Gran'pa

Gran’Pa

Lloyd Harrison Whitling

Writers Club Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Gran’Pa

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN: 0-595-19560-1

ISBN: 978-1-469-76686-7 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated, o’ course, to Mama-Lou for her kindness in keepin’ me fed and bathed whilst I done this.

Contents

Surviving Old Age

Old Folks

Grandpa

Emma’s Lesson

So, I’m a Grandpa, So What?

Little Tykie

Sex in the Old Days

Young ’uns.

Be Forward

Old Folks is ex-Young ’uns

Doomed and Bored

Wall Plaques for Old Folks

Priorities

Old Age Ain’t Good at Creepin’ Up On Me

The Old Man and Computers

Ants, Bugs, and Other Vermin

Mamas and Other Wimmin.

Advertisin’

It Pays to Advertise

So, I’m Getting Fat, So What?

Lessons in the Wine.

Older ‘n’ Meaner

Pickles, Cigarettes and Music

Poor Rich Folks

So, I’m retired

The Lesson

Pharte Charte

You Can Tell You’re Old When…

Working Your Life Away

Engineering Lessons

Why Santa Comes

About the Author

Surviving Old Age

Everybody knows surviving old age is one thing all of us won’t do, except for a small amount of time, which is what this book is all about.

One of the features of old age is, you get to meet lots of new doctors. Y’all get to be almost an expert on who is the best one to go to for what.

Y’all know, too, that I don’t much care for doctors. Take all the jokes about people of other nations and colors, and change them into doctor stories, and danged if they all ain’t suddenly true. If’n they ain’t, try making them about preachers instead. It is bound to work.

Only thing good about meeting all them new doctors, is they all have pretty nurses who get paid to hold your hand and get your telephone number. If you don’t mind paying upwards of a hundred bucks just to get a little bit titty-lated, it’s almost worth getting old just for this part.

I had to ask one of ’em nurses to stop holding my hand to see if my pulse worked. She asked me, what had she done wrong? I had to tell her, Why, nothin’, ma’am, but I have just found out I ain’t as old as I thought.

I had been sent there by another doctor, who thought I had prostrate problems. That’s something us old men gets bothered with, that the women folks don’t care nothin’ about. It’s kind of like, that’s our punishment for being menfolks so we never get labor pains and minister cramps.

I guess she told on me. The doctor had a big grin on his face when he came in the room to see me. How are those prostate problems doing? he asked me.

Well, Doc, I told him, it comes and it goes. That’s great! he said. That’s exactly what we want.

Old Folks

This is where it all began, many years ago. Once upon a time all us Old Folks was young’uns, and acted stupid by doing fat headed things just like you all does nowadays. Thing is, we didn’t have computers and televisions so we could see other ones like us out there, doing things even stupider and fat headeder than us, so we never found out until we got to be Old Folks how much competition we all had. On account of that, we never got to be really good at being stupid and fat headed, like you all are now. Don’t believe me? Then, ask your Mama and Papa.

We was taught different back then, than you all are now. Not better, mind you, just different. We didn’t have as much to learn about, so we had time to learn about getting along with each other. One thing we larnt was the best way to deal with someone one upping on us is to do him better than he done us, and that it’s a fun game to be playing. We larnt that the game goes on, whether we want to play it or not, and that it ain’t played by hurting each other like young’uns does nowadays. That’s dumb. It ain’t a game when nobody is left to play it. It’s a game when somebody does it the best, and wins.

Sometimes, it hurts and makes you get all red eyed and whimpery whilst you all’s still too tender to understand it. An’ what you need to understand is, feelin’ so bad you can’t hardly stand it, only is a taste of how good you can feel sometimes when you score a point honest and fair, and done it anyways, an’ want to dance and screech and wave your arms all over the place from feelin’ so good. With all your folks out working ’cause you eat so much an’ they got to feed you, there ain’t nobody around to let you in on that. Ain’t no other way to find out whilst you all still are young’uns, ‘less some old coot like me comes along an’ hopes you believe him.

Now, I know this message don’t exac’ly fit with the rest of this book, but these young’uns is hurting each other an’ somebody has to tell them so’s they’ll know they can do better than that. So, I put it here, right at the beginning where they can find it, and some other Old Folks like me, who give a hoot, can print it out an’ leave it where it can be found.

Grandpa

You know I ain’t been a Growed Up all my life. I was a kid once, just like you all might still be. I had a grandpa then, and uncles, aunts, cousins the whole works. I liked the lot of them, felt proud of some of them, hated a few of them, and felt scared of a couple of them. I stood in total awe of only one. His name, so far as I could make out, was Gran’pa.

I loved that man. Come a family fight, he’d be a part of the doings, and I’d always be on his side. Even when Mama was so mad at him she’d be crying. I loved my mama, but she would never be the equal of my gran’pa. In our family, only he held royalty status in my eyes.

Not that he was such a large man. I had to look down to talk with him, even at the age of ten. It’s just that he had a way of looking that pulled a person in to his way of seeing things, and he knew he was always right, no matter what the books might say. He could prove it, and he loved to argue.

He got to prove a lot of things, over the years. He’d do it by out talking his opponent, whoever that might be. I watched close. I wanted to learn how to do that. I wanted to be like him.

Preachers were his favorite victims. Preachers, and Uncle Will, who seemed to be the most capable of standing up against him. Sometimes, they’d go on for days about something frivolous, both of them taking turns laughing about getting the best of the other. At times like those, I watched both of them as closely as I dared. I wanted to learn to be like them.

Now, Uncle Wilbert had grown a lot taller than gran’pa, but only half as wide across. Gran’pa called him Beanpole sometimes, and it didn’t seem to matter whether he was mad or feeling good at the time. I admired that, too, but I never called Uncle Wilbert Beanpole because I followed more after his build than Gran’pa’s. Gran’pa never called me by that name, and I didn’t want to get him started.

Now, Great Gran’ma outlived Great Gran’pa a number of years. When she died, she had already shown Uncle Will and Gran’pa where her land should be divided between the two of them, according to her will, which had not been drawn up by a lawyer, nor surveyed.

It would never have mattered, had there not been a certain yellow rosebush Great Gran’ma had planted on the back line, away back when it had been thought a road was going to be built past there, and that they would therefore build a cabin there to live in.

Gran’pa wanted that rosebush. He wanted to dig it up and plant it by his house where, he said, it belonged because that was where Great Gran’ma had finally lived and died. Besides, he’d said, It was my idea. Trouble was, Uncle Will decided the rosebush was on his side of the dividing line, which they’d never bothered laying down or marking, and he wanted to move it up beside his own house. It was, he claimed, his only reminder of their mama.

In her will, Great Gran’ma had given that corner of their properties to be to the left of the rosebush. Their argument, as I understood it, was to decide which way they should be facing at the rosebush to determine which side should be ‘left’ and which side ‘right’. Walking from the road to the back would put the rosebush on Gran’pa’s; walking from the rear toward the road would make it Uncle Will’s.

Measuring, with their primitive tools, only put the line right in the center of the bush. It looked large enough, I thought, that they could share it. But, no, that would be too simple. An argument had started, and somebody had to be right, and somebody else had to be wrong. It didn’t matter. This is a test!

Uncle Will had apparently gone to see a lawyer and, after talking with him, had hired him to help settle the dispute after agreeing to abide by however it all turned out. He’d come to get Gran’pa to go visit the man, in town, with him to learn how the laws read about such things. Gran’pa met him at the door, shotgun in hand, in case Uncle will ‘might be up to some foolishness’.

Gran’pa let him in, when it became apparent Uncle Will had arrived empty handed, and only wanted to talk. They moved to their favorite arguing spot, in the middle of the living room floor.

I know I’m right, an’ I don’t need some stranger telling me whether I am, or not! Gran’pa had declared, and made his point by thumping the butt of his shotgun on the plank floor, which made echoey sounds all through the house and down in the cellar, like a giant drum would sound.

The gun went off, both barrels not quite at the same time, like bla bloom!, louder than anything else I’ve heard in my lifetime. The room seemed to shrink, expand, and then snap back to its right size while plaster started falling from the ceiling.

Laths fell amidst a ton of ancient, burning dust. A pair of ladies’ bloomers came down last, like a parachute lowering one last stick of wood to its place at Gran’pa’s feet. Damn, I think I’ve shot the bed, he muttered, then hollered up through the hole, You all right up there, Gran’ma?

Uncle Wilbert looked like he’d just fought his first wild goat and lost. His fancy hat laid on the floor behind him, dusty and full of plaster pieces. Crumbs of debris seemed to have gotten beneath his collar, which he squirmed inside while he backed up a couple of steps and tripped on one of the larger chunks, which made him plant his foot right into his hat.

Hey! Gran’pa ordered, You just stay put whilst I go check on Emma. I got more to say to you when I come back down.

He stalked off toward the stairway. I’ll be going, now, Uncle Will hollered after him. I’ll send the sheriff to see you.

I guess I better do my talkin’ outside with him, Gran’pa grumbled, then yelled up the stairs, Emma, are you alright?

I bounded up the stairs on Gran’pa’s heels. He turned once, about to shoo me away, then thought better of it and headed toward the hole in his bedroom floor. Emma, are you alright? he called out once again.

Gran’ma never once did answer him. I thought, from the silence and the smell, that she’d been shot and died. Emma, have you gone and shit in our bed? Gran’pa demanded, once inside the bedroom.

Gran’ma generally took a nap in the afternoon. I suppose she’d begun that routine as a way of getting out of hearing Gran’pa and Uncle Will while they did their daily discussion session. Otherwise, the dishes done and the laundry gathered, she’d have been upstairs folding clothing and storing it away. Could have shot her right up her butt, I heard Gran’pa mutter.

The way I have it figured out, the first slug in Gran’pa’s gun had made the hole through the floor. The second had been close behind, like me following Gran’pa, and had made the hole in the ceiling, that went on through the roof and outside. The two of them ripping past her ears had been enough to scare the crap out of Gran’ma. You better grab a handful of that sunbeam, and wipe yourself, woman, Gran’pa laughed. C’mon, get out of bed. You ain’t dead, unless you died of fright.

It’s a good thing it ain’t rainin’, I offered. I always have had a knack of saying the right thing at the wrong time.

You best get on downstairs, boy, Gran’pa ordered me. Keep a look out for your Uncle Will and the sheriff. Your gran’ma’s alright, just a little messed up from all the noise.

After years of smelling cakes, pies, and roasts coming from her kitchen, I never knew