10.5

Grandad would have been 98 today. I have blogged about him before. I have cooking several more posts about him that I would like to post in the future: an essay I did for a college English course, a few memories, some biography, photographs.

In a few weeks we’ll head north to Columbus for a Thanksgiving weekend with Laura’s brother and family. On previous trips north Laura has not only indulged me but insisted that we drive by the house where my father and his siblings were born and grew up. The last trip Darby was old enough to understand somewhat of the significance of the visit. The farm of my father’s childhood was then 9 miles outside the city limits, near Reynoldsburg, in a hamlet called Brice. Now the city surrounds it as suburbs replaced farmland. No longer in the family, it now sits empty and awaits either a buyer or a backhoe. I’ve not been to Grandad’s grave; I think this year I will go.

The Ohio air will be crisp in late November. The trees will be bare, save for a few remaining leaves which refuse to fall. The black dirt will be spongy and wet, perhaps even blanketed in snow. The sky will be grey. In short, a perfect day for corduroy pants, a tweed jacket, a hot cup of coffee. On that crisp November day I will miss Grandad, but I will relive many happy memories. I will remember seemingly endless drives north to Columbus when I was a boy (many of them for Thanksgiving). I will remember walking up the bricked path to the house and the squeak of the screen door. I will remember the moment of first entrance into that century-old farmhouse, sans central heating and plumbing, to be greeted by its symphonic atmosphere of smell, sight and sound. I will remember seeing Grandad in his rocking chair. Chances were good he’d be reading one of three things: this week’s Christian Standard, this month’s Word and Work or a Louis L’Amour western. About his head and hovering across the room would have been the hazy and sweetly aromatic cloud of Granger, Prince Albert, or Half and Half.

Such good memories.