Gramps

"He made a difference." Gramps, my mother's father, Dave Luke -- my grandfather, a tall unlettered white (decidedly white) Louisiana man -- was born August 1888. He lived 87 years. He grew under the stern paternal gaze of his father, Duncan (Grandpa Dunc.) Early in life he had to get used to the hard work that that time required. He labored in fields, in marshes, swamps, bayous and, accompanying his father, on cattle drive trails from South Louisiana to Galveston. There is, somewhere, a letter (which he could never read) offering them yet another cattle drive. But that is a stray detail here. I remember how he sat, every day, in the late 1950's in his wooden rocker next to his kitchen window. He never tired of looking out while it still existed at an oil well and at its nearby burn pit and flare in the adjoining expansive pasture with cattle that he liked to count every few days. Beginning in 1936 his fortunes changed from being simply a competent farmer. By 1944 he had 8 producing oil wells on his land. More came later. And went. But he was a calm man who enjoyed and valued his home. He had few pretensions. He watched from his window the noisy passing of oil field trucks on Hwy 317 that ran through his property to its end at Burns Point. The vehicles sped by, day long, swooshing the air somehow mixed with the earthy rot of the swamp and long-fallen logs and fauna. He sat in but, curiously, did not rock his chair. He sipped from his usual bottle of Jax beer, perhaps to dull unvoiced aches and painful memories of his wife taken by diabetes in 1954 and of children gone long (grown, growing old.) He thought and spoke, not bitterly, of recalled days in the fields and of winter trapping in the marshes before the monied days. And though life had been hard he did not complain. A rural party-line telephone hung on the wall next to his right shoulder. He rarely answered its occasional rings -- that was passed on to the changing rotation of teenaged grandsons or great-grandsons assigned or allowed to live with and to look after him (or to the cook who walked the mile to his house every day.) He didn't drive and, mostly, he needed to be not quite so alone. The young companions had their own needs and reasons to be there. He was not a talkative man. He spoke sparingly with strong clearly drawn instructions and authority. Still, a rare random silent tear sometimes could be spied escaping from his rather rheumy eyes as he fumbled for a Lucky Strike or spat into the porcelain coated white metal spitoon (cuspidor) on the floor next to his rocker. After his wife died (66 years old) he lasted 21 more years. Now, somehow, I feel better able to understand more about him. He was always spoken of and referred to (with respect and perhaps a little fear) as Gramps or, by non-family, simply as Mr. Dave. He had his share of failings. He was not always kind. Surprisingly, my own time with him (a bit less than 3 years), when I needed to be there much more than he needed me to be there -- over 62 years ago -- was special. He was human. Though I did not visit, later, as I should have, I often think of him and of what I owe him. I admit I miss him.