King George is Dying

My Grandpa George is dying.  He also has an advancing degree of Alzheimer’s.  My daughter says he may forget that he is dying and outlive us all.

I suppose he is ready to go.  He’s at home with hospice and family caring for him as best they can (or, as best as he’d let them).

I’d like to say Grandpa has been a good man.  But I don’t think he has been.  He has certainly not a nice man, as a rule.  In his day, he was the kind of man you’d want to steer clear of, especially if he was angry (which was most of the time).

I’ve often wondered what made Grandpa so angry.  In a pseudo-psychological sort of way, I imagine it was because he was really a lot smarter than the world ever let him be.  He only went up to 3rd grade.  I’m told it was because he had to work to help support his family.  I suspect it was also because the teachers found him threatening. 

Grandma told me a story once of a teacher sent to their one-room schoolhouse who tried to tell the kids that man came from monkeys.  Some boys in the class picked him right up, carried him outside and threw this ”monkey teacher” into a tree.  She never said, but I bet Grandpa was one of those boys.  Sounds like something he would do.

Grandpa was a survivor.  Though he didn’t really know how to read or write or even do math in any conventional way, he figured out how to do just about everything necessary to get by in life.  He built his house from laying the foundation to shingling the roof.  Electrical.  Plumbing.  Carpentry.  Gas  furnace.  Concrete porch.  Siding.  The whole thing.  It’s a nice house that still stands today almost 50 years later.

Grandpa never worked what you’d call a “regular” job.  I should say he never worked regularly at any job.  After a few weeks or months, he would get into it with his supervisors and they’d “let him go”.  I remember him most as a bus driver (for the school and church) which he did, off and on, for many years.  He was good to kids, except when he wasn’t.

There are things, good things, I’ll remember about Grandpa George.  Croquet in the front yard.  The card game “Rook”.  The way he said what sounded like, “Pee Pie” (later I figured out it was “Peep Eye”), instead of “Peek-a-Boo”.

The way I’d like to remember him is beautifully expressed in (yes, you guessed it) a John Prine’s song, ”Grandpa Was a Carpenter”.  

 

Grandpa Was A Carpenter
©John Prine

Grandpa wore his suit to dinner
Nearly every day
No particular reason
He just dressed that way
Brown necktie and a matching vest
And both his wingtip shoes
He built a closet on our back porch
And put a penny in a burned out fuse.

Chorus:
Grandpa was a carpenter
He built houses stores and banks
Chain smoked Camel cigarettes
And hammered nails in planks
He was level on the level
And shaved even every door
And voted for Eisenhower
‘Cause Lincoln won the war.

Well, he used to sing me
“Blood on the Saddle”
And rock me on his knee
And let me listen to radio
Before we got TV
Well, he’d drive to church on Sunday
And take me with him too!
Stained glass in every window
Hearing aids in every pew.

Repeat Chorus:

Now my grandma was a teacher
Went to school in Bowling Green
Traded in a milking cow
For a Singer sewing machine
She called her husband “Mister”
And walked real tall and pride
And used to buy me comic books
After grandpa died.

Repeat Chorus:

 

     {The song “Grandpa Was a Carpenter” can be found at “OhBoy Records” on the album/disc/etc… “Souvenirs,”  It can also be downloaded as an iTune there, but you probably know more about that than I do.  Shoot, I still have a cassette player.}

 

So, King George, though you can’t read this, I wish you well in dying.  May God bless you on your way.

 

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more reflections on Prine’s music…

“A Shrine to John Prine”

“John Prine at Carnegie Hall”

“As Good as Forgotten”