Grandpa

From the Memoirs of Pat Otterness

Grandpa

My grandfather, John Shackford, was a Methodist minister, and I was born into his house while my dad was overseas, fighting in World War II.?One way and another, I was a part of his household for much of my childhood.?I followed him around like a puppy, learning all manner of strange things at his hands.

My grandfather loved to paint, and our house always smelled of oil paint and turpentine.?My hair was very fine, and sometimes he would clip off a little of it to make fine paintbrushes, which irritated my mother no end.?But he would let me paint alongside him, and learn by doing.?His talent was questionable, except for landscapes.?He did wonderful landscapes.?His one attempt at portraiture was hilarious.?He tried to copy a portrait of my grandmother on her wedding day.?And tried.?And tried.?Over many years, the paint became so thick she was almost three dimensional, but he could never achieve the beauty he remembered.?Perhaps this was because my grandmother’s beauty was in her spirit more than in her features.?But also because my grandfather could not do portraiture.

Grandpa was very dictatorial, and mother all but hated him for it.?She felt his attitudes had impacted her life in a very harmful way.?But Grandpa was a brilliant man, and my mother often told me that one of the reasons she married my dad was that he was the only man she had ever met who was smarter than her father.?After my parents divorced (when I was four), we moved back in with Grandpa and Mimi.?And since Grandpa was a Methodist minister, we moved from place to place about every four years, first in Newport News, and then in Churchland, Virginia.?After I moved in with Aunt Margaret, Grandpa moved to Churchville, Virginia, where he preached at three different area churches right before his retirement at age 81.

? When I was about eleven, we lived in the small, rural community of Churchland, Virginia.?There was a small all-purpose grocery store within walking distance, and my grandfather gave his permission for me to buy snacks and drinks on his charge account.?One day, when I entered the store, I noticed that they were carrying some new products.?Tools!?I was so excited!?I grabbed a basket and began filling it with all the tools I thought I would need for some unnamed project too glorious to even imagine.?I even threw in a tool box.?I marched up to the front and placed my purchases on the counter.?

The store owner looked at me, and at the tools.?He said, “Excuse me a minute,” and went in the back.?It seemed like only moments later that Grandpa came storming into the store.?I was whisked out, tool-less, and even my snack-charging privilege was removed.?Rats!?I’ve always wondered what magnificent things I might have built, had it not been for Grandpa.

I was a very skinny kid in those days.?In the back of all my comic books were ads for the Charles Atlas muscle building kit.?The ad featured some bully kicking sand into the face of a 98 pound weakling.?Did I want this to happen to me, it asked.?No, indeed!?So I sent off for the Charles Atlas muscle building kit.?Then I waited, and I waited, and I waited.?It never came.?Disappointed, I asked my mother what could have become of it.?She told me that it had probably come long since, and that Grandpa had thrown it in the trash.?(Along with my dreams of being a Schwarzenegger look-alike.)

We had huge pecan trees in the yard at that parsonage in Churchland, right across the street from Grandpa’s church.?I was about eleven years old, and I spent a lot of time in those trees.?One day I was quietly playing Tarzan in the trees, minding my own business, when someone pointed me out to my grandfather, who was across the street holding a church meeting.?Zapped again!?Apparently eleven years old was too old for girls to dress only in loincloths (in my grandfathers opinion).

Grandpa was not especially pleased, either, when I brought home some of the tiny communion glasses to use with my dolls, or when I went to stand behind the podium before he came in to preach.?I was always getting in trouble for one thing or another.?Not least was my refusal to attend Sunday School, since Grandpa was known for creating a magnificent Sunday School program embraced by the entire Methodist?Church.

But Grandpa was an honest man, and a fair one.?Even though he ruled my mother’s?life with an iron fist, he never tried to interfere with how she raised me.?And he was among the first to welcome blacks to his church, which very nearly got him kicked out of the Methodist ministry.?He told me I should always be kind to black people, because they were like children, and while this sounds quite condescending now, it was very open-minded for his generation.?I loved my Grandpa, but I also knew his limitations.?He was very domineering, and woe betide those who challenged his rules.?Mostly my mother, who delighted in thwarting him.

Grandpa taught me how to make rope out of Yucca leaves, and thread out of freshly picked cotton from nearby fields.?He taught me how to make flour and water paste, and use it to re-glue falling wallpaper, using a cloth-covered broom.?He fixed broken rocking chairs with coat hanger wire.?He brought wildflowers to my grandmother in used coffee jars on which he had painted beautiful landscapes. (The paint was often still wet when they were presented to her.)

Grandpa and Mimi were both great intellects, and they often played a game together that I enjoyed.?It was a “first definition” game.?They would choose a word, usually an obscure one, and challenge each other to come up with the first, or preferred definition.?Then they would spend the day arguing over why their choice should be the preferred one.?Finally, at the end of the day, they would consult the unabridged dictionary, and declare a winner.?I never tired of that game, nor did they.?They were still at it well into their eighties.

I have many happy memories of my childhood.?My family was quite eccentric, and I have always loved quirky people.?There was never a dull moment in my childhood.?I often finger it, like old lace, in my mind.