A man I knew used to say that “everyone needs somewhere to go after breakfast.”
Say what you will about Lester Broom – he always had somewhere to go.
My mother’s dad would be 109 this week, were he still among us. ‘d give a great deal to see him now, where he is, to learn if and how more than three decades amid the wonders of heaven have affected his deeply ingrained habits of pacing, musing, and grinning a little, at the marvels of life’s passing parade.
One thing’s sure – he is having a high old time with the music. And joyfully chiming in his tenor part.
Grampa lived most of his days in the Mississippi countryside, tending his farm, raising his children, helping his neighbors, enjoying Granny’s exquisite biscuits. I am indebted to him, they tell me, for a great deal of my personality and deeper inclinations.
Wish I had known him better, longer. I was 10 when we came west, and in those days, coming west still meant for most what it had meant for everyone a 100 years earlier … you wouldn’t be coming back very often. So my memories are of early on, and mostly of putting on my little denim jacket and slouch cowboy hat, scrambling to climb way, way up into the cab of his battered old pickup, and squirming on the seat as we headed down winding country roads.
We usually stopped at the general store, a mile or two down the way, to fortify ourselves with a Nestle’s Crunch, and something cold from the icy waters of the old-time soda cooler. Then we’d trundle off down the two-lane on some obscure errand, or jerk along some rutted clay trail to look in on an old friend Grampa was concerned about, or working on a project for. Sooner or later, we’d wind up out at the cotton fields, and then at the watermelon patch.
Grampa was legendary in our family for his gift for cultivating great watermelons – and discerning the best of the best. He could tell the quality of a melon by the heft of it in his hands and the precise timbre of the thump when he flicked it with his finger. He knew the deep, hollow sound of sweet and crisp, and once he’d thumped and made his choice, there was nothing left but the plunging in of his weathered pocket knife, some slurping, and a heroic spitting of the seeds.
No watermelon since has ever tasted so good.
Can’t remember what all we talked about, rolling along, but it was high adventure, feeling the wind through the windows and watching it hurl itself in vain against his Brillo pad hair. I remember the wiry muscles under the farmer’s tan on his arm as it propped on the window. How he’d squint down the road and “shluuck-poot” some tobacco juice from the wad in his jaw. How the wry grin wrinkled over his face as he chuckled at something I’d asked, or he’d remembered.
He’d led a hard life … hopping trains as a youth, wandering, coming home to take care of his mother and siblings and later, his own wife and family. His first child died at birth. At some point, he reluctantly placed a younger brother, tormented with emotional problems, in an asylum – only to learn, too late, that the place was more of a horror chamber than his brother’s mind ever was. Grampa hurried to get him out, but by the time he arrived, the story goes, someone had thrown my great uncle out an upper story window. Grampa never forgave himself.
He carried a great deal of responsibility, and so tended to shy away from obligations that might multiply all that was already weighing on his mind and shoulders. His work ethic dodged at any job that smacked of a desk or at having to be at some one place every day, same time, rain or shine. But he was tireless at any task that meant helping a neighbor, fetching groceries for a widow, lending a calloused hand to someone he knew from the church.
He was a respected judge of livestock and a highly dependable gauge of often-tumultuous southern weather. He was the best front-porch barber in Lamar County, and Saturday afternoon on that porch was the only place to find out what was really going on in that part of the country. What the country didn’t know was that he was practically the only man of his age, color, and profession voting Republican – Grampa always kept his votes very close to his vest.
What he didn’t hide nearly so well was his affection for his oldest daughter – the one who moved so far away, and lived such a different life. And he was awfully good to his oldest grandson, who looked up at the thoughtful eyes, the shy grin, and the jaw working that plug of tobacco … listened to the high, lonesome sound of his voice as he worked his chores … and tried to imitate that peculiar stomping step he made, coming through the screen door.
He came west once, and we took him to Disneyland. Mickey and the Matterhorn weren’t nearly as fun as watching the wonder of it all play across his face. For a man used to cotton rows and sorghum molasses, Splash Mountain and the Haunted Mansion were a remarkable sight to see.
I like to think that capacity for wonder was one of the things he passed on to me – along with the restless nature, and his mostly wry-grin view of the world. That bent to go our own way, work out our own salvation ... with fear, yes, and trembling.
Hope the guilt is long gone now, and that – at his end of that great heavenly banquet table – they have sweet watermelon, and good biscuits. That he’s found some likely new hymn to sing to his Lord.
And somewhere to go after breakfast.
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