My
Grandpa Cardiff was a farmer, an unpolished rough-around-the-edges man who
possessed the most amazing volume of swear words I had ever heard. With his grandchildren, Grandpa was gentle
and kind, but he was quiet.
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| My mother is the small blonde girl on Grandpa's lap. |
He was
quiet, but he was a listener which was a good thing because I could talk enough
for both of us. With him, my little girl
imagination and world of questions could burst free and fill the air.
It was
a rarity that a grown-up would sit and listen to me, but he did. We would sit on a bench down by the garden under
a twisted peach tree. He cut pieces of
tree sap and let me taste it. Once Grandpa even gave me a piece of his “chaw” or
chewing tobacco once, and I threw up.
When I
spent the night at my grandparent’s house, I slept on the couch in the living
room. Grandma often babysat for
neighbors, making a whole 25 cents an hour.
When Grandma was out babysitting, Grandpa and I watched the black and white TV; his preferences were
baseball and boxing.
I
understood neither. “Which one do we
like, Grandpa?”
But I
loved it when he swore. He raised his
fist, let loose with a string of profanity, and told the players, “Yuh shoulda …yuh
sons of bitches…” I never knew what that
meant, so when I said it to my 4th grade teacher, she did not like
it one bit.
Later,
much later after his death, I learned more about him. How he had been in the Great War, how he was
a sniper behind enemy lines. How he had
been gassed and what that did to him. What
he had seen and what he had to do to survive.
Why he was so quiet.
Oddly,
I cannot reproduce his wide knowledge of profanity. I guess it was one of his many gifts, and
Lord knows, he had the right to use it.
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| Men in the infantry were the ones who "went over the top" from the trenches. |
