The Greatest Generation's Greatest Grandpa - April 5, 2007
We were paused at a red light, and in one vice-like hand he held a cup of root beer and sipped at it through a straw, until an annoying crackling noise was produced from the mixture of air and root beer popping in the straw.
"Grandpa, I don't think there's anymore root beer left in there."
My grandfather grunted, turned to me, spewed a cloud of sulfurous ash out of his nostrils and said: "Waste not, want not." The slurping sound continued for another minute. Deciding I agreed, I picked up my own depleted root beer and joined in. The sound in the car was like raindrops on a tin roof.
We had just spent all day taking Little League sports pictures, and were on the way home after stopping off for fast food. In the twilight of his years, my grandfather had become a local photographer for youth sports. I helped him handle the kids. For one reason or another, his stony face could not make small children in dodgeball uniforms smile, even when he pulled out his pro-move and replaced the classic "Cheese" line with "Fuzzy Pickles." My job consisted of making the team sign, doing exaggerated motions with my hands to get seven and eight year olds to look at the camera, and shouting, "Smile!" For this he paid me minimum wage, and taught me how to use a camera.
Occasionally, but not often, a parent would step out of line. They would yell at their children in an abusive manner. My grandfather would walk up behind them, tap them on the shoulder, and when the parent turned around they did not see a truculent old man. They saw "Master Chief George William Barlow" a name synonymous in the minds of many with God or Satan. He would tell said parent that their child's turn had come up. The parent would gulp. My grandfather would murder their soul with his eyes. The parent would hand him their pay envelopes almost in the way of an offering to an avenging Norse deity. My grandfather would grunt, and that was that. Master Chief George Barlow did not suffer from a short fuse. He suffered from no fuse at all. Action. Reaction.
The light turned green, and my grandfather took a second to put his drink back in his cup-holder. A horn honked behind him. His drink hovered above its place in the cup-holder. The diamond of his eyes screeched against the metal of his eyelids, as they scoped to the rearview mirror.
"Hurry up, old man! Get your fucking ass on the road!" I turned around in my seat. It was a group of nineteen to twenty-one year old thugs. Three or four of them, hanging in various states of disarray out of the windows of a small Ford pick-up, had their middle fingers raised. My sixty-seven year old Grandfather shifted the car into park.
"Those poor, poor children," I mumbled.
The driver's side door opened. The car's right side jumped up as two leather shoes hit the pavement. As I watched my grandfather walk slowly away from the car, I was filled with the same kind of dread a criminal feels when the chain on a guard dog suddenly snaps.
The first thing the would-be thugs did was laugh. The first of them to realize that laughter was inappropriate was the driver. His laughter faded when the shadow of Master Chief George Barlow fell across his face, blotting out the sun. Like an Aztec priest, my grandfather possessed the power to summon eclipses.
"Can I help you with something, son?" his voice rumbled like an earthquake. I heard it not with my ears, but experienced it as a vibration throughout my entire body.
His voice struck them all like a tranquilizer, running through their tissues, wrapping their organs in thick paralyzing gauze, before shrouding their minds in a dense haze. Disoriented, all they knew was that the old man made them afraid, and that it pounded down at them from every direction like a hammer. The ground beneath them, the sky above them, all were owned and dominated by the old man. They existed only by the whim of his mercy, and they were made to know this with every gravelly syllable he uttered.
He did not need to insult them. He did not need to swear. The power of his voice was the only tool he utilized. He spoke, too softly for me to hear anything but a few words.
For seven minutes, as I watched the car clock click over as time slowed, all traffic for a block in either direction came to a stop. The hooligans in the car were nodding their heads too quickly to look cool. One of them had pulled up his pants to hide the rim of his underwear from view.
Finally, the driver extended his hand to my grandfather. It was taken, pumped twice, and released. As my grandfather turned back to me, and left the hooligans behind, I heard several cries of "Thank you, Mr. Barlow!"
He climbed back into the driver's seat. The light was red again. He picked up his root beer and started to slurp.
"What did you say to those guys, Grandpa?"
Out of the corner of his mouth, without interrupting the popping soda bubbles, he said, "Fuzzy Pickles."
When the light turned green, he depressed the accelerator and took me home.
Posted by BC Woods at 12:00 AM
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Comments
very cool story. i have a family friend of 30 years that is probably the scariest man i know. big, stocky, hands the size of softballs. he speaks with such a low, southern drawl. his son in law comes to hunting camp with us every year, and told hes the first time he met "big L" to pikc his daughter up, Big L told him "if you hurt my daughter ill hurt you"
Posted by: nick at April 5, 2007 02:43 AM
A lot of the other stories on here are fairly unimpressive, but this one I liked. Nothing like force of personality in a person. Real force of personality, not empty threats and redneck jackassery.
Posted by: cliff at April 5, 2007 05:25 AM
Your grandfather sounds like one hell of man. It must be a trend, because my grandfather can be pretty formidable. (Of course, he can also be a big teddy bear.)
Posted by: Cori ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.daddydonthitme.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 5, 2007 05:39 AM
So how did such an awesome force of nature ended up with children like your parents?
BC: That questions plagues me to this day.
Posted by: Eureka at April 5, 2007 07:13 AM
Definitely a good one! I may use "fuzzy pickles" in conversation today. Love your writing.
Posted by: Ashley at April 5, 2007 09:39 AM
Nothing like someone with such a powerful personality! Kinda reminds me of my maternal grandfather (who unfortunately passed on nearly 20 years ago), a little skinny 5'0" guy who still had the force of personality to get even an ogre-sized monster to back down with little more than a glance.
Posted by: RecurveHawk at April 5, 2007 11:05 AM
Ah, your grandfather's one of those rare men: a true honest-to-God Alpha male.
Those guys are usually hott. Do you take after him, BC?
Posted by: Bee at April 5, 2007 11:58 AM
Excellent piece, each article keeps getting better.
Posted by: Scrybe at April 5, 2007 12:22 PM
Master Chief eh? i figured he would've been a marine.......every old marine is scary as hell.
Posted by: Chris at April 5, 2007 12:30 PM
I love your grandfather.
oxen.
Posted by: Mohnani at April 5, 2007 01:54 PM
My father is one of those men. People tend to love him, but they fear him all the same. He is my best friend, great at helping guys I don't want a second date with to go away.
Posted by: reader at April 5, 2007 02:31 PM
He's in that rare ilk of Men's Men: There's John Wayne, Johnny Cash, Steve McQueen...and Master Chief George Barlow.
Which begs the question: are there even men like that in the world anymore?
Posted by: Anonymous at April 5, 2007 03:33 PM
Where did 'fuzzy pickles' come from? Not New Mexico, right?
Posted by: Anonymous at April 5, 2007 04:17 PM
This is now one of my favorite stories, BC. One, because your grandpa is a badass who reminds me of my own grandpa; and two, because of the amazing way you can describe a person. I hope you write a book some day.
Posted by: Kyoko at April 5, 2007 06:51 PM
How'd this guy end up taking pictures? He should've been the guy who puts down an ultimatum when another country steps out of line. You wouldn't see him at meetings or press confrences, but when the president picks up that red phone and calls him he shows up and scares whole countries shitless. We could demand virgin sacrifices and all they'd do is ask how many!
BC: I like you, because you "get it." This is exactly what he should have been doing.
Posted by: Ace at April 5, 2007 07:20 PM
I don't "get it" then. Should have really doesn't amount to much, does it? The truth was that he took photos. If that's not what he wanted to be doing, then there's a moral to be learned by someone around here.
BC: He liked kids. He should have been a teacher. I'm sorry I joke sometimes. I apologize. In the future I'll write gray-tone forensic descriptions of everything to suit you.
Posted by: HybridVigor at April 5, 2007 07:38 PM
I haven't heard "fuzzy pickles" in maybe 10 years. I think he did our school pictures at McDermoth too. Is he still alive, does he still do that?
Posted by: C at April 6, 2007 05:38 AM
When people write flowery descriptions, it comes off as trying to sound "writery." Brevity and an economy of words are paramount, as I've been impressed upon by published authors.
When I see the amount of adjectives you use, I prepare myself to cringe, then I realise you're actually pulling it off. How much hacking and slashing does your stuff go through during editing? Do you agonise over your sentences, or do you blast through them without thinking, ready to go back once you're done?
Posted by: Mav at April 6, 2007 10:05 AM
Dear BC,Tell HybridVigor to take a hike! My grandfather was exactly as you described yours he was Chief Gunners mate on a U.S. Destroyer and until his Dying Day the only thing people called him was "Chief" family, friends, strangers. as for the way you tell stories, it is as if your way with words, is like a painters way with paint. you paint stories not simply fill us in on info your work IS art in its own way. thank you for what you do and ignore the detractors - GO NAVY! -
Posted by: Andrew at April 6, 2007 10:56 AM
I don't know about being a detractor, I was taking issue with conjecturing what people "should've done". If Chief wanted to be taking photos, why second guess his avocation?
I liked this story, some parts more than others. Every one of BCs stories has a memorable, great description; in this one I think it's the root beer drinking.
Posted by: HybridVigor at April 6, 2007 01:08 PM
Your grandfather was a funny man. He would have either hated me or loved me for laughing at him all the time. I'm a laugher. I don't know how to explain it. Awesome writing! Keep it up!
Posted by: Wayland at April 7, 2007 03:13 AM
Reading stories about your grandpa makes me wish I had my own just like him.
Posted by: Sod at April 8, 2007 11:45 AM
"As I watched my Grandfather walk slowly away from the car, I was filled with the same kind of dread a criminal feels when the chain on a guard dog suddenly snaps."
I'm diggin the imagery. Great work.
Posted by: Narke at April 9, 2007 05:25 PM
"Fuzzy pickles" is one I've never heard before. I'll have to try that. [I'm an apprentice portrait photographer and I'm getting desperate]
Your grandfather reminds me of my dad, but without the cursing and the pot smoking.
Posted by: kelli at April 10, 2007 01:37 PM
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