Andy

"Dang, Pearl, let's go home." The story of Pearl is not complete, without introducing you to Andy, my maternal Grandpa. At first glance, he might have easily been stereotyped as a typical crotchety old man. But, there was much more below that exterior.

Grandpa was mostly an introverted home-body, who's nerves were easily "jangled", as evidenced by the opening quote. There were times, though, when he would come out of his introverted shell and could be quite a ham. In fact, Andy was not his real name. Years before I ever knew him, he and his brother acted out an Amos and Andy vaudeville act. While nobody ever remembered his brother as Amos, the name "Andy" stuck to my Grandpa for life. It must have been some performance!

Grandpa drove a used, turquoise, American Rambler, with his hands on the wheel at eleven and one o'clock and his thumbs meeting at noon, rarely over 40 MPH, and often with the driver's window cracked to let his pipe smoke escape. I don't think he ever left the state in which he was born, and if he did, it was only as far as one neighboring state. One of my favorite Grandpa memories occurred in this American Rambler during one of the summer weeks my brother and I stayed with them. The four of us rode to "town" (about 20 miles) for groceries. As we drove into an intersection with a stop light, a bright red pickup met us from the opposite direction. My Grandma, making conversation, remarked (about the truck), "that's red". My Grandpa, not noticing the truck and thinking she was talking about the stop light, immediately stopped in the intersection, to verify the color of the light. As horns honked and my brother and I giggled in the back seat, Grandma and Grandpa had a VERY quick discussion of trucks and lights, and Grandpa sheepishly eased the Rambler through the intersection. Once his nerves settled down, I think he found the situation amusing. Several times throughout the day, he would look at my brother and I and say, with his gold tooth twinkling, "well, she said it was red!"

Grandpa couldn't read a note of music, but he played the fiddle by ear. My cousins and I loved listening to him play, and we would often pester him to get the fiddle out. He would pretend like he didn't want to, but I think he just enjoyed being coaxed. After several refusals, we would lay off asking him, only to shortly hear the familiar "ting, ting, ting" as he checked the strings. He would then commence to play Turkey in the Straw, Ragtime Annie, or a number of other fiddle tunes. Grandpa's brother played the banjo and his sister-in-law played the accordion, also both by ear. Occasionally, on summer evenings, they would visit and sit around telling old stories and playing music in the backyard for hours. Great memories.

I never remember Grandpa cussing... unless the words, "dang!", "fiddlesticks!", and " ahh, horse manure!" count.

Grandpa was a creature of habit. He always carried a pocket knife. He always ate corn flakes for breakfast, crunching them up to get more in his bowl. He always had to have bread and butter at meals, often dunking it in his coffee. Grandpa was most often found in his worn chair beside the Warm Morning stove, with one leg up over the overstuffed arm, and the coal bucket handy for emptying his pipe ashes. If not there, he may be on the "davenport" with one leg up on the back. Both postures were known as the "Andy Gump Slump".

Sometimes the smallest things make the best memories, and I will close with two such memories. My grandparents bedroom was very large. It had an extra bed that my brother and I usually used when we stayed at their house. Grandma was always up early, but Grandpa would stay in bed much later, usually long after he was awake, occasionally talking to nobody in particular. (I know, people who talk to themselves are sometimes suspect, but it wasn't weird, it was just Grandpa... and besides, we all talk to ourselves sometimes, right? I mean, I do... what? ...WHAT? You mean NOT everyone talks to themselves?) Anyway, most of the time it was just nonsense stuff, some of which I found amusing. The one thing my brother and I still have not forgotten is the morning he was lying in bed , and out of the blue said, "he said his name was Oodle-Doodle... but it didn't start a big fight!" I'm now forty, but my brother and I still say that and laugh! When Grandpa got up, he would never verbally say "good morning". He would hold up one index finger and wait for you to return the greeting. I still do this to my kids and they return the greeting. Sometimes we pass on the oddest things!