February 23, 2011

Last week was my Grandad Baker's birthday, February 13. He left West Virginia for Oklahoma  as a really young man, leaving his entire family behind.  I never knew why he wanted to do that.   I'm guessing he was looking for work, but he never said. On a day when he was being real conversational,  he didn't say a whole lot so what I knew about him, I learned by watching what he did

As much as he loved her, he thought my Grandmother was just sloppy about her grandkids. She was. I was not present the day that my brother, Johnny and our cousin, Greg were playing cowboys and Indians and tied my Grandmother to a tree. As  family legend goes,---I'm fuzzy on those details--Grandaddy came home for lunch just in time.  It's hard to say who he was madder at....the boys for doing it,  or our Grandmother for letting them do it. I know it took some tall talking by Grandmother to keep Johnny and Greg from getting a good bottom dusting.

My cousin, Jana, swears she does not remember this one, but I do...She and I were upstairs in the big fat middle of a feather bed, and we were busy burning candles.  We were pouring   the melted wax  onto our skin just to see if we could stand the pain. A FEATHER BED!  He walked up the stairs, looked at us , turned around , went back downstairs and sent Grandmother up.  I'm sure she did some tall talking to save us that night, too.

It wasn't that he didn't love us.  He just thought we shouldn't be allowed to kill ourselves or others...especially his wife. He could be just the kindest, most thoughtful man When I was in seventh grade, Mrs. Kirkpatrick taught the homemaking class how to make cornbread.  I made it for supper one night when Grandmother and Grandaddy were coming.  Just before they left to go back home, he followed me into the kitchen where I was washing dishes.( My Dad didn't buy an automatic dishwasher until we were all grown. He didn't feel the need.  He had four perfectly good dishwashers.)  Grandad said , 'Kiddo, that was the best cornbread I ever ate,'  Since he didn't talk much, I was just stunned and so very flattered.  He had given me the best gift I think I ever got.

 Grandmother and Grandaddy  raised kids in the middle of the Great Depression, and they struggled.  Really struggled.  Once, when we were studying that period of  history, I asked him what it was like. I remember we were sitting under that big tree in their front yard, and  he was quiet for such a  long time that  I thought he wasn't going to answer.

"There were a few  nights when  I watched my wife feed what little bit we had to our kids, and then I would listen to her say ,'Well, I'm not really hungry, and  I'm trying to keep my figure.". Then she'd just sit there and watch us eat.' Quiet, then   'The food doesn't go down too easy after that, you know. But, I knew that I had to eat so I could work the next day.   Sometimes, after supper, I would take a walk, and I would think, 'Tonight is the night that I'm going to jump off a cliff.  And I'd get to the hill, and I'd stand there looking down.  I'd think of her, and I'd think of them.  Then, I'd turn around, walk back home, saying to myself, 'Well, one more day.  I'll try for one more day.'

Canyon deChelly. Chinle, Arizona , a truly spiritual place 

I could not have been more than about thirteen when he told me that story,and what does a thirteen year old kid with absolutely no people skills whatsoever say or do after that?  I got up, hugged his neck and said, "I love you, Grandaddy."

My Grandad was a man who kept his promises, honored and loved his family and did the very best he could. I wonder what he'd say about what some people in this generation regard as their entitlements, what they  are owed rather than what they are obligated to do.I wonder what he would say to the lawmakers who appear to be able to find money to line their own pockets but unable to find ways to provide assistance to people whose families are where his family was in the thirties. Then again, I don't have to wonder.  He wouldn't say squat.  What he'd think, I don't have to wonder.