Vance: grandmothers helping raise children is "the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female."

[Zoomie1986]

34. Oh dear

My experience of a grandfather was rather different. It seemed to be about bringing home candy bars for us kids but then eating dinner without ever looking up from his plate because kids were being heard as well as seen from the sugar high...

Whittling a wood figurine for the kid willing to sit next to him while he listened to baseball on the radio (almost always me)...

Muttering hilarious insults to himself about the idiots around him...

Driving 25 miles an hour everywhere but having no regard for center stripes, stop signs and traffic lights (OMFG we are going to DIE)...

Pointing at people's houses while driving down the road and saying, "That sumbitch owes me money..." or "Remember when that widder woman got drunk at the 4th of July parade and took off all her clothes?" Did I mention we children, none of us older than 9, were in the backseat hearing these things, much to my grandmother's mortification?

Chain-smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes....

Having a nip of bourbon every evening after (he thought) the kids were safely in bed...

Hanging at builder supply stores yakking with the other old coots and letting his granddaughter dig in all the barrels of nuts, bolts, pipe elbows, washers...

Taking his granddaughter, not her brothers, fishing with him because she was the only one with the sense to know when to shut up, and never tattled on him for the beers he drank...

And spending hours 'figgering' his accounts on notepads cadged from the local bank. They put them out as lagniappe, and he never failed to take a few when he popped in to make a deposit. Had drawers of them back home, but he'd always take more. Ooh--today they have pens!

So, uh, yeah, my grandfather was something of a character.