The Absent Uncle: One of those really good days
TThis past week I had one of those days that you just like to remember. The weather was fall-like here in the Houston area. A bit of frost this morning when I rolled out the trash for pickup, temps in the mid 30’s with a clear sky for the upcoming sunrise.
I did my normal morning routine, then went to the local food bank for a few hours of volunteer time and returned home still full of energy and the desire to get a couple of things done that I had been putting off (for no good reason).
I found myself sitting on the front porch, enjoying the quiet, thinking about so many things, and then just all of a sudden remembering my grandparents’ home on E street in Marshall, Minn., on a day like today (in the late 1950’s or early 60’s) that I may be spending with them, along with my cousin Barb (for whatever reason we were dropped off while our parents had stuff to do preferably without our presence) and we no doubt disturbed the tranquility grandpa and grandma had created for themselves.
Barb and I ran in and out of the house; playing with neighborhood children (which as two farm kids we never could) playing hide and seek, kick the can, or some other noisy active game we made up. It was great!
But our favorite activity was to go into grandpa and grandma’s basement and skate! We would each clamp on a pair of those old roller skates with metal wheels and zoom around that basement in a big circle around the poles, stairway, furnace, and the shelves containing home-canned jars of so many home-grown vegetables and fruits, always careful to step over the gas pipe that ran across the floor from the wall to the furnace.
Neither of us had any concrete on the farms we lived on to use these skates, so they just stayed at grandpa and grandma’s house for just such occasions. I don’t know who bought them for us, but I can absolutely say without a doubt that it was not grandpa!
Grandpa eventually would reach his limit, come to the top of stairs and let us know we were driving grandma (yeah right) crazy with our skate noise and we would have to stop for the day.
Over the years, we both wore out multiple metal wheels on those skates and thankfully the skates adjusted to our ever-increasing shoe size, and somebody replaced the worn-out wheels when necessary. (Assuredly again, not grandpa!) And so, the sound of those metal wheels on concrete continued with our visits.
Ah, my front porch. Quiet, peaceful. Thanks grandpa, it was a really nice trip back.