White Meat

"I just drove right through the damn beauty pageant," bragged Grandad in his tough-guy voice.  After 25 years with the Ft. Wayne Police force, he knew how to sound intimidating.  "Chairs were in the way so I drove slowly to knock 'em down as I drove.  The colored people jumped up an waived their arms and yelled 'Gawd almighty,' but I had my .38 under the seat in case I needed to enlighten them."  A smile crept across his weathered face.  "Served 'em right, settin up a beauty pageant in the middle of the day on a street like Pontiac."  He peered over his black-framed glasses like an investigator from Dragnet.  Grandad was intimidating all right, but looking for approval.

Grandmother hid her giggle with one hand, and asked if I wanted more mashed potatoes.  We always had about four times as much mashed potatoes as we needed at Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother's house, which was probably why my 5-foot-tall, mentally disabled aunt who lived with Grandmother weighed over 200 pounds.

I was a gangly 12-year-old with bushy red hair and an emerging allergy to poultry.  Nobody understood why I clutched my chest after every chicken or turkey dinner, but it was assumed that I was just seeking attention over a mild case of indigestion.

"That .38 came in handy a few times on Pontiac Street," my grandfather said.  "One time I pulled up to a stop sign behind a couple of black guys, and one of their gang pulled up close behind me so I couldn't move."  He took a piece of turkey out of his mouth and fed it to his toy poodle who was staring up at him.  "How you doin' Keek?" He said in a high voice which neutralized his John Wayne image.  That dog would sit there and look at Grandad like he was god, then he'd come around and bite at your ankles and yap at everyone else.  I found that a swift kick while no one was watching would establish the proper relationship between me and the dog early in the visit.

"As the guy from the car in back came up to talk to me, I put my elbow out the window and held the .38 under it with my right hand."  Grandad lit a cigarette for effect.  "When he came up to the window, he said, 'Trow yo wallet on the street, mang."  This imitation sounded like something from a cartoon, so I laughed out loud.  Everyone looked at me in silence and then panned back to Grandad.

"Well I said back to him 'I didn't hear you.  Come closer boy.'  When he stuck his head down by my window and said again 'Trow yo wallet out mang,' I lifted the gun up slowly from behind my arm and said, 'You don't know who you're talking to."  Grandad said this last part slowly and deeply.

"Wow," my dad said.  He'd heard these stories a hundred times before and knew they were only half true, but he played his role anyway.

Back to the cartoon voice, Grandad said, "Move da car, move da car, da man's got a piece" and then he broke into a cackle.  "They never bothered me in my T-bird again...and you better believe it."  He took a long draw on the cigarette.  "I just hope they don't try to steal my Christmas lights again.  They'll get a load of buckshot from Santa they'll never forget."  Everyone nodded solemnly.  I wondered why anyone would ever make a point to steal Christmas lights.

After the meal, while I was feeling the initial effects of the allergic reaction, we went to look at Grandad's guns and the variety of items that he took from criminals during his years as a motorcycle cop.  My most cherished gift from him to this day is a set of brass knuckles he'd taken from some thug.

Grandmother and Grandad had a green house out back, that I doubt my Grandmother ever entered.  He'd go out there and play poker with his fishing buddies and drink beer all night.  But Dad and I got to go out there when we visited and I always marveled at all the bottles of beer in the refrigerator.  Grandad sat down at his desk and lit another cigarette.

"I went fishin a couple weeks ago at Lake Ednakia with Buzz and Zuber and we caught a mess a walleye.  This part of the lake was new to us so we fished it and man did we kill em.  I got that sign over there where we were fishin."  He pointed to a metal sign in the corner that said, "No Entry.  Protected Wildlife Reserve."  "I figure I can put that on the wall of the green house and that'll keep Mad out."  He laughed.  Mad was his nickname for my grandmother Madalynne, but it also represented her principle emotion toward Grandad.

While he and Dad drank beer, I went out to the garage (clutching my chest from the turkey) and noticed some pictures of skinny guys with only a few teeth, mussed hair, and a dazed, half-witted look about them.  Under each picture was a handwritten name:  "Buzz," "Zuber," and "Bill."  I was dismayed to think that these were the fishing buddies of my granddad.  It wasn't until several years later that I learned that these were mug shots of drunks that he had taken and put his friends' names underneath.  The sad thing is that when I met some of his friends, they didn't look a whole lot different from the drunks in the mug shots.

I don't remember anyone crying when Grandad died, but we all had plenty of stories about him.  I do remember my Grandmother's words to my dad when Grandad died.  "I'm free at last, free at last!" she declared without a hint of sarcasm or emotion.  That statement, spoken once before by Dr. Martin Luther King, couldn't have been more appropriate.