GRANDDADDY

                                                        By the work one knows the workman.

                               JEAN DE LA FONTAINE   [1668]

     I never heard exactly why my grandfather came to Florida, but I think it had to do with the land boom.   Henry Plant had extended his East Coast railroad over to the West Coast, so Clearwater was experiencing a building boom in the 1900s.  It would accelerate after World War I ended in 1918, and explode after WWII.  As a young carpenter in Maryland, I wonder if he heard through the grapevine that Pinellas County was going to be the place for steady work.   I’m guessing that he arrived in 1913 or 1914 because he married my grandmother, a local girl, in 1915.  That story itself is kind of amusing to me.

     All my life I never saw my grandfather attend church.  Grandma went faithfully every Sunday to First United Methodist.  I think she was even a founding member of her Sunday School class, the Friendly Helpers.  It never seemed to be a point of contention between them, or maybe by the time I came along it had ceased to be one.  He didn’t seem to be against religion; I think he was raised in a churchgoing family.  I just assumed it was because he was shy; but for whatever reason he just wouldn’t go, except for a wedding or something.  So I laughed out loud when my mother told me that he had met my grandmother in church!  I guess it was the only place a young man could meet a nice girl in those days, when you were new to town and didn’t know families who could introduce you.

     It was an open secret that Granddaddy hoped for a son in his family of three daughters.  Today’s girls might disapprove of that, but it wasn’t unusual back in the day.  My grandmother felt the same way; I even found a letter from a friend of Grandma’s back in 1929, congratulating her on expecting again (late in life).  She hoped that third time would be the charm and maybe it would be a boy. Surprise!  It was my mother, born with red hair.  Though disappointed, Granddaddy had not lost his quiet sense of humor.  He had a redheaded friend named Doc.   He said, “Doc, have you been visiting my house?”  Mom loved to tell that story.  

     After that, he accepted his “fate” and seemed to enjoy his daughters.  However, he did not give in completely.   My mother was very proud when he gave her a child-sized football.  She was the only one in the neighborhood with one (it being the Depression), so the boys could only have a game if she brought the ball.  Naturally, they had to let her play too.  Granddaddy would also take my mother to minor league baseball games at the old Clearwater Athletic Field.  However, he took things too far when he took Mom with him to the boxing matches in Tampa.  Grandma didn’t like that.

     The strangest story I heard growing up was the one about my mother’s playhouse.  He had built her a very nice one, divided into two rooms.  After she outgrew her playhouse, a little old lady moved into it!  Granddaddy added another room, she had it moved somewhere, and it became her home.   As a child it sounded crazy to me, but the family assured me it was true.  They would just say, “It was the Depression.”

       A story that Mom did not share so eagerly, and I just happened to find out, was the time she got caught coming home late as a teenager.  She and Granddaddy were on their own for a few days while Grandma was out of town.  Her sisters were gone and married; they were much older than she was.  I think Mom was about sixteen when this happened, around 1945.  I don’t know what her curfew was, but anyway, she missed it.  The house was dark.  She entered the back screened porch, trying to quietly open the door, which was never locked.  Surprise, it was locked this time.  No luck with the front porch either.  Returning to the back, she saw that the window into the kitchen was open.  It was high up and very small.   She contorted herself up and over, landing in the kitchen sink.   She said it was painful.  But no sound from Granddaddy, and she sneaked off to bed. In the morning, he asked her if she had a good time the night before.  That was all he ever said.      Mom would kind of laugh when she told that story, but in a nervous way.  She knew that he had enjoyed his little joke, but she would not dare to let it happen again.

     At the end of every day Granddaddy was always sitting in his rocking chair.   Now I sit in it every day.   There is an indentation shaped like a fingertip at the end of the wooden armrest.  My own finger fits perfectly in the groove. There was kind of a mystery about this rocker.   When Granddaddy arrived on the train from Baltimore, he brought the rocking chair with him.  I couldn’t think why he would lug it all the way from Maryland to Florida, surely paying extra. The only place he could stay would be a boarding house, and of course his room would be furnished.  Even my mother was puzzled as to why he did this.  I spoke with my first cousin Margaret several years ago about this; she was the daughter of my mother’s oldest sister and knew things Mom did not.  She was sure of the answer:  the chair had belonged to his mother.  I checked my great-grandmother’s death date, and it was 1910.  Since he left Baltimore not many years after, it makes sense now.  I never thought of my elderly grandfather as once being a young man who missed his mother.   Now I wonder if the indentation might be from his mother’s hand.  Now that would make a beautiful ending to this story.

*Granddaddy on far right in group photo.   Him in his rocker with one of his adorable grandchildren.