Grandpa's Reproaching [The Old Russian Bear: 1957]

Old Grandpa Tony [Anton] swore more than most people prayed, and I'm talking about the clergy. A 4'11 inches tall man, that's all he stood, I always thought he was at least six foot tall, even when I went to high school, but no, he was four foot, eleven inches tall. It's not the unpardonable sin, I know"to swear, but if you added them all up, all the cussing words he done in front of me, and then there is 24-hours to the day, it would top the Andes, and then some. But he was kind enough to allow my mother and my brother and myself to live with him, in his house during my formative years. And back in the fifties, it was rough, so I suppose I can say, thanks gramps. But the Old Russian Bear, used to say:

"I tell you vhut you gottaa wtch dem boys Elsie (his daughter and my mother)"dhay mak-a too mch noyce!"

All the time, we had to be like mice.

"Well," I heard mom say, "I can't watch them every second of the day?"

Grandpa thought about that for a while, "I gonna thorw dem out!" he'd say. I think he started telling mom that from my thirteenth birthday on: steadily. He liked my brother Mike for some reason: perhaps I didn't pay him much attention, or for that matter attention. I was very active: meaning, overactive, I could never seem to slow down, and that may have bothered him. Nowadays, they give kids pills up the tuba to slow them down: back then, mom would say: 'Go run it off..." and out the door I went, and I'd run a mile here or there, and come back and eat up a storm (my son and my grandson are the same way, but now they want to give them pills, pills: have them run it off, that is how I got rid of it).

"Yes," mother would say," I'll tell him to play out side more..." (I was but ten, then, at the time). I think it all started one day when I was in Ernie's 1950 Chevy (my mother's boyfriend for forty-years), and mom was looking at me in the backseat, and I was about seven years old then, and I asked about this and that: many, if not too many questions, never could be settled too long, and she noticed that, and would try to answer my numerous questions, and she'd get tired, and say:

"Stop! You're wearing me out with questions."

So when I got older I bought an encyclopedia set and read it a few times from start to finish: a to z. One year I read 400-books, after all my other activities. I slept four to six hours all my life, until I got ill, and slept 10 to 14 hours; made up for all that lost sleep.

"Then Grandpa would put his pipe in his mouth, pace the kitchen, mumbling,

"Them god...d...m..kids."

He didn't want us boys to stay with him in the house, but he didn't want mom to leave, she did all the work, and bought the TV and the furniture, and did his laundry, and bought the groceries: she was an economic asset for him, as he was for her (or us). He bought the meat for the Sunday meals, paid the heat and water bill, and phone bill. They had a good system going I suppose. I always prayed mom would take us kids out of that environment, but it was as it was, and it gave me a father figure I suppose: he had good work ethics, and I suppose I got that from him. In any case, mom, she'd reinforce, by telling me, "Nobody's going to kick you out." And he never did. When I grew up: went to Vietnam, and came back home for a visits, Grandpa, being in WWI, was proud, but he still had that bear in him, and one day he said something, and I got mad, and I wasn't a kid anymore, and I said:

"Grandpa, don't swear at me, if you don't want me here I'll leave, but if you swear once more I'm going to knock you on your ass!" and I walked away angry. I had always felt bad about telling Grandpa that, even to this day, it really wasn't called for: I could have walked away like always, I just wanted to let him know, I was not that little kid you could pull his ears, when you didn't like what was happening. And I was sorry for that, as I had said"but I did make up for it, I think. When he was too old (meaning, 83-years old, he worked up to 78) and his children were coming over to count his money (he had several children living at the time), and was threaten by them, I heard about it, and made myself present when they were present, and told everyone: the threatening was over, that if I heard about it again, I'd throw them out, everyone out. I think, Grandpa may have heard it from the dinning room, not sure what or how he felt, but I guess, if it made up for that bad remark, so be it.