PA
By Debby Rhoads Eason

Pa has always been old.  In fact, the first memory I have of him is his uneven limping gait as we walked to the store when I was three.  Afraid he would leave without me, I clung to his pant’s leg, straining against the grip of my grandmother as she swept back my hair in a ponytail.  On our journey, I held his pointing finger, feeling the rough warts as my arm jerked up and down with the unevenness of his walk.  He limped because he had been in a mine accident years before.  His broken leg had not healed correctly, so he had special shoes with one heel built up high, making him walk with his torso forward, looking as if he might fall.

I don’t remember what his voice sounded like.  Pa could talk then, but somehow the sound of his voice has been replaces by the ever-present buzz of his talker as it vibrates against his throat.  The year I was four he had an operation for cancer of the throat and has been buzzing us ever since.  Pa’s talker has been a familiar object to all of his grandchildren and great grandchildren.  The thrill of being able to push the button and feel the tingle has been his connection across the lines of communication with all the children.  We could understand his metallic voice better than most adults.  It never seemed strange to see the pulsation of the hole in his throat, or to see him hold the Kleenex to his neck, instead of his mouth, when he coughs.  He was just Pa.

Each year my cousin, Sandy, and I spent a week with Ma and Pa.  We could always hear his thumping approach as we giggled in bed, watching the designs the fire and grate of the pot bellied stove cast upon the ceiling.  The days were filled with Pa.  He and his ever-faithful beagle, Dick, went squirrel hunting almost every day.  (Dick was always Dick even though the dogs changed over the years.)  My cousin and I remained behind, climbing atop a washhouse Pa helped build when he was seventy-two.  We sang and played and listened for his return.

Some days he would go to town to join the “Idler’s Club” and swap pocket knives.  He didn’t seem to care if he had a good swap or not.  The days he stayed home, he would entertain us with stories about France during World War I.  His memory is so vivid that he even remembers the two French words a friend spoke in a restaurant, oeuf and jambon.  He loved to talk about his adventures.

He is eighty-seven now, but his appearance has changed little over the years.  He wears his shirt collar open so that he can breathe through the hole in his throat.  His clothes hang on him.  He cinches his belt tight, and his pants gather around his waist.  His short white hair recedes further each year.  The biggest change of appearance has been his nose.  His face was badly cut in an auto accident, and from the mass of stitches covering his face, emerged a small pointed nose to replace the monster that was there before.  He uses a cane now and has difficulty managing stairs.

The kinship between Pa and me has grown even greater in the last few years.  I always enjoy being with him even when he declares that Republicans are terrific, and chooses Kentucky basketball over Tennessee cagers.  We snicker behind Ma’s back because he has doctor’s orders to take a little whiskey everyday for his circulation.  He doesn’t trade knives anymore but we barter together.  Two years ago he planted four rows of sweet potatoes—my favorite.  He pulled me to the garden to choose a row and declared I would have each potato in the row.  In return, I never fail to bring him a tin of King Leo Peppermint stick candy each time I visit.  The same finger I clung to at three is the one that greets me every visit.  He hooks it around my finger for a special handshake.

Pa and I are an example of the special feeling that so often springs up between the young and the very old.  Both have the ability to accept one another, warts and all–  the young because of innocence,  the old because of wisdom. –D.R.E.
<<<<<<<<<<<~~>>>>>>>>>>

Debby’s Pa, my dad, died the year after she wrote this story. But he left the little girl she had been and the woman she became with a head and heart full of life-enriching memories. I suggested in the preface to this story that there were a couple of words in the story that may have been the genesis of Debby’s career. The words? Oeuf and jambon–the menu words Pa had picked up in Paris in WW I. Debby became an outstanding teacher of the French language and escorted student groups to France. Was that a goal of her grandad? No, his goal was to pour his love in the hearts of his little grandchildren. That he did–and they responded. That’s what happens where love lives. –PDS

“Daddy, did Pa really shoot up the poolroom at Beech Creek?”

Lisa asked me that when she was perhaps 13 years old. 

“Yep. Sure did,” was my reply.

A few years later: “Daddy, did Pa really shoot the Muhlenberg County Sheriff off a ladder?”

My response: “Yep, he sure did!”

I told the truth.

A couple of decades passed and Lisa, by then a published and recorded song writer, wrote a song about her Pa: “Gentle Heart, Gentle Soul, Gentle Man.” You’ll see it soon.

Hard to believe, but what she wrote in that song was true. He was a gentle heart, gentle soul, and gentle man!

In the decade after the song came out, “Pa” became the inspiration basis for the male protagonist in Lisa’s historical fiction novel, Turn Back Time, which won the national Benjamin Franklin Award for fiction and became a featured Doubleday book club offering. (BTW, I coauthored it). In it, and its sequel, Sunshine & Shadow, he was a good guy–mostly.

Debby, another of Pa’s granddaughters, a school teacher, wrote the essay, “Pa.” In it she tells of the delightful relationship she and another granddaughter had with him. She describes what he was and what he did that made those little girls adoring fans.

They couldn’t have imagined that he was the man who shot up the pool room and shot the sheriff off the ladder. Knowing how he honored “Ma,” his wife, they couldn’t have conceived that there was a time when his best friends hoped no woman would be so foolish as to marry this “fast-fisted, short-fused, bad-news bachelor.”

But let’s go back and glimpse the story behind the story.

“A man can change, cain’t he?” John Orville Smith asked his cousin, Maude. He was back from carousing around the country and wanted to get to know her friend, the “young widow Rhoads.” His question was a plea in response to Maude’s unwillingness to cooperate.

“Yes, Orville,” Maude replied, “a man can change. But you ain’t likely to.”  She refused to introduce him to the genteel and highly respected young widow with two small children.

But she relented.

The man who became my dad spent the next half-century proving that, yes, a man can change. And can become the adored patriarch of a passel of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and their spouses.

So the premise of this blog is that  a man (woman, and child) can change, can improve, can make a difference. Fortunately we won’t likely have make changes of the magnitude that “Pa” did. We can make little differences as we adjust, tweak, and upgrade our attitudes, skills and behavior. As we do, marvelous benefits will accrue in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones. Perhaps for generations to come. 

Now, I’m honored to include his nickname in mine. He was my dad and was “Pa” to following generations. Now I’m “GrandpaDale.” If only I could be as “Grand.”

I’ll try. 

–GPD