My grandpa was my knight and shining armor when I was a little girl. I try to live my life by his example, because I have yet to meet a better Christian than him (with the exceptions of Scott Karnes, the French missionaries Youngs and Hutchisons, and Wendell Beall).
He only ever raised his voice at me once - once in my 20 yrs of life I was blessed to know him and have him in my life. He was teaching me how to drive his truck in his cow pasture, and I was slowing down. Before I came to a complete stop, I put the truck into park about dropping the transmission out of it. He didn't even yell, it was more his tone that hurt me more than anything. And once I teared up, he hugged me and apologized for raising his voice. Even though yes I did about ruin his truck.
We had our "horse back" days where 3 little girls( my cousins and myself) ran around begging and pleading Grandpa to give us horsey rides. We each got a turn til Granny came and had us shell peas and beans. Those 3 little girls also rode home every Sunday with Grandpa and we stopped twice on the way to Grandpa's house - one would get to "drive" from the church to the first stop, then it would be the second's turn and at the second stop it was finally be the third's turn to finish the short trip.
Those same 3 little girls would go out to the farm with Grandpa. We peed behind tractors and trucks and helped feed the cattle and check the fields of crop. We would play tag on top of the long lines of round bales trying to knock each other off. Grandpa would take us fishing out at the pond near his cattle pasture. I had the yellow Snoopy fishing pole.
All five of us grandkids (six when Cody finally joined our clan) would fight over who got to rock in Grandpa's recliner with him. He would sing us silly songs. "Tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum, I'm a fat lazy bum...." "Trella Bella!" "Amanda Banana!" "Monica Bo-bonica!" "Kelly jelly belly!" Or he would hum a silly tune. He always heehawed at the end and counted our ribs.
I begged my mom to get my hair cut really short when I was 3-5 yrs old. I had like 8 huge thick curls that hung down to my rear. I looked like a china doll. So my mom took me to get my haircut, and everybody was mad at her for it. My curls were gone and my hair was right at the end of my ears. My mom said that was the only time my grandpa was mad at her and he was furious. He never fussed about any of the other 3 granddaughters getting their hair cut short. Just mine.
When I played basketball and I wasn't all that good and was never played, he still came to as many games as he could. My dad wouldn't show up til it was time for the senior boys game. Grandpa would always sit in the same spot up at the top right at the end of the walkway up so I can see him there to smile at me and give me encouragement.
Lord give me strength. When I allowed myself to think of all the wonderful memories, I tear up and cry. Cry for what I had and didn't appreciate til he was dying.
When my car broke down, it wasn't my dad who came to help me. I quickly figured to call Dad meant I would be interrupting his work and I would be yelled at over the phone. Then Grandpa would come because either dad or mom would call him. He would just hug me as I cried over the mean things my dad yelled at me. It was the same thing around the house and with my mom, brother, sister and granny. All would try and call my dad and he would just chew us out. Then came along Grandpa and he fixed everything and wiped away all the tears Dad caused from his hatefulness.
Dad never fixed any of our dogs. He had breed everything. He had to be in control of everything. The only person who he couldn't control even though he tried was Grandpa. So of course we had a ton of litters of puppies that were mutts and nobody wanted to buy. One time we had some twisted mutt puppies that had weird colored coats. They always tried to bite us kids even though we handled them gently from birth and loved them. One day when I was feeding our 50 dogs at the time, I caught 2 of the not-quite full grown pups eating the smaller one with a huge full bowl of dogfood right by them. It was the scariest, most twisted gruesome sight I have seen in my life. I told mom and dad about it. Dad didn't believe me and wouldn't even go look. A couple days later the last two were trying to eat each other and had taken bite marks out of the other. I went to my poor blind mother who couldn't fix it in tears. The next day they were gone. Mom had called Grandpa and he came by while we were at school to "take care" of them.
Kevin when he was in 8th grade had to go to the mandatory sex education class in Beebe. The McRae and Beebe 8th graders were divided into groups with community leaders (men for the boys and women for the girl) to teach them the class. Our idiot preacher, Richard Pectol, was in Kevin's group. He pointed Kevin out in the middle of the class because Kevin was too ashamed and embarrassed to watch the sex ed film and made fun of him. That sex ed class made Kevin blush and look away from Mom, Kelly and me for a long time - he couldn't meet our eyes. Instead his eyes went to our chests and then lower then he would run and lock himself in the bathroom crying. Dad and Mom finally got it out of him what was bothering him. Dad furious went straight to our preacher's house and chewed and cussed him out. Typical Dad. Grandpa, when he heard about it, went over to the preacher's house and asked him to come have a cup of coffee with him. So Grandpa took the preacher to McDonalds for a cup of coffee and the next day the preacher came up to Kevin and asked for forgiveness apologizing. Grandpa fixed everything.
Now I have a good reason for thinking that that preacher was an idiot. He had his hay days for sure and used to be a talented preacher however McRae hired him right before he lost his mind with dimentia. He gave a sermon over the word 'and' and barely used any biblical references. He would teach the same lesson again a month later and he would get lost in his own sermons. His wife was crazy and hoarded everything. The church had to gut their house because they wouldn't have anybody over ever. Now Mr Richard Pectol had redheaded granddaughters, just like my grandpa had 2 redheaded granddaughters - my sister and myself. My sister and I would sit beside Grandpa at church and this was when I won beauty pageants and Kelly lost her baby chunk and was stupid cute (stupid cute meant boys did very stupid funny embarrassing things to get her to look at them). Well the preacher's granddaughters were the pasty flaming redheads and were on the plumpish side with long round faces and gapped teeth. He introduced his granddaughters to us when we were sitting in our pew before services started, saying well Weldon I think I've gotten the prettier redheads for granddaughters. Grandpa was polite and wouldn't smile at the preacher but did at his granddaughters. When services began he whispered in both mine and Kelly's ears that we were the most beautiful granddaughters that he could ask for. We overheard him talk about that incident later to Mom and Granny who piped up in her blunt Granny way, "What...?! They were most certainly not prettier than Trella and Kelly (took her about 10 other names before she got ours out). They were not very attractive at all and were on the larger side if you ask me." Grandpa would sssh her saying Now Phyllis be nice. Mom just giggled saying Oh Granny.
Kelly when she was having her wild streaks, the only person who could calm her down was Grandpa. Mom and Dad were so mad at her one time that they wanted to send her to military school. There was a lot of spankings for her, being locked in our room which meant I was locked in too. Kevin and I cried during the big big spanking dad gave her after he dragged her in from chasing her around the town. It sounded so horrible and she had marks and bruises all over her. Mom and dad told her she had 30 minutes to pack clothes for Fayetteville that she was going to come stay with my aunt and uncle and grandparents up here to straighten her out. They kept trying to send me in to make her pack and when i wouldn't, I was spanked and sent to pack her things for her. I say mom and dad but mom was crying and would come to randomly scream stuff at us while Dad hoovered over Kelly and would get upset watching him with Kelly and run off again. It was like watching him try to squish her like a bug. Mom called Grandpa and dad was mad at her for including him. I remember Grandpa coming into the bedroom and he sat down in the floor and told Kelly he would help her pack and would even ride up to Fayetteville with her if she wanted him to. And he sat there in the floor cradling her and rocking and sshing her like a little baby. He then helped her pack and gave me a big hug and kiss. Then Dad and Grandpa took Kelly up to Fayetteville that night and came straight back. My aunt and uncle said Kelly was a dream and behaved perfectly for them. Lead them to believe that my parents were too stern with us.
I always got in trouble for asking questions in church and Sunday school. My youth minister when I was in junior high told me that only Church of Christ would go to heaven. It didn't sit right with me and I piped up and asked a bunch of questions which lead to a bunch of Bible reading to show me where it said that. I think argued that those versions could have multiple meanings and how could we know that we were the one true church. His reasons were well our name and how we took communion every week and just described our rituals. Later my dad had a serious talk with my youth minister and then had a serious talk with me - more an argument than a talk. Lead to us quoting a scripture at each other. He finally beat-red looking like a volcano about to erupt yelled honor thy father and thy mother. I yelled back the verse about fathers and husbands do not abuse the power you have over your children and wives and that I do honor my mother for she is a good Christian. My dad picked me up by my hair and my pants, and threw me out of the front door. I crashed into one of the porch beams before landing on the concrete porch. I ran off into our back pastures and hid in the tall grass. I watched my mom looking for me worried and run back in and tell my dad that I ran away. Dad jumped in his truck and sped off down the road looking for me. I hid out there for hours til I saw my grandpa's truck pull up and I straighten up and sprinted as fast as I could to him. He saw me and was relieved to see me til I got up close where he could see my bruises and hair pulled out of my head. He stayed with me, called to tell Dad that I didn't run away I just hid in the back yard from him. He then stayed for a long while with me in my bedroom asking me what happened. I told him about Sunday school and how dad was mad at me for arguing. Grandpa said that he was proud of me and that who are we to judged who will get to go to heaven and who will go to hell. For all he knew, he said, he might end up going to hell too. I said he wouldn't be allowed in there because he was too nice. Made him chuckle. Told me that I was right to speak up when I did and was proud I knew my scripture so well. He left later and then I was in trouble for tattling on dad to grandpa.
My dad and grandpa were fighting when Grandpa got sick. Grandpa wasn't happy with how Dad treated us, and I heard Grandpa almost yell at dad about it. He told him that if he wasn't careful he would push us all away. Dad decided to stop speaking to him and avoided him unless it was important. Just like how he refused to speak to me and avoided me and wouldn't allow my mom to talk to me.
Grandpa got sick when I moved away to college. That first month Ryan's mom died tragically. I had ended a rough relationship before moving up to Fayetteville, and Kelly tattled on me to save her skin which lead to Dad calling me a whore as he slapped me and not speaking to me for a year and a half. My grandparents up here took me in and were nice to me. I actually didn't have a curfew just had to let them know if I was staying out late and where I was going. When I thought nothing else worst could happen, I was sat down by the RFC campus minister who I had just barely met. My parents decided to let him tell me about my grandpa having cancer. It felt like my whole world was going to break apart and I felt like I couldn't breathe. They all assured me that they caught it early on. I didn't learn until 3 years after he died that everybody else but me knew that he had an aggressive malignant type of lung cancer that hardly anyone survived.
So right after I learned about it, I called my parents and demanded to know why they couldn't tell me myself. My mom 'wasn't allowed' to talk to me due to my controlling dad and told the campus minister to get the news to me. I could talk to her at work where dad had no control over how things were ran. A few weeks later I had another sit down with Scott. My grandpa flat-lined on the biopsy table 3 times and was almost pronounced dead. Again I wasn't told by my family because of my dad still being mad at me.
I remember visiting him in the hospital, how when I visited him the world seemed to stop and the walls closed in on me, how I would panic and have to run outside to get some fresh air, how sick looking he was for that last Christmas with him, how he grew back his hair quicker than any other cancer patient after his chemo, how he got sick again so quickly. Grandpa didn't like his hospital bed and said we needed to come sit with him so he would feel better. Kelly would curl up next to him and take a nap. Monica, Amanda and I would all sit on the hospital bed with him and talk about school. He was funny on his pain meds and would try catching 'dots' that only he could see and then would gush about his love for Granny and how she was the prettiest thing he ever saw. I remember getting the call on April 20th about 7am. The day before it snowed up here in Fayetteville. I moved like a zombie not believing my mom when she said he had past and was no longer in pain. Ryan took me down there, wouldn't let me drive. Then I was stranded with my family who all except my mom were mad at me for saying I'm glad he's no longer in pain and that he's in a much better place. Dad still wasn't speaking to me and would clear his throat when mom talked to me. I did get a hug from him at the funeral and he was nice to me then. My good friend Melinda came to bring me back to Fayetteville so I could get my car. That was my first official causal date with Clint that night. He wanted to cheer me up and he did. I was happy and sad. I drove back down to McRae. I was the strong one at the funeral out of my cousins and my siblings. The one who held them up while crying myself. I was the one who demanded that they put his glasses on him. That wasn't my grandpa in that casket. It looked nothing like him. No smile, no mischievous tinkle in his eye. He was known to be a prankster, even put a dead squirrel in my mom's jeep during church.
Granny's answering machine, during one storm after deleting it, randomly picked the voicemail message with Grandpa's voice. I was the one who found out about it first. I was going to leave Granny a message and when I heard his voice I dropped my phone in shocked. His message was deleted and replaced with one by my uncle. I warned my mom and aunt who told Granny. Granny left it on there desperate for anything to remind her of him. Why she held on to random clothes and a message of his voice and wanted to throw away his military hat still dumbfounds me. I have the hat FYI.
So January 16th is not MLK day to me. It's my hero's birthday. There is so many more stories about how wonderful Grandpa was. He fixed everything, and helped make the world a better place. His patience was amazing. His kindness and great Christian example is still known today. I have never heard a negative word about him in my life and if I did I would tell them all the stories about how patient and kind he was. People who knew him or were friends with him come to me when I'm home which isn't often and tell me how great he was and that they were thankful to have known him. I'm so thankful for the memories I have of him and that I didn't lose them with my concussion. I can still hear him singing Tempted and Tried at church and I cry every time I heard that tune or that song sung. Wendell Beall will bring me to sobbing tears with how he sings it so like my grandpa. So I will remember him tomorrow. To me, my grandpa is greater and more important than MLK jr. No offense intended. Just how it is. I will always love you Grandpa and honor your memory. Happy Birthday in heaven Grandpa.
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