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November 22, 2002 liked me twice My mother's father was a tiny man who always wore a necktie and Hush Puppies.  I think he wore them to bed.  A car accident left his left arm withered and permanently bent at the elbow.  But the deformity accommodated his violin-playing.  When he lifted his left arm at the shoulder, the L-shaped arm positioned his fingers a perfect distance from his face.  He'd pick up the violin by its neck and swing its body to the proper place under his double chin.  The appearance of his arm bothered him, but it bothered my grandmother even more.  She hated weakness, probably because she was so weak. My grandfather liked me twice--once when I was a boy and once when I was a grown man.  He didn't like me in the middle years, especially college.  My hair was long and I argued religion and politics without conviction. When I was a boy, I didn't argue anything, with or without conviction.  So he'd let me ride with him in his Corvair while he made his run up and down the river road.  He was a salesman for a grocery distributor and he liked to show me to the store owners and the old men playing dominoes.  I can still see bright light strained through screen doors.  I can still hear the dominoes clicking. When I was grown and married, I got a call from my grandmother one evening.  She was in hysterics.  My grandfather had fallen out with some kind of spell.  I rushed to his house and found him writhing around on the floor in his pajamas.  I guess my grandmother had removed his necktie and Hush Puppies before I got there.  He looked strange with no glasses and his tongue lolling around between outbursts of gibberish.  Not long after I arrived, some nice people from the fire department came and took him away on a stretcher.  I really didn't do anything helpful but, when he got better, he thought that I had.  So he liked me again.  Then he died.

©  2002 by the beastmaster