For many years, when JR Turner saw a member of my family, he always asked about Ruby. At 100, he still did. He looked great, got around well. But his short term memory recycled very fast. When we have to tell him, again, that Ruby has been dead many decades, he begins the mourning process all over again. But it does not last long. The last time I talked to JR, his memories were essentially gone. He has, at long last, been released from his lifelong agony of loving, and losing, Ruby. He passed away in 2012 at the age of 102.
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I seem to have this need for my
grandboys to remember me as being outstanding in some physical way,
because boys are all about physical strengths. The problem is, I
never did have many physical strengths to begin with, and what I did
have are pretty well all gone. So I'm going to tell you my story
about my search to bring this about, over the years.
Caylie is my only granddaughter.
She's a freshman at OBU now. We just love having her at Arkadelphia.
But Caylie is a lady, rarely impressed by one's physical exploits.
So, I just never felt the need to impress her with my physical
strengths. And, she runs half marithons, and is a skydiver What could
I do physically to impress a half marithoner, and a skydiver?
Nothing, that's what.
The grand boys are totally
different. All four of them. Christian is the oldest, fifteen,
weighing in at 192 with no fat, six feet tall, so I know better than
to try to impress him with most physical things. Afraid he might
impress me with his own physical things. But years ago, when he was
much younger, I did impress him with my ability to start a fire out
in the woods, under any weather conditions, using only a match and
natural things available out in the woods. That impressed him. I also
showed him how to start a campfire with flint and steel, and he just
grabbed onto that one and worked and worked at it until he had
mastered that too. When he was much younger, he and I were sitting
around a campfire one night. I have to make a confession here, I
occasionally have a small chew of tobacco. But I was still trying to
conceal it from him. I didn't think he would be greatly impressed by
that fact, and he never has been. Anyway, as we were sitting there
spitting into the fire, as everyone worth their salt does in that
situation, Christian just had to know. “Papaw, how come when I
spit, it's clear. But you can spit brown. Now, why is that?” Well,
I wasn't ready yet to tell him that whole story, he would find out
soon enough. “Son, you have to reach way down into your lungs and
bring it up from real deep to get to the brown stuff.” Christian
started working at it. He just went deeper and deeper, just wore
himself out. Couldn't do it. But he continued working on that for
some time. He soon figured that whole thing out on his own.
Jordan and Jackson are brothers,
and both are rough and tumble boys. They get a lot of experience at
it, fighting like cats and dogs. All day. Every day. After coming
home from two hours of wrestling.
I just feel like my grandsons
should carry memories of me around when they are older, and I 'm
pushing up daisies, as a strong, fast, or tough old man. But it's too
late. I can't impress them with my speed, I can barely get out of a
good fast jog. On a good day. Strength, I never did have much of
that. That just leaves tough.
We were sitting in their house one
night, several years ago. I told them I would give them one shot each
at pulling on the long hair on my forearm. I've got a lot of it. My
“kids” at our orphanage we worked at in Africa often said, “Uncle
Pat is like Esau.” They both pulled as hard as they could. Though I
was screaming inside, I just sat there and took it, never changed my
expression. After that, they often said, “Papaw is the strongest
man in the world. He's even stronger than Daddy.” Well, their
father Mickey is about the strongest man I know. He could easily snap
me like a twig, so I just wallowed in their admiration. Lately, the
youngest, Carson, now six, got his shot at my forearm hair. But he
somehow had it figured out. He didn't pull straight out, as the older
ones did. He just grabbed a good handful of hair, leveraged his fist
some way against my arm to get an unfair advantage of me, and pulled
out a whole handful of hair. I've decided its about time to retire
that one. But I kept a straight face the whole time. I'm proud about
that.
Two or three years ago, they all
got into a big gunfight with those air soft guns (they shoot plastic
BB's, unlike the metal kind) at my house, wearing goggles. I watched
closely. Those plastic pellets went a long way, but you could follow
the path of the pellet all the way out, so I knew they didn't pack a
big punch. So I took advantage of that opportunity to impress. I put
on goggles, and gave each of them five free shots at my face at about
fifteen feet. Only one, right on the ear, stung a long time, but they
were all impressed. I worked very hard at never moving or blinking.
That's the key.
Barbara and I looked after Jordan
and Jackson this week, and our main job was to keep them from killing
each other. They now had a new, up to date, and obviously much
improved model of the air soft gun, a pistol. Jordan was ragging
Jackson about crying when he got shot in the back with it a few days
ago, and that impressed me, because our family motto for a long time
had been, If Jackson cries, call 911. For good reason. He just almost
never cries from pain.
Well, I saw a new way to impress
the grand boys. I watched them shoot it a couple of times, and though
I could never follow the pellet when they shot it, I just assumed it
was because it would soon be dark. I backed off ten feet or so,
turned my back, raised my shirt, told them to each shoot me in the
back. Well, this turned out to be a whole different gun. Jack shot
me, and the blood started flowing, though it didn't penetrate much.
They were impressed. Well, I still had one more shot to
take, and there was just no way I was going to destroy that image of
being the world's toughest Papaw that I had spent years building up
in my grandsons. I turned around, told Jordan to take his best shot.
He did, and it felt like it hit even harder, but at least no blood.
Just a big bruise. I never reacted outwardly to either shot, though
inwardly I was bawling like a baby. That's was enough of that for
that day. My reputation was now reinforced in blood.
The boys went upstairs, and I went
to the kitchen for a long knife. I called Jackson down, handed him
the knife. Told him that bullet could still be in my back, possibly,
and I couldn't reach my back to dig it out. I told him I was going to
lie down, and, since he's the one who pulled the trigger, stick that
knife in that hole about half an inch and dig that bullet out. Tough
as he was, Jackson turned white as a sheet. While he was still in the
white state, I took back the knife, told him I would let him off.
When we all go to the State Fair
together, I let the boys pick out the baddest ride on the place, then
ride that with one of them. That's all I ride. Always with a big
smile on my face, flaunting the “no hands” thing. When I get off,
I always get out of their sight as quickly as possible. In case I
have to throw up. Where carnival rides are concerned, Carson, just
six remember, takes the cake. He's still very small, yet he begs to
ride all of them. He managed to get on one this year that he should
not have been on in the first place, and the bar did not fit tight
enough to hold him. He got slung all over that cage.
So, all you Grandpa's out there,
remember if you're weak and can't run, like me, you can still impress
the grand boys in physical things. The key is to show absolutely no
reaction to pain, then you can go in the bathroom. And have a good
cry.
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