Hangin' With a Non Old Person

I was going to write about a bunch of personal stuff that I am dealing with, but I had the kind of day that put something else on my mind.

My grandfather will be 82 at the end of this month.

He has been in and out of the hospital for about a year, but he’s a tough old bird. In fact, I am suspecting he will be back at home in the near future.

This is a man who was outside cutting greens for his supper back in September. He likes the greens he grows better than the ones from the store. The ones he grows are his.

When I visit with my granddad, we don’t go into talking about the weather or what ails him. We talk about life.

I ask questions and let him take the conversation wherever it suits him.

It’s probably evident in my writings that 2010 has not shaped up to be anything like I expected.

I have been accused of things and portrayed in a manner that has made me look and ask, “Really?”

I went to see my granddad today. After going through the usual talk about cars and whatnot, I asked him about his life here in Chicago.

He shared tales of being born in the Black Belt here, moving down south, and returning here with his young family.

“I know you going through something,” he said. He shook his head. “I’ve been homeless. Got burnt out of a place. Only had the clothes on my back.

“I didn’t want to buy a house. Especially WAY out in the middle of nowhere. But at the time, the apartments in the city for Black folk? Mainly slums. Plus, I had a family. People saw you had kids, you couldn’t live just anywhere. By the time I paid to rent some house that had been cut up into a bunch of little rat and roach infested apartments, well, it just didn’t make sense.

“So I bought that little house I have. I’d been on at Ford Motor Company for a while. Laid off when work got slow, model changes, or whatever. If I got laid off, I went down to Campbell’s soup and worked for them. Or the stockyards. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even asked what it paid. I found out that it paid every Friday when they gave out the pay envelopes.

“When we moved out here…well, I was finally doing well enough to buy a car. Bought a little car, left it with your grandmother to get the boys back and forth to school, make they runs and what not.

“Me? I built me a car. I went to the junkyard and got a piece of junk. Now, what I did, see, I bought a rebuilt motor at Montgomery Ward, they put that in there for me, and that’s what I drove to work…

“It’s not easy. When you get in a hole, you just can’t jump right out. You gotta dig…but where there is a will, there is a way…I knew guys got laid off, they’d say, ‘I ain’t got no job…’if I had to, I’d pick up temporary work laying grass on the medians of the expressways. Whoo! That was lousy work. Figured that was the closest I came to slavery…

“So without you telling me, I know you are going through some things. I have been there. I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t always the nicest person, and I didn’t always have any money. And sometimes, people said things about me that weren’t true. People sometimes would help and then throw it at me that they did. You just have to deal with that. I had a mission, though: I wasn’t never going to be poor again. I wasn’t going to steal anything, and I was gonna be there for my kids…those boys had the luxury of having me there, although I guess we all had a lot to learn as parents.

“My point, though, David, is that if you tough it out, and I know you can…look, you got opportunities I never had…you got an education I could never dream of…them teachers taught me? Wouldn’t be fit to teach school now. All 8 grades in one room. No books…Black folk had it bad down south then. Your daddy and Uncle junior? Their first schooling was a Catholic school. I paid, figuring they were going to get the foundation right…I never did…

“And contrary to what they sayin…this ain’t no Great Depression…I was there. Noooooo. This ain’t it by a long shot.”

I sat and mulled that over for a while.

“I don’t have your book learning…but I know you…I know your daddy…the three of us are real different, but real alike, too. Stubborn. Proud. Sometimes a bit quick to anger…we let things stay bottled up too long, and that ain’t healthy. Not a one of us is lazy…We don’t like people lying on us, and we work to play by our own rules. Sometimes, when you’re that way, you gotta go through some rough patches. They don’t last forever…in fact, I suspect they’d last longer if we just went along to get along.

“You be OK. Me, I’m ready to leave this place. Get home and get me some real food. How they expect me to live on this food? I’m just choking it down to get my strength back. I got here, I couldn’t walk. I’m moving, slowly, on my own again. Gonna be behind the wheel of my Lincoln in no time. Places like this for old people. “

I adjusted my glasses.

“I can tell you this though. Two things, one, you live long enough, you’ll be alone.”

“And?”

“Two? It always works out in the end.”