My granddad was a railroad man. He spent his youth working on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. My grandmother was the cook in a boarding house that catered to railroad men. Her brother Clifford who also worked the rails, looked after her. My grandparents married and had four children: Sybil, Mozelle, my mother, and the twins: Jesse Lou and Johnnie Tex, born on the Louisiana-Texas line. Granddad was curious man. I don’t mean he was particularly inquisitive; he wasn’t, but he had a couple of interesting quirks, and a big heart that was cleverly hidden.

 

He had only a thumb and two fingers, ring and pinkie, on his right hand. He told me his brother had whacked them off...just like that. I was afraid of my uncle for a long time before the finally told me ‘the rest of the story’. He and Uncle Cecil were chopping kindling for the stove, Cecil missed the wood Granddad was holding, and did indeed, whack off two fingers. Granddad used to shake his right hand, and the two remaining fingers would fly back and forth really fast. He’d take a swat at my bottom when I passed too close to his favorite chair. He never connected fingers to flesh, but just the shaking hand scared the crap out of me when I was little. As I got older, I realized he was teasing me. About the time I figured that out, my grandma taught me how to snap a dishtowel. (This proved to be a useful little skill in my college years.) When Granddad was engrossed in the newspaper, I would snap the dishtowel and zap the side of the chair. He would always jump and I figured we were even. So did he.

 

He also had a dog named Nick. Nick was a black and white Boston Bull Terrier...sweet and cute, in spite of his mean looking little face. I spend many weeks in the summers of my life visiting my grandparents in the hot and dusty, nothing little towns of San Miguel, and Paso Robles, CA. Every summer Nick would run out to greet me when I got out of whatever green Ford was the current ride. One summer I noticed Nick didn’t have a spot where one should have been. “New Nick,” replied Granddad when I asked. Apparently I hadn’t become a keen observer until that seventh summer, because Grandma told me later that this was the third Nick. Turns out that there were six little dogs named Nick. When the last Nick died, my grandfather soon followed.

 

Granddad grew sweet peas in a planter box beside the garage. He drank a little, didn’t talk a lot, and never acknowledged that Grandma and I knew he kept a small bottle of Old Crow behind the sweet peas. She was annoyed, and I didn’t get it. He also ate homemade biscuits and gravy, sausage and eggs, every day of his life. I don’t know if this says more about my Grandma or him. Making biscuits was like making coffee in their house. He wasn’t big on comments or complements, but when I turned out what he considered the perfect biscuit, he told me they were the best he’d ever tasted. This was the highest praise imaginable. I talked about those biscuits for the rest of the year. I still make great biscuits.

 

During my eighth summer, my sister was an infant, four months old and I spent almost all of that summer with my grandparents. It never occurred to me that this was a wonderful thing for my mother; she could spend time with my new sister. I always thought summers in San Miguel or Paso Robles were a special treat just for me. I didn’t realize until I had children of my own, just how precious this time must have been for my parents.

 

The year was 1952 and Granddad had a 1949 green Ford. He always bought Fords and they were always green. My parents would drive me to Salinas; Grandma and Granddad would pick me up and my summer would begin. As I got older, I rode the Daylight from San Jose to San Louis Obispo all by myself. During the 50’s little girls and young women wore dresses, hats and white gloves. I was pretty cute, and felt very grown up riding the train with my hat, cloves and lunch on the seat next to me. Usually the summer included hanging out with my three cousins: Benny, Doug and Lee. They were older than I was by four years, two years and two days. They toughened me up, and I don’t think they realized I was a girl for most of my life. They all seemed amazed and puzzled when my first bra was hung on Grandma’s clothesline.

 

But in July of 1952, I was in the backseat of that ‘49 green Ford, heading for White Horse Lake in Arizona, and I was hot...really hot. The car had a canvas Desert Bag full of water hanging over the radiator, and a ‘cooler’ that fit between the window and the roof. The seat covers were plaid and made of something that looked like straw and felt like the sticky side of Scotch tape. Grandma gave me a Coke bottle of water to help me stay cool. I don’t remember anything working all that great. “When are we going to get there? I’m hot and I don’t have anything to do!” “Honey, wherever you are, there you are,” she said. “You have to learn to bloom where you’re planted.” This shut me up because I didn’t know what she meant. It took me thirty years to figure it out.

 

Somewhere on Route 66, between Needles, California and Kingman, Arizona I complained enough and Granddad finally pulled over at a gas station. I got out of the car, had a ‘co-cola’ from the cooler, and the gas station attendant let me take the water hose and get wet. If Granddad was annoyed with me, he never said a word except to mumble something about making good time before dark. When I got back in the car...soaking wet, I heard the voice of the attendant in a deep southern accent say “Mister, you got somethin’ poking out your tar. Looks to be a bone or somethin’.” Off came the tar (or tire as we say in the north), the bone was removed, the tire patched and filled with air. As we were ready to pull out on the road, Granddad turned around in his seat. I was sure I was about to get a ‘talkin’ to about wasting time, but instead he said, “Patsy, I believe you saved our lives today. If we had a flat out on that road, who knows what would have become of us. I remember running over something on the road a few miles back, but I didn’t think much about it. From now on I’ll stop anytime you ask me.”

 

I’m not sure why this particular memory has stuck with me for almost 60 years. But as I rode to Arizona with my grandparents, on that long hot trip, I think I may have learned what absolute love and total acceptance were all about. The rest of the years I spent with the two people I have loved with all my heart, for my whole life, were always wonderful. They saw me for who I was, who I was becoming, and who I could be...never judging, always loving. Nothing since has made me feel the way I did about myself on that dusty afternoon. I think it was they, who saved my life.

 

P.S. I also learned how to drink from a coke bottle, in the back seat of a moving car, on an old crackled highway, without chipping my front teeth. This little talent excited my parents a great deal more than biscuits or popping dishtowels.