Toot Toot Peanut Butter

We've had a rough few days with the funeral of Pro-Pompa but ('m grateful for the family time and reminiscing of sweet moments.  I gave a eulogy at the funeral which I'm including below but 2 of my uncles and some of my Pompa's friends also spoke and did an amazing job portraying who he was.  I learned a few things I hadn't known (jokes that were played or how he would take the time to shoo the animals of the way of the tractor while cutting hay even if everyone else was in a hurry to get the farming done).  I'd forgotten that before he started up the school bus in the mornings, he'd have us say "toot toot peanut butter."  The funeral was packed (over 350) with the overflow room and lasted a long time but that's what happens when a man lives in one place for over 80 years.  Matalley and Grayson got a little tired sitting in the church pew and after the service, Matalley leaned over to YiaYia and said, "I didn't fit in very well." 

The power went out at one point and so this morning all the clocks were blinking.  Matalley came in to our room concerned because she and Grayson use the clocks to determine when to get out of bed.  She said, "We're watching for the 7 but it just keeps blinking the same number so we don't know what to do."

The kids had a chance to ride the 4-wheelers and helped Uncle Steve round up the horses and check the irrigation pumps.  I'm sad that they don't get the opportunity to be on the ranch or in Meeker as often as I was as a child.  Growing up in the city, I sure feel like the small town ranch experiences helped keep me grounded.  I'm glad I have all these memories though...so many things to share with my kids as they get older!

I think grandchildren have a special vantage point. By the time we meet our grandparents, they’ve most likely made most of their mistakes and learned most of their lessons. Their journey,  while largely imperceptible to others, is carved on their faces. When a little child looks at grandpa she knows who he is…maybe in her innocence she even catches a glance of his eternal face.

My Pompa’s image is engrained in my mind.  His beautiful blue eyes one with a speck of coal, the way he would purse his lips together to whistle a tune, and the little head nod with an eyebrow raised to say “Oh, Really?”  I also think that there are lives that are so whole that when they end, you realize they’ve shown us all that we need to know about living a good life. My Pompa’s life was like that. 

He grew up in a small community with a one room school house.  My siblings and I loved Little House on the Prarie when we were little and I honestly picture my Pompa’s life like the characters in the book or tv show.  Hard work and lots of dust, but joy in simple things.  Even as a young married man, he didn’t have running water…an existence the three of us couldn’t understand.  He told stories of sledding and branding cattle and trips to California to watch his cousins ride in the Rose Bowl parade.  He also shared stories of sorrow with the loss of his mother, whom he was very close to, when he was just out of high school.  But if he hadn’t gone back home to take care of her, he might never have run into my YiaYia.  I love that he was smitten with her at first glance and that he pursued her despite his non Greek origin.  I’m happy to have memories of them dancing in the kitchen or my Pompa coming in from a long day of farming and giving her a kiss on the cheek.  It reminded me of Donna Reed or Ozzie and Harriet, another favorite of mine when I was little.  His way of life just seemed to fit what I watched on tv.  Maybe it’s because I always thought my Pompa could have been a movie star with my Aunt Aileen.

They may not have lived glamorous lives but they had a charisma that attracted friends just like the movie stars we read about.  Both of them seemed to shine when others were around to hear a joke or listen to a song.  I loved the few jam sessions I got to sit in on and the parties and the trumpet playing when he got home from work.    

Abraham Lincoln said: “The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land”.  Noone can argue that my Pompa didn’t LOVE farming.  When we were little, I rode a lot with my Pompa.  We’d get up early and have breakfast before the sun was up, then head over to ride the school bus on the kids’ morning commute, we’d get done with that and go deliver mail, and then maybe mow the lawn on the riding mower, we’d ride out to the ranch and ride the tractor or combine, and when we’d get done with that, we’d drive up to some field and just look at the wheat.  He was happiest when he was out on the ranch immersed in God’s creation. 

If we weren’t riding somewhere, we were sitting around the dining table eating, watching a game, or playing cards.  I spent a lot of nights sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs listening to the adults play “Hearts, Pitch, Love the neighbor, or others of the like.”  He taught me how to deal and that you never ever pick up your cards before anyone else.  He LOVED milk toast and passed on the craving to my brother.  Family was very important to him and he took pride in the size of his own.  I remember multiple church services in which he would stand up during prayer requests to praise God for his family.  He was present at our college graduations and sat with me on the student side of a Baylor football game (when we didn’t have RGIII) in the penetrating heat.  The devotion he expressed to all of us is something we will be able to pass on to our own grandkids making his legacy far reaching.

He also loved his friends and this community.  As a member of Lion’s club, we would visit him at the concession booth under the grandstands.  We met up with him at REA conventions …one time we spent 2 hours looking for steak restaurant in DC and another time I went to an Oakridge Boys concert with him in St. Louis (Elvira happened to be a favorite 8track when I was little).  I loved hearing his cool voice over the loud speaker as the 4^th of July parade announcer and hearing the bad words of the saloon scene in the Pagent because Mrs. Cooley wouldn’t dare say anything so crude.

Besides passion, he taught me the meaning of courage and resiliency …just knowing he was once a bull rider made me sit a little straighter.  All he had to do was give you a look and I knew it was time to move out of his recliner in the living room.  I moved out of a loving respect, not fear.  And for those who knew him, I think we all respected him for the hardworking, fun-loving, passionate, courageous, and tough man that he was.

Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease.  It’s painful for those watching the one they love lose pieces of personality every day.  I was able to visit my Pompa just days before he died and even though he was confused about who I was, he still teased his great-grandkids the way he always did.  It was the piece of him that never left and perhaps the one I will miss the most.  Pompa had a very good life! He spent 60 years with an incredible woman, my yiayia, Artie. They raised a family full of LOVE.  We will miss him but death just ends the earthly life, our relationship and memory of him will last forever.