VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 22, SPITTIN’ TRUTH WITH RED:

“The house don’t fall when the bones are good…”
Maren Morris ~ “The Bones”~

These are my grandparents, little ones. This coming Sunday, May 26th, is the day they married in 1928 & stayed married until my grandmother passed on May 17, 2001. That’s 72 years & 356 days. What I miss most about my grandfather, Red, is the back porch on which the picture was taken. I’ve come to appreciate the time he spent watching his family as we gathered for a cookout or Christmas or snapping garden grown beans & I miss terribly the wisdom I was too dumb to grasp while he took a chew of Red Man & I took one or filled my bottom lip with my favored snuff as we used a metal JFG coffee can weighted with rocks as a spittoon. He told me, & as his Bible that I now possess proved after nearly 73 years of marriage & no less than 11 full reads, “if your Bible’s falling apart, you’re probably not.” Sometime in the spring semester of 1985, my beautiful girlfriend & yet to be my beautiful bride & your beautiful grandmother, told me it was her or the tobacco. On numerous occasions, I’m sure your Jules has regretted my decision. Later that year, at one of those family gatherings, my Granddad sidled up & said, “I really like her.” From a metal rocker on that porch, he told me in later years, as he dealt with his share of “for better or worse” as dementia wreaked havoc on my grandmother, that she was his “tough ol’ broad”. He said it without a drip of misogyny but dripping in love & respect. My granddad never quit chewing or rocking or spitting or lost his eye for tough ol’ broads. This October, me & Jules will celebrate our 38th year together as your dad & his beautiful bride celebrate an anniversary that leaves them a scant 66 years & 354 days behind the family leaders in the clubhouse & your uncle & his beautiful bride celebrate 7 wedded months. The anniversaries simply mean our marriages are barely half full or barely on the entrance ramp & our Bible’s are traveling the same road to falling apart as Red & Edna’s, & I think Red’s eye for tough ol’ broads might be genetic. In Heaven, I bet Red’s happy & I bet there’s a coffee can to testify…