Getting to know you, getting to know all about you

It's an interesting road, this relationship I have with my grandfather. My family is large and spread all over the country, but most of my father's side are still right here in Indiana. Granddaddy is our patriarch, the kind of tough guy a granddaughter probably looked up to in awe, and maybe a little fear. And with busy lives being what they are and my family living out of the state throughout my childhood, I can't exactly say I really know the man. Our gatherings were loud and boisterous, and involved a lot of beer. For the adults, not the children. I remember learning to carry a stein of cold ale from the shop, where Granddaddy always had a keg stocked inside a refrigerator with a specially built tap on the outside. As soon as we could walk we were put to work, to "go out to the shop and get me another beer! And don't spill it!"

We would pour from the tap like Tom Cruise in that bartender's movie, and then make the long trek from Granddad's shop out behind the house, to the house where the men, and some of the women, were playing poker. If I got really lucky, one of my uncles would grab me after I delivered the beer and declare me his good luck charm. I'd stay by his side til somebody else sent me to fetch a beer or one of the women called from wherever the women hung out...I don't remember that part.

Of course, to hear Granddaddy tell it now, apparently we spilled most of the beer on our way back to the house. When he started to tell the story the other night about how he'd get us, ("they was just little things,") to carry his beer to him, I actually smiled. I thought I knew where this was going. But his punchline was that we spilled more than we actually retrieved. Once again the joke was on me.

I've learned a couple of things from this exchange: first, he's full of crap. If we spilled that much beer he'd have fired us and fetched it himself. And secondly, I don't have to believe everything my grandfather says.

So I have determinedly continued to visit him these past months-turning-into-years because now I just enjoy him. I have him tell his stories again and again so I can discern between what actually happened, what he thinks happened, and what I think I heard him say happened. Applying that technique to the current world situation, we have pretty well decided we know it all and the world's going to hell in a handbucket.

We love Bill O'Reilly and can cuss and discuss every story covered on Fox News. We think politics are a bunch of hooey and we can sit for hours and talk about old times. He, the guy I never talked to as a child, can reminisce all day long now. I don't do a lot of talking, but for anyone who knows me, that's like a vacation.

My grandfather would grunt, “Yeah, a vacation for ME.”