Grandpa Berkshire

“Boots eats it, and he don’t like it.” was one of my grand­pa’s favorite say­ings. For the longest time, I had no idea what the hell it meant. I mean, I under­stood it, but it made no sense to me. I thought Boots [who­ev­er the hell he was] was pret­ty stu­pid for eat­ing some­thing that he did­n’t want to eat. I cer­tain­ly was­n’t going to eat a toma­to sim­ply because some dude named Boots was too weak-willed to stand up for what he believed in.

I believed in sneak­ing E.L. Fudge cook­ies from the cook­ie jar at my grand­par­en­t’s after school.

I only remem­ber bits and pieces of my grand­pa from when my grand­par­ents lived on the lake in Mon­ti­cel­lo. I remem­ber his boat and his loud voice [his nick­name was Boomer] and that I was­n’t allowed to touch most of the things in the house. Once I went into town with Grand­pa in his Ranchero, and our fam­i­ly was play­ing the McDon­ald’s Monop­oly game, and I spilled a milk­shake all over my pants and in the car.

He also was friends with Old Hezeki­ah, who was known to leave pock­et change in the unlike­li­est places for me to find and keep. He always drank Man­hat­tans.

Anoth­er time, he took me shop­ping for a G.I. Joe and I took for­ev­er to pick out which one I want­ed. I end­ed up get­ting Life­line, who came with a pis­tol. He told me that medics did­n’t car­ry guns when he was in the war. Grand­pa was a radio man and had fought in the Philip­pines in World War II and had a chunk of his thigh blown off while on Leyte. I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the giant scar and his ever-brief sto­ries about how they had to graft skin from his chest onto the leg. He did­n’t like to talk about the war.

I was enam­ored by all of this and even­tu­al­ly he gave me all of his old army stuff for me to play with. Grand­ma and Grand­pa moved to Con­nersville a few years lat­er and I remem­ber sit­ting on the rock at the end of Coun­try Club Road, wait­ing for them to appear.

We would get into a lot of trou­ble togeth­er. He would rile me up and I’d love it and then both my mom and my grand­ma would yell at us [most­ly at him]. One time he had me laugh­ing so hard that I threw up straw­ber­ry ice cream. He had this box of junk that I always want­ed to root through, but was nev­er allowed to do so. One day I burned my leg on the muf­fler of his rid­ing mow­er and he put some strange goop on it and final­ly [!] let me go through the box and keep a few pock­et knives and oth­er weird­ness.

We’d also go fish­ing togeth­er some­times. He always had caf­feine free diet coke because he was dia­bet­ic and sand­wich­es made with white bread and one slice of chopped ham and a bit of mus­tard. Need­less to say, those lunch­es weren’t the most excit­ing, but I loved being on the lake with him.

He got esopha­gial can­cer when I was 12, we found out almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the death of my cousin Matt. All of this was just weeks after my Grand­ma and Grand­pa had cel­e­brat­ed their 50th wed­ding anniver­sary. I remem­ber vis­it­ing him at a hos­pi­tal in Indi­anapo­lis and hat­ing the smell of the place and hat­ing the chemo chem­i­cals that wast­ed him away. The can­cer was so advanced that there was­n’t much to be done except wait. He could­n’t be as active as he used to, and to keep him­self busy, he orga­nized and made copies of our fam­i­ly videos and con­tin­ued to play his end­less and arcane­ly scored games of dou­ble deck soli­taire.

He died in mid-April of 1993. Although he appeared uncon­scious, I remem­ber telling him I loved him and ask­ing him if he loved me. He squeezed my hand. I was made to go mow the lawn, but I was still there when he died. I played Taps on my sax­o­phone for him on the day he was buried. That was the hard­est thing I’ve ever done. I did­n’t let myself cry until after.

Boots eats it, and he don’t like it.