My grandfather was one of my favorite people in all the world. He had a great sense of humor, was not afraid of having fun, treated everyone with respect, and could laugh at himself without any trouble. He was a juggler, poet, masterful chess player, and he loved his grandchildren. I grew up with a large extended family, so we had parties almost all the time. We had them for major and minor holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, you-name-it. For us grandkids, the moment we all waited for was when my grandparents would arrive at whatever house was hosting the party. That was when Grandpa would open the trunk of his car and bring out the boxes full of paper lunch bags, which were filled with candy for all of us. These weren’t just random bags full of candy, but personalized with our names and fun stickers on them. The candy and other goodies in the bags were chosen for each grandchild based on their age and tastes. He put a lot of effort into those candy bags.
Of course, he was a human being and had his share of faults. He was raised Greek Orthodox but converted to Roman Catholicism when he married my grandmother. That in and of itself isn’t a problem. However, he held to some of the more regressive policies of the Church for most of his life, even going so far as to convince my mother more than once that she had a duty to stay with my alcoholic, cheating, asshole father. Eventually, my mother decided she’d had all the fun she could stand and filed for divorce after 24 years of less-than-blissful marriage.
He was both a product of his time, and ahead of his time. He grew up in the 20s and 30s, served as a bombardier during World War II, and left most of the rearing of their seven children to my grandmother. He could have easily been confused for a conservative, especially when it came to his disdain of hippies, and rock and roll. But he was also a supporter of racial justice, twenty years before it became a national imperative. The last significant action of his long life was arranging transportation so that he and my grandmother could vote for Barack Obama in 2008—he died three days before Election Day.
I loved my grandparents a great deal. Considering the daily misery that was my life at home, I often wished that I could have been raised by them. They lived in a house that they’d purchased brand new in the late 40s, and their neighborhood was eventually surrounded by the city. It was two stories with a partially finished basement where all of the games and toys were kept. The house had nifty things like a laundry chute that went from the 2nd floor to the basement, and a “window” that looked from the kitchen sink to the living room. There were Norman Rockwell prints on the walls. There was a bona-fide 1950s drive up ice cream stand on the next block over. They were the quintessential midwestern, mid-century family and I savored every minute I spent there.
Grandpa had a habit of nicknaming all the grandchildren. Some nicknames were goofy rearrangements of a grandchild’s name, some were lifetime reminders of how that particular kid fucked up in spectacular fashion when they were five years old. I was one of the lucky ones.
He also substituted certain words for his own screwy versions of them. Toilet was “terlot” (he also used “the can” quite a bit). Santa Claus was “Soondy Claus”. The Easter Bunny was “the Eater Bunny.” I could go on. Almost every member of the family, from Grandma, to his children and grandchildren, could do impressions of him and the way he talked. Even my wife and step-daughters joined in. Some were funnier than others, but he enjoyed them all.
His favorite expression was “eight ball”, which he used to refer to someone doing something stupid. For example, whenever one of the grandchildren would be doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing (which was often), he would say to that particular kid, “hey, don’t be an eight ball!” If he was watching the news and saw a story about this or that politician saying or doing something stupid (stupid by 1970s/80s standards–today would probably just make his head explode), he would say, “what an eight ball!” It’s a pretty flexible term, and one that is used freely by several members of the family today.
I’m guessing most people have heard the old saw about Santa Claus bringing lumps of coal to naughty children on Christmas. Grandpa put the fear of being naughty into his grandchildren with a little more flair. “If you’re naughty, then Soondy Claus will bring you a bag of broken glass.” I was appropriately horrified as a less-than-saintly five-year old. But, one year, all of his sons-in-law got together and gave him a bag of broken glass for Christmas. He laughed so hard I thought he was going to stroke out right then and there.
One time, around the Easter season, I went to Grandpa to ask him something that I’d been curious about for some time.
“Grandpa, Santa Claus gets around on a sleigh. So, how does the Easter Bunny get to all our houses?”
“Well, the Eater Bunny drives around in a convertible 1959 Cadillac Eldorado.”
I instantly had this image of a six-foot tall rabbit, driving from house to house in a red (probably because I was also thinking of Santa’s sleigh at the time) Cadillac with white leather seats and huge tail fins. To this day, this is the enduring image that pops into my mind whenever I hear about the Easter Bunny—a cooler version of Harvey the Rabbit.
He once said of his experience as a grandparent that it was, “a great way to get back at your kids. You take the grandchildren, and you spoil ’em. Then, at a certain point, you shoot ’em back to their parents.”
I had a cousin who taught me the mechanics of chess—how each of the pieces moved and what checkmate looked like. But Grandpa taught me the strategy of the game. In my whole life I only ever beat him twice. I was one of those kids who had little patience for losing, but I relished every opportunity to play against him. I think it was because he had an interesting way of razzing me while simultaneously not rubbing my nose in it and making me feel like a piece of shit. He also made a point of coaching me throughout the games so that I could get better. I would take upwards of 15 minutes before making a move, studying every conceivable possibility, as far as seven moves out. Then, I would make what I felt was the best move available. The first couple of times I did this, Grandpa would pause, look at me with a smirk on his face, and say, “you like that move, huh?” I, being a gullible kid, would say, “yeah, I like that move.” Then he would proceed to destroy me, either by taking that piece, or another piece that I had left unprotected. Soon enough I learned to dread the question, “you like that move, huh?” But I kept playing him, I kept losing, but I also kept getting better. It was from this experience that I learned a lesson that has served me well every time I choose to remember it: if I want to be better at something, then I need to engage with people who are better at it than I am. When I was 15, he gave me a chess set for my birthday. It was a hand-carved and hand-wood burned set from Poland. I still have that set and have taken better care of it than almost anything else. Once, and only once, I made the mistake of playing a game against my brother with that set. He was four years older and therefore always beat me at every sport or game when we were growing up. But he hadn’t played chess against me in several years and I knew I could wipe the board with him. Within five moves, he realized this wasn’t going to go well for him. He threw a fit, picked up one of the pieces and threw it down at the board, scattering everything and breaking a piece off the crown of a queen. I yelled at him and told him what a dick he was, but he would much rather be called out as an asshole than lose to me. I was able to repair the queen, but I can still see the damage he caused.
As I mentioned earlier, Grandpa was a poet. He wasn’t published—he just did it for fun. He wrote everything from short ditties to multi-page epics. His poems were funny, serious, topical, and sentimental. The annual highlight was his Christmas Limerick. This was his opportunity to mention every single member of the family and something worthy of note which took place that year. Sometimes that noteworthy event was something the subject would rather forget. He wrote this poem almost every year for 15 years. Eventually the family got so big that it became more of a chore than anything else, so he gave it up. But, during the years when these were being written, the whole family would be piled into the living room, howling with laughter.
When I was very young, Grandpa and I had a little routine whenever I was there. I would be sitting on one end of the couch and he would lie down and put his head in my lap and ask me to scratch his head. As a young kid, I didn’t understand that his objective was to take a nap, so I would start talking to him while scratching his head. After a minute, he would open his eyes, look up at me and say, “hey, just scratch my head.” I’d be quiet for a little bit, and then I’d start talking to him again. He’d open his eyes, look up at me and say, “hey, just scratch my head.” I’d be quiet again, but would eventually start talking to him again. Finally, he would open his eyes, look up at me, and say, “hey, shut up.” While all this was going on, the adults would be making bets on which one of us would fall asleep first.
He had an amazing capacity for making people crazy. He was never malicious about it, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t remind someone of an embarrassing moment, or tease them when he saw an opening. He had a particularly special relationship with one of his daughters. At any given time in their house you might hear the following exchange after Grandpa saw his opportunity:
“Hey, Chris.”
“Shut up, Dad.”
“Hey, Chris.”
“Shut up, Dad.”
“Hey, Chris!”
“Shut up, Dad!”
His superpower was being able to remember every single stupid thing anyone in the family ever did, tuck it away for upwards of a few decades, and then strike at the moment when he could inflict the greatest psychological impact. When his only son was graduating from college, the whole family drove out to spend the weekend and celebrate. The morning that everyone was going to head back, we had scrambled eggs with meat and veggies for breakfast. One of my uncles by marriage did not like green peppers, but he also didn’t want to be that person who has to have their own special meal, so he had the green peppers just like everyone else. However, the kiss of death was when that same uncle decided to ride back home with my grandfather. Grandpa’s driving habits were…odd. Among his bugaboos was a continual habit of speeding up, then coasting to slow down, then speeding up again. After an hour of this, my uncle frantically told Grandpa to pull over as fast as possible. He had just enough time to open the door and empty his guts all over the side of the road. Fast forward a few years. That same uncle is at my grandparents’ house early in the morning while Grandma is making omelets for breakfast. Nonchalantly, Grandpa looks over and says, “hey, Don, would you like some green peppers in that?”
But his Mona Lisa took place a few years after my parents divorced, but during one of their “let’s give it one more try” periods of living together. I was on winter break from college, and was on the phone with Grandpa. My mother wasn’t home at the time so when Grandpa asked to speak with her, I told him she wasn’t there. My father was in the same room as me and Grandpa heard him. The exchange went like this:
“Is that your old man?”
“Yup, he’s here.”
“Ask him if he still likes ‘em dry.”
“What?”
“Just ask him.”
“OK. Hey, Dad, Grandpa wants to know if you still like ‘em dry.”
I’ve seen my father lose his temper more times than I care to remember. It was never pretty. However, I had never witnessed anything like this. He went from zero to nuclear explosion in nothing flat, screaming at the top of his lungs, pacing around the living room, and jamming his finger at me.
“WHY DON’T YOU ASK YOUR GRANDPA IF HE STILL LIKES THOSE FUCKIN’ HARVEY WALLBANGERS! HUH?! WHY DON’T YOU ASK HIM THAT! FUCK YOU, BILL! FUCK YOU!”
Meanwhile, Grandpa is laughing his ass off, and I’m completely dumbfounded as to what the hell just happened. I asked what was going on, but Grandpa wasn’t giving me any hints and my father sure as shit didn’t want to talk about it. It was about a week or so later before I could get some time alone with my mother and tell her about it to try and get the scoop.
“Oh my God. I can’t believe he brought that up.”
So, as you know, my father was a drunk. One of the more maddening questions I’ve asked myself is how all of my aunts managed to marry decent men, but my mother happened to connect with the man who became my father. Once, years later, Grandpa said to me, “I hesitate to say that your father was a problem…but he was a problem.” Anyway, when my parents were dating, my father would stop by the house and hang out. A regular feature of these evenings would be my grandfather making vodka martinis. He would ask my father if he wanted one, and the response would always be, “yeah, Bill—I like ‘em dry.” Invariably, my father would then proceed to make an ass of himself in one fashion or another.
One fateful evening, my father is at the house, being asked if he wants a vodka martini and replying that he likes ‘em dry. At some point, somebody notices that my father has disappeared. Nobody has seen him for at least a half hour. A search party is organized. Someone is assigned to look outside. Someone is assigned to look in the basement. Someone is assigned to look around the first floor. My grandmother is given the task of searching the second floor.
As soon as she gets to the stairwell, she comes upon an unsettling sight: a trail of clothing leading upwards. Like the character in a horror movie who is about to get murdered by the serial killer, she follows the trail of clothes up the stairs, to the left down the hall, to my then 12-year old uncle’s bedroom. There, she finds my father passed out on my uncle’s bed, snoring like a freight train, wearing nothing but his underwear.
My mother told me that after that particular incident, she laid down the law: no more vodka martinis. So, he switched to beer.
My grandfather lied in wait, for over twenty five years, until he saw the time had finally come. It was a moment I will never forget, and one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed in my life.
He was perfectly willing to make fun of himself, and his own mistakes, in front of the family. Two stories stick out in my mind. The first is from when they were younger and raising their kids. Being a mid-century, Catholic family, they didn’t eat meat on Fridays—but Grandpa was not a big fan of fish. Still, I’m guessing that the concept of a fully vegetarian dinner in the 1950s was akin to announcing membership in the Communist Party, so Grandma—with great trepidation—made fish each week. Grandpa would come home from work, smell the fish, and the first words out of his mouth were not “hello, Honey”, but “what stinks?” Years later, when Grandma was relating this story to us, Grandpa also took the opportunity to apologize to Grandma for doing that to her each week. “I look back at those times and I think to myself, ‘how could I be so stupid?’”
The other story also belongs in the “how could I be so stupid” category, and also demonstrates his sometimes baffling capacity for being obtuse. One winter day, they were walking out to the street to get in the car. There was a lot of snow and ice everywhere, so while he was about to open the driver’s side door, Grandpa says to Grandma, “now, be careful—don’t fall.” Grandma takes one step off the curb, slips on a patch of ice, and goes right down on her back. Grandpa frantically runs around to the other side of the car, looks at Grandma on the ground, and says, “didn’t I tell you not to fall?!”
For some people, these two anecdotes might irritate or even offend. But I think it demonstrates his willingness to admit his own faults and mistakes. Certainly, he enjoyed poking fun at people, but he also made sure that everyone understood he was fair game, too, and that he had room to improve just like everyone else.
I came by my own alcoholism honestly. The difference for me was that I burned hot and bright. By the time I was 17 I was landing in emergency rooms with alcohol-related internal damage. By the time I was 20 I was attending meetings of a 12-step organization. This was quite the scandal in my immediate family—not the drinking, mind you, but the fact that I stopped and needed help to do it. Grandpa was the first person to write me and tell me that he fully supported what I was trying to do. It was all I needed to understand that I was doing the right thing and not to concern myself over the objections of my immediate family. Even as late as 15 years into my sobriety, my father would occasionally ask me, “so, are you still doing that not drinking thing?”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m still doing the ‘not drinking thing.’”
But, if I hadn’t had that initial show of support, I’m not sure I would have been able to be that honest with someone whose mere presence had always struck terror into my heart when I was a kid. It was always that memory of Grandpa’s letter that came to mind at times like that.
Grandma had started developing memory problems when she was in her 70s, which then progressed to full blown dementia by the time she was in her 80s. Grandpa always had a mind like a steel trap, so at first he was frustrated with her seeming inability to remember simple things. But, once he came to realize that she was in the grips of a progressive illness, he did what he could to help her navigate through her day-to-day life. He would help arrange her daily pill packs and each evening he would write her a letter for her to find when she got up each morning (she always woke up early, while he would be up by the crack of noon). The letters would inform her of some basic things like the day of the week and the date; if there was anything they were supposed to do that day; the location of certain items in the house; and he would always close by telling her how much he loved her.
As they got older and frailer—and as Grandma’s dementia became more severe—it became clear to their children that living in a two-story house with a basement was not safe for them anymore. So, a meeting was organized to discuss it and the possibility of moving to an assisted living facility. Grandma was not able to recognize the seriousness of the situation and flatly refused to leave her house. Grandpa, always the pragmatist, eventually agreed that the children were right and tried to help her understand why this was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, she never really got over it and the dementia exacerbated her resentment, but he knew this was something he needed to bear for both their sakes.
He died first. His health had been lousy for some time. It was the result of an abdominal aneurysm which had burst, so he bled to death internally. However, we’re pretty sure that he knew his time had come, because he wrote his wife one last note, made himself a bowl of his favorite ice cream (Neapolitan), and passed on.
I was asked to recite one of the scripture readings at his funeral. Even now this is difficult to write about. I got up to the lectern and was about five seconds in when I broke down. It took a short eternity for me to get myself together enough to plow my way through the reading and go sit down. That funeral was a traumatizing event for everyone.
His passing affected me in a way no other had before or since. I was heartbroken, as was the rest of the family—but the most difficult part was watching Grandma. She simply didn’t understand what was happening and kept asking where he was and when he’d be home. So, when she joined him just a few months later, and my wife and I had returned to help pack up the apartment, I saw a series of photographs on the wall of the facility which showed some scenes of daily life there. In one picture was a whole group of residents in a semi-circle for some kind of activity. Grandma was at the very center, and she looked as miserable as I had ever seen her. It was a haunting image. But her funeral was quite different. It was viewed as more of a celebration that these two people who had loved each other for 70 years—and who had been married for 67 of them—were finally reunited again. We missed them both terribly, but we were all happy that they were no longer suffering and apart.
That was 12 years ago. However, Grandpa still lives in my house. He lives in my probably-too-frequent impressions. He lives in my sense of humor, of which he was clearly the primary influence. He lives whenever I remind my wife, “now, be careful—don’t fall.” He also lives in the example that I keep trying to emulate: as someone who accepted new members of the family, such as new boyfriends or girlfriends, as if they’d been there since birth; who finds more value in coaching than criticizing; who prizes the connections of family as things not to be taken for granted; and who welcomes reminders of his own human weaknesses. I’m nowhere near meeting that example, but it’s something I keep striving for because I loved him and because he was a better person than I could ever hope to be. If I want to be better at something, then I need to engage with people who are better at it than I am. I can’t engage with him personally anymore, so my memories of him will have to serve as the next best thing.
My grandfather was an immigrant from Sicily who came over through Ellis Island when he was nine years old. He made his way somehow to Colorado and worked as a shepherd, and later went to work for the railroad where he worked for over 50 years. That’s what took him to Chicago. We were a union family. He never went to any school beyond the third grade. He and I learned to read together. I’d sit on his lap at the kitchen table and we’d go through the Chicago Tribune’s comics section first, then the sports page, then look at who was running that day at Arlington and Sportsman’s Park. We’d work out the words, carefully pronouncing the new ones. He liked the races. In fact, he loved taking me to the barber for a haircut, not because I needed a haircut (though I didn’t mind), but because the barber was also a bookie (which I later learned explained all the little slips of paper he kept in his breast pocket). He taught me his never-fail system for picking horses, which served me well when I was old enough to go to the track without him. I never won much, but I seem to recall winning more often than winning. Like blackjack, it was about cash management and risk assessment. When I was in grad school in New York, I’d amaze my friends at Aqueduct or Yonkers. He liked to watch Gunsmoke on the little black and white in the kitchen, and then the Dean Martin Show because they had lots of good-looking girls. Him and Grandma lived downstairs from us in Little Italy, and since my Mom also worked, I spent my days with him. I am told I look just like him.
Your grandfather sounds like my great-grandfather. He emigrated from Greece with his brother, but his brother only came over to help him get there safely and then he went back to Greece. So there’s a whole shitload of relatives that I don’t know. Anyway, my great-grandfather worked as a water boy on the railroad and eventually got work in a Milwaukee brewery (Schlitz, I think) where he stayed until he retired. He had an accent so thick you needed a chainsaw to cut through it.
My dad used to tell me stories about his grandfather who was a railroad porter. On his days off he would take my father out of school, without my grandmother’s knowledge or permission, and ride the train free into the city to watch baseball. My dad saw some of the greats including Dizzy Dean, his favorite player. They frequently went to see the Pittsburgh Crawfords, my dad loved Satchel Paige. Then they’d have dinner at a bar, for a nickle you got a couple of beers and a free meal. My father ate the food, his grandfather drank the beer. Then he’d take my father home to his frantic mother who hadn’t known where he was and promise never to do it again. A promise he broke over and over again. My dad became a life long baseball fan.
Wonderful stories, @butcherbackertoiletrymaker and @ilpapa.
Your grandfather sounds like a wonderful man. I never knew either of mine, they both dies before I was born. My older siblings tell stories about them and I feel keenly what I missed out on. Thank you for another beautiful post.
Late to commenting, but that’s great stuff.
My grandfathers were both pro-level at building things, and during this awful year I’ve been trying to do some very basic construction in wood and concrete outside. It gives me a new level of appreciation for what they could do, often by hand instead of with power tools.
nice story butcher!
I only remember one of my grandmothers. she had a heart of pure gold. I loved so much staying to her house, I did it for weeks at a time. oh the memories…