being spoken to "like adults".
The years went by and the hard work had taken a toll on my grandfather. Arthritis in his knees and hands made it difficult to do the "big jobs". He took a job as a night security man for Wells-Fargo, doing small side jobs on his days off to supplement his pay. He would still take one or more of us on these jobs. Teaching skills, he said, that we could use for ourselves to save money or, if times were hard, to fall back on.
The summer I was seventeen, I went for one of my regular visits to my grandparents' house. My grandfather was on the front porch in his watchman's uniform eating barbecue out of a cardboard container and drinking a beer. I distinctly recalled the beer because I could count on one hand the times I remembered him drinking anything other than coffee or water. On those occasions, my grandmother would give him one of her "looks" and he would brush it away, "Ah, hon', it's just one beer."
By then I had heard those little stories at family gatherings about my grandfather's younger days when he was considered a hard drinker and an even harder fighter. Even though there was usually laughter involved or a kind of awed shaking of the head over certain events, it was always with the understanding that those days were long gone. I had never seen that man in those stories.
I was hard pressed to reconcile that younger man with the man I knew as "grandpa". "Grandpa" rarely drank and had offered other sound advice on fighting, "If you can walk away from a fight, walk. If you can talk your way out of a fight, talk. If it looks like you're gonna fight anyway, throw the first punch. Because, if the other guy hits you first, you might get your clock rang and it's hard to get up after that."
The only time I had dared to bring up one of these stories, my grandfather had gone quiet and then told me he gave up drinking a long time ago. After the doctor told him if he didn't, it might kill him, one way or the other. I was suspicious that the doctor had given him that advice on the occasion of sewing stitches in his head post violent introduction to an iron skillet.
That was another one of those "family stories". Apparently, my younger, cockier grandfather had arrived home one night, early in my grandparents' marriage, stinking drunk. He sat down at the table and demanded to be served dinner. My grandmother had quietly went about laying dinner on the table. Taking a bite, the story goes, he proclaimed the food was cold and proceeded to throw it on the floor, demanding my grandmother "get in the kitchen, woman" and make him some "hot food."
My grandmother, as she later told me, went into the kitchen and stood staring at the stove for a moment, trying to decide what to do. It wasn't the first time he had come home drunk. She always claimed she didn't know what came over her. The next minute, she had grabbed the cast iron skillet off the stove, came out of the kitchen and "gave him a good wack."
A trip to the hospital and many stitches later, contrition on both parts, reconciliation and apparently a new view on the dangers of continuing to be a "hard drinker". According to my grandmother, she had been very afraid that she had killed him when he fell unconscious to the floor. My grandfather, on the one occasion he acknowledged that story, only nodded his head and said, "Yep, she damned near killed me."
It was that knowledge that had me glancing down at the beer by his chair on the porch and quickly checking the screen door lest grandma came out and gave him one of her "looks". I took the other chair on the porch gingerly, one eye on the screen door. He offered me some of his barbecue and a side of pickles. We sat munching in comfortable silence until he asked me what I had been doing that day.
I told him I had been to the library. He inquired on what I was reading. I told him I had gotten several books on the Civil War, World War I and World War II. We proceeded to talk awhile about history. Even at seventeen I realized this was an important moment. A moment in time when I was privileged to see the intelligent, astute man behind the usual coating of saw dust and adhesives. It was wonderful because I had thought there was no one in my family who shared my passion for books and history. There, in that moment, I shared a connection with my grandfather. We talked as we never had before.
It seemed like an appropriate time to ask about the picture on the wall. A black and white picture of my grandfather in dress navy blues looking like a boy playing dress up. Everyone knew my grandfather had been in the navy in World War II. We knew that he had been the "fly weight boxing champion" of the fleet. That he had joined right after his seventeenth birthday.
According to my grandmother, he went down to the recruiting station, got the paperwork and went home to demand his parents sign the release. He wanted to "get in the war" before it ended and had told his parents he would run away and lie about his age to join if they didn't sign. That was what his mother had relayed to my grandmother. My grandfather rarely spoke of it. Everything we knew was from other members of the family.
I asked what he did in the navy, what ship he was on, all the things I had wanted to ask, but never seemed the right moment. Largely because he rarely spoke of it and neither did anyone else.
Soon he was telling me stories about being on the ship, a destroyer, the USS Edwards. Funny stories about crossing the equator and the "ceremony" for all the "turtles"; the newbies or "virgins" who had never crossed the equator before. They had a big feast. He had to dress up in a hula skirt and coconut brassier. He said that the choices were to jump in the ocean or get thrown in. He chose to jump. I believed him because my grandfather was a natural in the water whether swimming, skiing or piloting a boat.
Then he proceeded to tell me how he had gotten his tattoo. The one on his arm that was an anchor topped off by a scantily dressed beautiful woman in a hula skirt. The ship had docked for supplies and the "local women" were lined up waiting for the sailors to disembark.
Right at that moment, my grandmother appeared, the screen door swinging open, "Lee-roy," she always dragged his name out when he was 'in trouble', "don't be telling her that story!"
My grandfather looked a little sheepish, but smiled, "Ah, hon', I wasn't gonna tell her nothin' bad!"
My grandmother continued to give us both "the eye". I had to turn my head to hide my smile, slightly disappointed that I wasn't going to hear the rest of that story. After a few more moments, my grandmother went back into the house, the screen door slapping closed behind her.
My grandfather waited a heartbeat before picking up his bottle of beer and holding it out to me with a conspiratorial smile and one eye on the screen door, "You want a swig?"
The screen door slapped back open and my grandmother appeared a second later, blue eyes blazing, "Lee-roy! Don't even think about giving her a beer! She's under age and Larry will have a fit!"
Larry, my father, was Officer In Charge of the county's Juvenile Court system. He did frown mightily on underage drinking and other nefarious activities that led to the numbers of disaffected youth parading through the system. Of course, my father put it much more pithily, warning us on several occasions, if we ever got arrested, he'd come and get us, but then he would "whoop" our "asses from one end of the state to the other."
I endeavored to live my life by at least that one rule: never do anything that would make me have to call my father and ask for bail money.
That in constant mind, I had never even considered taking a drink of the proffered beer. Not that my grandfather was serious. I suspected even then that he knew my grandmother had been hovering just beyond the door, waiting to see if he was going to finish telling me the inappropriate story of the infamous tattoo. That suspicion was confirmed when he gave me a wink and a smile saying, "Guess we better not."
My grandmother continued to give us both the evil eye until my grandfather assured her, "Ah, hon', I wasn't gonna give her nothin'. I was just funnin' with you."
A minute or two of gimlet eyed scrutiny later, my grandmother assured we were not going to share a beer, she went back into the house, screen door slapping closed behind her once again. The story sharing moment was broken, but it had created a much more important one with my grandfather. We were now co-conspirators of wickedness and it was good.
We sat awhile longer in silence before I finally asked the other questions that were on my mind. Specifically, what did my grandfather do in the war and was he in any battles. He said he was a Gunner's Mate and that, after joining his ship, they had been assigned to convoy duty, escorting other ships to their destinations. The last escort was to the battle of Okinawa.
I was very interested and listened avidly for the details, but his answers were beginning to slow, the sentences brief with little detail. Once or twice he would expand on the subject, explaining once about being dived on by a kamikaze, all guns opening fire until it split apart and crashed a few hundred feet off the bow.
He told me, after the first intense hours of bombardment on Okinawa, the firing had quieted down as "the Japs" had withdrew to their hidden bunkers in the hills. Occasionally, one bunker would be identified and the guns would open up. The thing he remembered early on was targeting a big "nobleman's house" up on the hill and watching it splinter into a thousand toothpicks. He said he always wondered if the man and his family had gotten out before they opened fire.
Anyway, he went on, there wasn't much fighting for the ships left to protect the invasion after that so he volunteered to help pilot the flat bottom boats (LSTs) that were ferrying men and supplies back and forth. Nothing much to tell about that, he said, except there were a lot of guys throwing up.
I was some what disappointed as I had just been reading the history of the Battle of the Pacific. There, right beside me, was a man who had lived through history. I was eager to hear the first hand account of the last major battle in the Pacific. Everything I had read had been about the intense fighting and heroic effort of these men against a terrible and determined foe. My grandfather was making it sound like they had been on a deep sea fishing expedition accompanied by serious bouts of sea sickness.
I was sure he wasn't telling me everything. Despite our earlier shared conspiracy, I wasn't sure how to ask the questions that were boiling in my mind. I opted for a weak, "So...uh...you didn't see any of the fighting?"
He took a sip of his warm beer, the box of barbecue balancing on one knee, as he shook his head, "Not much. There was this one guy...we were coming in to pick up some wounded to take back to the ships...I guess we missed him or he didn't get the message he was supposed to retreat. I don't know, but the tide was coming in...these guys, some marines, they were stuck on the beach. So this guy, this Jap, he opens up and was shootin' all around them. Took a few shots at us. The pilot wanted to turn back...but, we gunned it and ran right up on the beach in front of these guys. The front dropped down," he gestured with his hand, "then we grabbed some guys and started dragging them in. Some of those guys were in bad shape. Bad shape."
I remember how he drifted off for a moment, staring out at the road, just holding his half empty, warmed over beer. I remained silent, not sure what I should say or if I should say anything at all. It seemed I had intruded on a memory, one that he had preferred not to dwell on for many years. I had an inkling in that moment that maybe there was a reason, back in the early days of my grandparents' marriage, why my grandfather had been known as a "hard drinker" and a "harder fighter". Who, according to some accounts, would get knocked down just to come back swinging, again and again.
"Leroy," one of his brothers would say, "would never stay down. Even if it was for his own good."
That was a different man, not the man I knew as my grandfather.
My grandfather shrugged, took a sip of his beer, "Anyway, I didn't do much. A lot less than some other guys and we got back to the ship alright. Went home after that. Went to school. Thought about being an architect. Or, a lawyer. Then I met your grandmother."
I knew that was the end of that. I was not going to hear any more stories of war. Another question did enter my head, "How come you didn't become an architect?"
It seemed fitting that a man who could build anything with his hands, could replicate historical architecture with some scrap wood and river stones, should have been an architect.
"Well," he said, picking through the remains of barbecue, "I met your grandma. We got married and had a couple of kids. Had to get a job."
He held the box of barbecue out to me and I took the last piece of meat and slices of pickles. He asked, "What are you gonna do when you graduate?"
"Well...," I proceeded to tell him all of my plans about going to college, the two or three career paths I was contemplating, wanting to travel and so on. My dreams. I was seventeen and the world was wide open, mine to conquer. It was the first time I remembered actually talking to him about the subject.
My grandfather listened, occasionally nodding his head. When I ran out of steam, he said, "Let me tell you something. On the way to your dreams, you might end up doing something you don't want to do. Like being a ditch digger. Even if you gotta be a ditch digger, be the best damned ditch digger you can be."
I admit, at the moment, believing that I was humoring my grandfather by listening to his advice. My seventeen year old ego could not imagine a time when I would ever be "digging ditches".
Strange, I can remember that conversation almost word for word, but I can never remember how we parted. My grandfather passed a way unexpectedly a few months later from an aneurism. I recall sitting on the upstairs landing, holding the book I had been reading about medieval history as the paramedics strapped him to the gurney and carried him down the two flights of stairs in front of the house. The book was opened to a page showing a stained glass window depicting the stages of knighthood. A young knight stood, hands clasped as in prayer, as a monk strapped a belt and sword around his hips. I can remember that like it was yesterday.
A few days later at the wake, the funeral home was overflowing. There were over a hundred family members including second and third cousins. Many whose names I could barely recall. There were almost a hundred more, some seeming complete strangers, who had known my grandfather over the years and, having read his obituary, made sometimes long and difficult journeys to pay their respects.
I had taken up my station next to my grandmother, fetching tissues or a drink or someone she recognized that she wanted to speak to. The lines of people kept coming, each approaching my grandmother with condolences, a little story about how they knew my grandfather. All around, people gathered in small clutches, laughing, sharing stories. Each of them recalling something my grandfather had said or did.
A stranger approached my grandmother, his long hair pulled back into a pony tail, his beard freshly trimmed and wearing a new suit. He introduced himself, but my grandmother couldn't recall how they had met. He explained that my grandfather had once given him a job at the gas station he owned up on 7th street. He was a drifter, just returned from Vietnam at the time and his life was a mess.
He said my grandfather had caught him stealing a hundred dollars from the till. Instead of calling the police, my grandfather had given the man another hundred dollars and sent him on his way. I remembered that story because it was a point of contention in our family and, every time it came up, my grandfather would simply say that the man obviously needed the money more than he did.
The stranger took my grandmother's hand and kissed it, holding on as if he was reluctant to let go. He told her that he had used that money to buy a bus ticket home. He had gotten his life back together, got married, had a family. He had never forgotten my grandfather. He said, if my grandfather hadn't given him the money, he didn't know what would have happened to him. He might have ended up dead.
It was only by happenstance that he was talking to a friend from our town who remembered the story and mentioned my grandfather's obituary. He had driven all night to reach the funeral home in time. His one regret was never showing his gratitude while my grandfather was alive.
He thanked my grandmother repeatedly for having shared her life with such a great man. In that moment, our sadness was lifted. Yet, at the same time, we were made aware of what we had lost.
The man had never forgotten.
Years later, I stood at my grandmother's graveside and read the small inscription on the bronze plaque provided by the Veterans Administration for my grandfather who lay at rest in the next plot. It was a simple marker with only my grandfathers name, rank (S2), United States Navy, WWII, date of birth and date of death. I remembered that I had never been able to ask all of the questions I had wanted to on that long ago summer's day.
Later, I asked my uncle, a Vietnam Vet, if he had ever written to request my grandfather's service records. He showed me a brief typed form that had been returned with his request. A short listing of my grandfather's induction, training station, ranks and only berth on the USS Edwards. That my grandfather had received a commendation for "repeatedly" risking his life and boat to rescue men on shore at the Battle of Okinawa.
That was all. It was all that was necessary.
Dear Grandpa,
I've been down in the ditches a time or two.
Thank you.
In memory of my grandfather, Leroy C. Henry, S2, USN, WWII, USS Edwards, Battle of Okinawa.
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