I loved
my grandparents. They took me in when I was at a very early age and did not
have a home. I spent about half of my childhood with them throughout the 1950s.
They taught me their verities. Everyday, they told me about the Lord Jesus. And
justice. And right. And wrong. And work. That was a start in life.
My grandpa, ol' John P., was 5'11', 180 lb of
gristle. He started working in the coal mines when he was 13 years old, then
switched to laying brick and farming later on after he moved the family up to Ohio.
Some people said that he was the workin'est man they ever saw.
Sunday was his only day off. After church and
Sunday dinner, he would pile into his bed in an upstairs bedroom, and you could
hear him snoring all over that old farmhouse. Nobody ever had the heart to wake
him up. "Daddy's sleepin' " were the only two words you needed to
know.
Later on in the day, he would sit out on that
rickety old front porch, rocking back and forth. He would carry on an entire
conversation while peeling an apple with his pocketknife and eating the slices
right off the blade. He would also use that same pocketknife to carve little
monkeys from peach seeds. Whenever he finished one, he would laugh like a
little child. He would then dip the little monkey in varnish, claiming he was
baptizin' it.
I'll never forget how he once pulled me up in
his lap and started talkin' to me straight. He held out his hands and said,
" Look at them hands." I did. They were gnarly. He was a bricklayer.
His hands felt like bricks. He said. "I don't want you to have hands like
that when you grow up. I want you to do good in school and make somethin' of
yourself. You're a right smart boy and you can make your mind up to be anything
you want to be." I wasn't old enough to know that he was giving me his
blessing.
John P. was the closest thing to a daddy I
ever had. He was gruff and strict and sometimes a little scary, but he never
laid a hand on me. He didn't have to. He made me want to do good. He made me
want to be a little version of him. Of course, I never even got close to that.
John P. was a leader in our church. For a
fact, he was the most natural leader I have ever known. The young people adored
him. They loved his jokes and his fairness and how he would listen to them. The
congregation made him an officer in the church because they knew the church
wouldn't go under as long as he had a dime left. As a matter of fact, he built
the church-house with his bare hands, beam by beam and brick by brick. Never
charged a nickel. He thought a man ought not to charge the Lord. And he was the
first one that those poor people turned to when things got bad.
When he died, I was out in California working
for an aerospace company. As I pondered the news that he was gone, it occurred
to me that I had hands, but mine were as soft as a baby's. That's what he had
wanted. I caught a plane and came back home.
I wrote
John P.'s eulogy, and I didn't have to tell a single lie. I talked about his
big ol' shoulders, and I talked about his big ol' gnarly hands. I talked about
how he walked with his God every day of his life, and how he loved his wife and
children, and how he had loved me, and how he had never treated me like I was a
burden. The little boy who had received ol' John P.'s blessing so long before
had the last word on what kind of man he had been.
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