Today, Tuesday, August 21st, is
Grandpa’s 78th birthday. I asked Grandpa today what his favorite
birthday present was. He referred me to a picture from seventy years ago of him standing behind a
table that held a birthday cake with eight candles. Behind him is his birthday
present: a tent. In the tent sits his dog Scraps, staring at the camera with one
ear perked up.
The picture is of me standing in front of my
Indian type tent. In front of me is a little table with my cake and eight
candles. I remember putting that tent up in the backyard, taking an old blanket
for a pillow, and spending the night out there. I could think of it as being
out in the middle of nowhere. My little dog Scraps would stay in the tent with
me; he was my guard dog. He, to me, was a very big dog at that time, I would
imagine. The reason I became so thankful that I got it that tent was for that
private time.
I also had another place where I could spend
some time alone: our wooden front porch. Although, private wasn’t so private
with my super dog. That porch was well-used. What I enjoyed the most and this
came back last Saturday: when it started raining, the thunder and the lightning,
the early drizzle, then heavier and heavier with a little more wind. It reminded
me of my younger days when a northern would blow in. The place that was the
driest to be outside and not get wet was the front porch of the house, which
was not enclosed at all. What I enjoyed was to kinda tie together a cardboard
box or two and that was my cover. I would crawl inside the cardboard box. I
wouldn’t tear the box up; one side would be the floor. I could slide in there
and take a piece of old towel for a pillow and I would lay there and listen to
it rain and the wind blow.
Still to this day, I can sleep through a
thunderstorm. It’s a comforting noise, if you may. Saturday morning, out where
the dumpster is, either Paul or Danny drug a box as big, deep, wide, and long
as this kitchen table. It was a cardboard box that was sitting on top of a
wooden pallet, and it had a lot of parts from Modern Manufacturing out of
Beaumont. I’m thinking we’re liable to get some rain and I don’t want to see
this box get destroyed. Man, what I could have done with that box when I was
little. I drug it away and put it on the back of the pickup that was outside but
under the roof of the shop Saturday morning. Later, when I saw Paul, I told him,
“Y’all can cut that box into four pieces and put them on top of the rafters and
use those as a creeper to slide on and crawl underneath the cars. That’s what I
used to do when I didn’t have a creeper good enough.” I didn’t want it to get
wet and messed up.
So I’m sitting here on the back porch, seeing
it starting to rain. I probably could have laid down somewhere where the rain
wasn’t getting to me and fallen asleep. I flat out enjoyed not only the wind
and the rain but to see changes in attitude of birds and, when it stopped, here
these frogs emerged. I got the biggest kick out of those frogs. For ten minutes
duration, I’d take that water jet nozzle and shoot this frog and it immediately
would jump. The way some of those frogs could jump tickled me. I’d shoot
another one. There was a couple on the sidewalk down here next to the plants.
They didn’t know whether to go back against the house or into the yard. This
one of them was right by the wheelbarrow and jumped over the wheelbarrow, over
the sidewalk, and next to the swings. But where did they come from? Penny said
that happens occasionally in Berry Creek. So anyway that was the frog ordeal. Sometimes
when it rains a lot, we call it a frog strangler.
Grandma went grocery shopping and when she was
leaving to go back out to the truck, it was raining cats and dogs so she
literally stayed in the grocery store damn near half or three quarters of an
hour and finally decided to heck with it. She ran to the pickup and still got
soaking wet. Her hair told me that.
So anyway, that was like a Saturday evening
from the past, nobody else around.
After seventy-eight years, it’s amazing to
think something so simple, the feeling of freedom and independence, is what Grandpa
cherished the most out of his birthday gifts. And I take comfort in the fact
that he can easily recall and regain that feeling every time a thunderstorm
passes through; I can only hope there will be no shortage of rain in his many
years to come.
