I have a habit of going into Story Time! mode in various threads when I read something here that reminds me of a life experience. I know plenty of you do the same. I normally try to keep the stories short because they're somewhat off topic, but I thought it would be interesting to have a thread that anyone here can use to jot down some life experiences for no other reason than telling a (mostly true) story that you feel like telling. I'm obviously not a writer and I don't claim to be a wordsmith, but I like telling stories and really enjoy reading them from others that have a knack for it.
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Topic: Dad's car broke down in the Arizona Desert. I learned to cuss.
I suppose I'll start with a short one....
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Topic: Memories of summers with Grandpa
Please try to use this format to make scrolling easier:
Topic: Dad's car broke down in the Arizona Desert. I learned to cuss.
A long time ago, in a state far, far away.....
I suppose I'll start with a short one....
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Topic: Memories of summers with Grandpa
My Grandpa, on my mother's side, died from lung cancer when I was about 12 years old. I know a lot of people that were 'raised' by their grandparents and/or have very fond memories of all the time they'd spend with their grandparents, but I didn't get to see mine all that often. Since my grandparents lived on the other side of the country, I only got to see them a handful of times for an extended duration when my sister and I would stay with them for about 2 months every summer, for 3 or 4 summers in a row.
Grandpa was in the Army. Airborne, if I remember right. I remember being told that he was on a "hand crew building roads in Texas" when I was really young, before I even have a memory of meeting him. That detail really lodged into my memory because he used to send me rattlesnake tails in the mail when he'd kill one with a shovel at work. Out of all the things I had in my room when I was a kid, that Whitman Sampler's box full of rattlesnake tails was my most prized treasure. I didn't know anyone else that had one, and I had a desk drawer full of about 50. That made such a big impression on me that when I was doing a survey last summer in NE Washington's rattlesnake country, I was absolutely determined to bring my daughter home a rattlesnake tail. I ended up getting one on the last day we were there, which the dog ate within an hour of giving it to her. (He also ate her umbilical cord the day it fell off. Disgusting Bastard.) Anyways....
By the time I was old enough to remember meeting Grandpa he was a truck driver in New Mexico. Mainly cattle feed. Even when we would stay with them for the summers, I felt like I didn't get to see him very often because he would leave for work around 4am, and usually get home around 4pm and go to bed around 7pm. He would occasionally ask me if I wanted to "haul a short one" with him, but Grandma said I was a heavy sleeper and he could never get me out of bed at 3:30am. It's funny to type out "...he would occasionally ask me...." because I don't have a single memory of him actually speaking. Not one memory of his voice, his lips moving, a specific phrase or sentence. Nothing. The closest memory I have of him making a sound is the subtle, whistling laugh he'd make when he quietly farted and was waiting for Grandma to notice it. I do regret not going on every ride I could with him over those summers, though. I know he's the exact type of man that I like hanging out with nowadays. Salt-of-the-earth type of guys like my neighbor, where a commitment and a handshake mean something.
Grandpa loved watching "Wild Discovery" on discovery channel during dinner, which is why Grandma normally would eat dinner on the back porch. My sister started eating dinner on the back porch with grandma after she decided she was a vegetarian. (She turned into a vegetarian overnight one year because our neighbors butchered a cow she got attached to right outside our kitchen window). So for the rest of the summer, Grandpa and I had dinner together on the couch and we'd sit there chewing on chicken or sausages or whatever while watching Hyenas or Lions rip apart one mammal or another.
My favorite memory with Grandpa was his "midnight snacks" that I started joining him on. Every night at exactly midnight, he would walk into the kitchen in his tighty-whities to drink a tall glass of milk and eat one of those little pecan pies before going straight back to bed. I had pajamas on the first time I got up with him for a midnight snack with him, but decided to rock the tightie whities from there on out. He'd pour both of us a big glass of milk and get a little pecan pie for both of us. We'd sit there and eat them quietly, down the milk, and go back to our beds without saying a word. I think I had it stuck in my head afterwards that "real men don't talk much" because of those experiences. One night, much to my annoyance, my sister decided that midnight snack time isn't just for boys and she would join us. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think it annoyed Grandpa too. He had two daughters and I was his only grandson, so he liked "guy time" and this was about the only thing my sister wasn't explicitly invited to. Luckily she only joined us once because a grasshopper jumped on her foot while she was drinking her milk and it scared her so bad that she blasted half of the cup of milk out of her nose and right back into the cup again. Grandpa made her finish the whole glass anyways because nothing goes to waste in that house, so we never saw her at midnight again.
I have a handful of other stories about summers with grandpa, like the jeep breaking down in the desert and getting blisters on my shoulders while walking back to town with him, but I'll save the rest of them for later.
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