Opaque Lucidity

A Decade Past

On June 10, an artificial harbor on the Indiana side of the Ohio River will be dedicated in the memory of my grandfather, my father's father. The harbor is on land that belonged to my grandfather, father and two of my uncles. They once had a restaurant there and a floating gas station and docks for rent. The restaurant closed soon after my grandmother's death in the 1960's and the rest folded sometime in the early 1970's. They sold the property to the current owners in 1981.

Grandpa's funeral was 10 years ago today. I was living in Texas at the time. I was on a plane by the evening of the day I heard the news; the next four days were a blur. He died just shy of his 95th birthday and had been more or less healthy until about a month before his death. To this day, I don't know what he died of. I guess he just wore out. I'm not trying to be funny when I say that---the human body can only last so long, even under the best of conditions.

My dad asked me to say a few words at the dedication. I found out yesterday that one of my cousins will also be giving a talk, so I'm not exactly free to range far and wide for fear of talking about items she may cover. I actually worked with grandpa for four summers in the mid-80's. The people who bought the land on the river re-opened the gas barge part of the family business and hired me to work there. My grandfather also worked there to have something to do during the day. He was well past 80. I worked on the same gas barge my dad had worked on 25 years before.

So I spent a lot of time with grandpa. My memories of that time are not all pleasant, but not necessarily because of him. I was a teenaged male, so my focus was the many attractive women on the river, not the many little details that the job entailed. Grandpa was the kind of man who liked to have everything in its proper place, from lines to oil to pens. This attention to detail served me well when I was in boot camp a few years later.

Grandpa's relationship with some of his eight children was somewhat rocky. It's hard to ignore when I think about him, but I can't really talk about it in front of people who knew him only as the old man who hung out on the river. To be honest, I don't know how I'll fill the time. My friend Steve told me that humor is the way to go, but I can't think of anything really funny that he did. He loved all things mechanical and all things historical. He loved word puzzles, checkers and a game called "31". The only alcohol he drank came in the form of a highball---whiskey and coke. I can still remember him shaking his empty glass and yelling "Son, (he called every male "son") how about another one of these."

I know I'm rambling and if you've read this far, thanks. I'll figure something out because I've never given a speech without knowing what I was going to say. If you have any thoughts, please let me know.