Frank Stanley Harris (1912-1994)

Now that I have been called out by my Elder Younger Sister for my lack of posting, I suppose I must remedy the situation before her former Significant Other, now Fiance (congratulations, guys) jumps on the bandwagon and really lays into me with his rapier wit. So, here goes.

I must preface this whole thing by saying two things. One, that anyone who is my sibling may wish to go get a precautionary supply of tissues. Two, that this post is primarily about one of my grandfathers, my dad's dad, and that fact should in no way be taken to mean that I'm playing favorites among the grandfolks--it's just what was on my mind.

Like I said, this is about my dad's dad. That particular set of grandparents has long been referred to in Harris family tradition as "Little Grandma and Grandaddy." This would be in contrast to what we called my mom's parents, you guessed it, "Big Grandma and Grandaddy." Family lore further goes on to claim that I was responsible for starting this tradition, during one of those truthful little kid moments when I pointed out that my mom's parents were, well, bigger than my dad's. It's a nice little story, but, you know, there are a lot of stories like that in my family, stories that involve me saying something precocious and/or mildly weird (ask the EYS sometime about how she supposedly got her name) that evolved into family tradition, and the older I get, the more I wonder if they're all true, or if some of them have been passed off by my parents as truth simply because I was too young to present any kind of plausible deniability. I guess the main reason I suspect this is that, when and if Jen and I have kids, I fully expect to mess with their minds in just such a fashion.

But I digress. Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about Little Grandaddy lately because of the dual facts that we just bought a house and I just started building guitars as a hobby. And this means that a lot of the woodworking/handiwork/general hardware store-y type skills that I learned from him have come into play lately. Which is good, because the baseball skills that I learned from him have decidedly NOT come in handy at any point in recent memory, and I would hate to think that all that knowledge was rusting away in the deep recesses of my brain. But that handyman stuff has come to the fore quite frequently. See, when I was little and formative, we lived in a condominium that lacked any kind of real yard and any sort of garage/workshop-type space. So when we would go over to the grandparents' house, Little Grandaddy and I would almost invariably go out and knock the Wiffle ball around (with a blue plastic Louisville Slugger, thanks very much) or go into the garage and build something vaguely semi-useful. We built a pair of stilts once (all of 4 inches high) that I never quite learned to walk on; we also built a box that was pretty ugly (one whole corner of it was squared off with wood putty, a good 2-3 inches in every direction) but quite functional--I kept stuff in it well into my high school days. I still have my grandfather's folding carpenter's ruler, sitting on a shelf just above my workbench (that I built myself) where I can keep an eye on it and it can keep an eye on me.

I was at said workbench the other night working on a guitar, and in the course of my work I partially disassembled the guitar and came across something I didn't expect to find. And when this happened, what I said to myself in my head was not "Wow" or "Look at that" or even "Huh." No, what I said to myself clear as day was, "Well I'll be jiggered." I did not have to search very far in my memory banks to know where that came from.

I have this really unattractive shirt/overcoat-type article of clothing--I guess its characteristics put it technically into the category of "jacket," but if you saw it you'd understand why I hesitate--made of plaid flannel that Little Grandma gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Little Grandma has always been sort of hit or miss when it comes to giving me clothing; I am always genuinely appreciative, but a lot of the things just don't get worn. And this thing would fall into that category, I'm sure, if it weren't for the fact that the minute I looked at it, it reminded me of something my grandfather would have worn to work in his yard, or the garage, or the garden, or something. And so, despite the fact that it really is not the most flattering of couture, despite the fact that Jen snickers (deservedly so) and asks me if I've become a lumberjack whenever I wear it, I will continue to do so. Besides, for all its lack of visual appeal, the sucker is warm.

WheneverI walk into a hardware store (a real hardware store like Pleasant's, not some big-box home-improvement warehouse), I can't help but breathe in and enjoy that hardware store smell. You know the smell: the potpourri of lawn chemicals and lumber and metal and paint and PVC pipe and everything else they sell there. Love it. Love. It. Guess why? Yup. My grandfather. I found out after he died that, many years ago, he had owned a hardware store. It must be a genetic thing. Jen and I were talking last night about the frustrating imbalance between income and outflow in our bank account, and I mentioned that I had pondered the possibility of getting a temporary part-time job during summer vacation. She asked where I would work, and I said, "I dunno, maybe a hardware store." 'Cause that would be fun. But, again, only in a real hardware store, where you can go in and buy something and the people can actually tell you about how to use it. I would enjoy being one of those people. Got to think my grandfather would be happy to know that.

So, Jen and I were having this conversation in our favorite local Italian restaurant, and I was describing to her how I love the smell of hardware stores, and why I think that is, and how much of what I've been doing lately has called my grandfather to mind, and what I learned from him. And that conversation brought to mind the thought that, if he were alive today, I would have brought him over to see my new yard, and the workbench that I built, and the guitars that I built and am building, and he would look at my beautiful wife and lovely home and the modest number of reasonably good things I've accomplished, and he would be proud of me. And for some reason that thought made me incredibly happy and incredibly sad at the same moment, and I quite unexpectedly began to cry to myself, right there with my lovely wife and delicious pizza in front of me. Fortunately, my lovely wife was understanding, and the pizza seemed to have no opinion one way or the other.

It's weird. I didn't cry at his memorial service. I was upset, of course, but crying wasn't how I reacted. I was also barely 18, and maybe it takes a while for things to really settle in. I do remember that, when Jen and I were on our honeymoon, I had a dream that my grandfather was still alive but in some sort of home (he had Parkinson's disease), and that I was explaining to him that I had gotten married over the weekend and that I wished he could meet Jen, because he would have really liked her. Understandably, I was a little down when I woke up. But maybe I'm reacting this way because I now understand a little better what kind of person he was, and I'm beginning to understand how much I value a lot of the same things he valued, and how much I wish he were around to see me arrive at that point.

I haven't had this kind of dream nor this kind of reaction about my mom's parents, who have both passed on as well. I did cry at my grandmother's gravesite, and I know they both would have liked Jen a lot, and they would have been proud of me for the things I've done, and I miss them very much and I have all kinds of great stories and memories of them. Like I said, please don't think I'm playing favorites among the grandparents--the memories are just different, as the personalities were different. At some point I'm sure I'll relay the story of how Big Grandaddy once tied a piece of twine to a very young Valerie's rolling walker and let her waddle/roll around on the porch until she started to go too far, at which point he would give a tug on the twine and she would roooollllllll right back to where she started. (I recall her giggling delightedly at this.) Or the story of how he and Big Grandma met before they actually met, and how they didn't realize it until years later. They were different people, and we had a different relationship, and I wouldn't compare it to the one I had with Little Grandaddy any more than I would compare pizza to Heavenly Hash ice cream. (Why choose just one?)

And please don't think I'm discounting my dad in any of this. I'm sure my dad would have taught me this stuff, too, if we'd had the yard and the workshop and everything else. I got other things from him: my sense of humor (you may thank him or blame him as you wish), my stunning good looks, some of my musical inclinations, all of which I'm very grateful for. And he taught me to ride a bike and kick a soccer ball, so there's no shortage of traditional father/son lessons there.

But this one, this one today, is about Little Grandaddy. And today I miss him very much.