Grandpa Paul

Wow, has it really been 10 whole days away. It seems like it was just 9 and a half. I would apologize if I felt I needed to but I do not feel that way. Seems that sometimes life just jumps in and ruins a daily blog post. It is really too bad because I actually had a fair amount of material over the last 10 days. I missed the anniversary of the passing of both my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother on the 10^th and 11^th. Both of them had great influences on my life and my views and I have thought about them many times over the last ten days.

I will take today’s post to talk about Grandpa Paul. With as much resistance as I offered Grandpa Paul still had so much to do with my outlook on life and who I am. I guess it was not really resistance as much as it was our different generations added to us both probably resisting the ideas of the other at times. As I grew older I came to understand and agree with his views much more often. As a teen I viewed my grandfather as someone old fashioned, cautious, afraid of risk.

As I came to be an adult that view totally changed. I do not think a cautious man barely out of high school signs up to serve his country in a time of war. You cannot be afraid of risk and become a pilot of a 55,000 pound bomber and fly it at over 200 m.p.h. Old fashioned people do not sell a dairy and pick up a family in Idaho and move to the eastern Washington desert hoping to make a better life based solely on water and land.

I was pretty lucky as a kid. So many kids only get to see their Grandfather annually or a few times a year. For my first 18 years there was seldom a day that passed I did not get to see Grandpa Paul. He was always teaching and he mostly led by example. Grandpa knew so much about so many different things. The house I live in now was designed and built by him. He was always about practicality. Things had to have a purpose, a reason, nothing was ever done just for show. When people I know talk about him there seems to be few but very common descriptions. Hard working, salt of the earth, honest and a “good man” are often terms people use to describe him.

Grandpa was a big man, over 6 feet tall, big shoulders, strong as an ox and he knew it. He sometimes ruled with a somewhat “iron fist” but he also could be as gentle as a tame bear. I think every grandchild was swung by his large arms in his “swing” as he would recite his poem about going up in the swing so high. For me grandpa was a great moderator between Dad and I. Once as a teen my family was at a wedding reception. My folks left early and I was allowed to stay longer and come home with Grandma and Grandpa. Well, some other kids forced (well that’s the way I remember it) me to try hard liquor for the first time. I can still get the dry heaves to this day from the smell of Southern Comfort. Anyway, I ended up crashed on the floor and had to be poured into my grandparent’s car. Luckily I spent the night at their house and woke up the next morning actually feeling not so bad physically but scared as hell.

I walked into my grandparents kitchen with my head hung low that morning. Grandma Sally only had one concern and that was did I want eggs, bacon, toast, fried taters or any combination of the four. Grandpa Paul had a deeper concern. I remember exactly what he said to this day. “Junior you did a bad thing last night. Your parents trusted you and let you stay at the party and then you got drunk and stupid. I am sure that your parents will give you sufficient punishment, but we need to find a way to tell your Dad. You certainly deserve some punishment but your Dad is going to want to kill you and that is probably too harsh.” LOL, I took Grandpas advice and was straight up with Dad and told him what had happened. He was not happy but I am still alive so it ended well as could be expected.

Grandpa Paul was a never ending source of humor. His down to earth ways and absolutely blatant, and I do mean blatant, honesty would often translate into some gem that can still make me laugh many years later. I will tell a few of those stories in a later post. Thanks for your patience with me and my missed posts. I am going to focus this week and try and be here daily.

Today’s real environmentalist species is something I did not know existed at all yet alone on the ranch. I spotted a new bird last week and with some research found out just what it was. The bird is the downy woodpecker aka

Picoides pubescens.

Today’s picture is something I took awhile back that reminded me of my Grandfather.