Booze, Cops, Guns, Deals, Grandpa by CornFed (the red fox clan txt) 📕

someone’s judgement. And then there was hell to pay. Always.

And so it was, on the day when some 30 people were gathered over at Grandma and Grandpa’s house to enjoy good cooking and a bunch of laughs, that someone made an off hand remark about how wasteful it was for Grandpa to spend his money on a brand new .38 caliber semi-automatic pistol just because he “thought it was a good deal.”

I could see Grandpa shift a bit in his chair but we didn’t really get too worried. It wasn’t until Grandma agreed with that “wasteful purchase” statement that he disappeared into the back of the house, his drink still sitting on the floor. Whenever Grandpa bolted out of a situation AND left his drink behind, there was something cooking in his testosterone supply.

About 5 minutes later, Grandpa emerges with the pistol, holstered between his belly and his navy blue Dickey jeans. He sort of stood there, his demeanor inviting one more smart-ass remark. All was quiet for a few minutes until Grandma noticed the gun and remarked that “the gun Grandpa was wearing didn’t really work and was only good for show…like right now.”

And this was the exact moment Grandpa had been waiting for.

“This gun works just fine!”

he yells as he whips it out of his pants, jacks a shell into the chamber, and points the gun at the brand new Curtis Mathis television that was just purchased by Grandma for the living room.

“BOOM! BOOM!”

“See. It works just fine. It’s your damned TV that’s all messed up!”

was the only thing Grandpa could say before every man, woman, and child in that house ran our fannies off for the door, not knowing if he’d try to prove the unworthiness of other household items, mainly one of us.

I am uncertain if Grandma really wanted the police to show up when she jumped on the phone and called the local Sheriff, but Grandpa took it as yet another test against his gun supply and pride. Before we could get the ringing out of our ears, Grandpa met us all outside, dressed head to toe in camouflage, and holding his shotgun in one hand and a camouflage stool with a padded seat in the other.

There was only one entrance to the house and it was via a small dirt road. Grandpa, with remarks to the affect of “Tell that Sheriff I’ll be waiting for him!”, positioned himself right in the middle of the road, sitting on his stool, with the shotgun in his lap. If you were an outsider looking in, you’d think he was hunting ducks.

After about an hour, we all started to see the humor in this. Grandpa wasn’t really going to shoot anybody and he was just proving his point that he’s entitled to buy what he wants to buy and you’d better just leave his money and decisions alone. Grandma quietly called the Sheriff back and told him to not bother, that it was taken care of.

However, she didn’t tell Grandpa this. I didn’t readily keep time very well at the age of 10, but I do remember that Grandpa pretty much sat out there for the rest of the afternoon, just waiting for that Sheriff to show up. People came and went from the house, Grandpa gently waving to each person who rode by, wondering what in the hell this fool was doing sitting in the middle of the road with a shotgun.

As the night fell, Grandpa figured out the Sheriff wasn’t going to come out to the house, so he meandered his way inside, fixed supper, and rang the Sheriff himself.

“Sheriff, this is Edsel Wade. I sure missed you coming out today. We had some really good barbecue. And, by the way, I have money and I can spend it any way I damned well please. If you got a problem with that, you might want to stay home.”

Grandpa never apologized to anyone for his behavior that day. And no one who was there ever cornered that man again.


Grandpa and Making Deals

Grandpa was what you would call an Independent Colony Free Thinker. If he could, he would have waged war with any government agency threatening his way of life and ideals. A staunch “it’s none of your business” kind of man, he did everything in cash only. His taxes, and income/expense records, were so miniscule that he qualified for welfare the majority of the time he was alive, despite the fact he never lacked for anything and always had a wad of Benjamin Franklins in his pocket.

He never had to apply for a loan and he never hired anybody to build anything, from the house to the pool. He didn’t shop for groceries as much as most. He relied on taking things “where they walked or swam” and eating them in short order. I think the funnest thing I ever did during the summer was eat welfare cheese, sprinkled on turtle soup, while watching pirated satellite.

And he loved a good deal no matter how inappropriate the purchase.

For a living, Grandpa made his money selling flowers. He built 2 green houses in the back yard and grew ferns and other popular “show” plants. And every month, he would take his large van that looked exactly like an extended milk truck, to South Carolina to a place they called the “Jockey Lot.” From what I can gather when I went with him on one of his trips, it is a cross between a flea market and an outdoor camping site, except the campers are selling things while they camp.

Grandpa owned a few “selling sites” there where he, like the other thousands of people, would bring their wares to the open market and make some money. To some people, this is how they made side cash. Grandpa made his entire living selling flowers in an outdoor flea market to people who spread the word on his behalf. He was charming enough to sell a garter belt to a nun.

But one of Grandpa’s weaknesses was “deals”. Anything that sounded too good to be true was exactly what he was looking for. And it was during one of my summers that I got a glimpse of several of his sometimes bad, and always odd, deals.

“Look what I got! Boys help me bring these in out of the truck! You won’t believe this!”

The look on my Grandma’s face told the story long before I knew the ending. Stacked in the back of his truck were boxes and boxes of TV’s he purchased from a vendor at the Jockey Lot Flea Market Extravaganza. From 20 inches up to 32, these boxes promised each room in his 5 bed room hand-built home a chance to tap into the pirated satellite and watch color television for the first time.

As my uncle and I started toting them into the house, they seemed a bit oddly weighted. Even a 10 year old knows that a television doesn’t roll back and forth and make jingling noises when the weight is shifted. And the televisions didn’t have the same weight as was appropriate for their size. The 32 inch TV box weighed 20 pounds less than the 22 inch TV box while the 20 incher required all three of us to get into the house.

So, there we were, Grandma, myself, and my uncle huddled around 5 large boxes of different brands of TV, from Zenith to Curtis Mathis, in the large living room. Grandpa was holding his pocketknife, grinning like a kid on Christmas day but with the adult fortitude to use a pocketknife, pacing around each box undecided as to which one he should open first.

“Let’s start with the Curtis Mathis!”

he spoke as he performed surgery on the duct tape holding the top two flaps together.

It occurred to me, at this point, that Grandpa had not even opened the boxes, somehow making their way from purchase to 2 days of personal transit without the least bit of fondling.

The look on this mans face was a cross between somber and hell-fire, as he pulled out brick after brick, packaged in tape and paper, from the large box....only to find himself the proud owner of a “maybe-12 inch” black and white television with the rabbit ears chopped off at the base so they would fit into the box without much fuss.

“Well Edsel, that’s quite the 32 inch color television you got there”

said Grandma, the only voice of reason in the house that wasn’t chuckling like my uncle and I.

The knife carvings became fiercer as Grandpa went from box to box, removing brick and newspaper and boxed up nuts/bolts, only to find various models of black and white television sets stuffed into the bottom. As he stacked the TV’s in the corner, still careful since they might actually work, Grandpa sort of stood there, knife in hand, look of dismay on his face, while his mind worked up exactly he would do to the man who sold him these televisions.

But, first, he had to at least check and see if the TV’s worked, apparently making the punishment for the bastard who sold him this "shit", less extreme than his conscience would allow.

And that required a good bottle of Dickey’s Whiskey.

At the end of the day, none of the TV’s made it into any of the bedrooms but he did find some good use for the bricks. They were found that evening politely shoved into the front of the TV’s with the gentleness of a rocket.


Just Grandpa

It never fails with me. I always find the real joy in knowing a person long after they have gone. I never savored those days spent watching him cook some of the best food and laugh some of the strongest laughs. I never admired his quirks and uniqueness the way I do now. We always judged Grandpa because of his affinity for alcohol and his lack of “religiousness”. Looking back at it now, Grandpa was more spiritual a person than I ever was. He lived in the day, was dedicated to his family, and never once lived life the way everyone else told him he should live it.

My Grandpa would have been a prime candidate for AA, the organization and therapists easily bestowing upon him the label of “functioning alcoholic”. But that label would be so unbecoming of him. My Grandpa lived out what was inside of him without any guilt or remorse. The price of admission into the realm of the human is birth and death. But the realm of the Spirit, the realm of what made my Grandpa, Edsel Wade, the kind of person he was, and still is, lives forever.

If anything, my Grandpa taught me that there must be a dichotomy within life. Summers require winter. Joy requires sadness. That which some call pain, others call pleasure. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, my Grandpa is still enjoying the things he loved the most about being human. Good friends. Good living. Good laughing. Good guns. Good pool. Good cooking. Good deals.

And Good drinking.

At the end of the day, I’m glad my Grandpa made a decision to do it his way. It would have been boring as hell with Deacon Grandpa running the show. And I would not be the kind of person I am today were it not for his uniqueness.

Grandpa, I’ll drink to that.