Dad Entry #205

It's the 4th of July – as I write this – and I'm going to mention two men who are like lions to me, the paternal great-grandfathers of M 'n' m. One of them they knew until he passed recently; the other we lost when I was in high school. The former, my dad's dad, was signed by the Chicago Cubs but went to Korea instead. There was a war on, and he joined the Army. He married a very young and breathtaking brunette, before he went to war, and fathered a baby he didn't hardly see until his son was a toddler. But Grandma Marilyn (who, at the time, was teenage Mother Marilyn), showed their son a picture of his father every day, while narrating, I presume, stories of his lionhood. The other great-grandpa of M 'n' m went off to foreign battlefields, also. He did so in 1945. He survived intense combat in the Siegfried Line in Germany. They still talk about his General. A guy named Patton. Tough stuff that my Grandpa refused to speak of. He saw a lot of boys killed right alongside of him (one of only two details he ever wrote about combat), and then, very sadly, his unit liberated a concentration camp. I can't imagine.... But he was an affectionate grandpa and, of course, a hero. Oh, and he was a helluva baseball player, too. Oh, and he also married a stunning brunette. Like I said, they are lions to me.

Now to lighten the mood... of the thousand or so random thoughts I had on the 4th of July, not about my superhero-to-me grandfathers, one of them was conspicuously troubling and deep. I stumbled onto a real puzzler and I'll share it with you: Whatever happened to water beds? We had three of them when I was a kid, every member of the family a proud user, and we weren't the only ones; friends and relatives all around were filling giant bladders for mattresses, and berating ignorant children – like me – who insisted that the water, though impossibly confined, could still be forcefully rocked into surfable barrels or waterpark-worthy wave pools. I wonder what gimmicky things will be powerfully associative to my children's 'wonder years,' only to vanish and leave them viscerally nostalgic 25 years later?

I have a lot of summer memories, and my children are in Minnesota creating their own at this very moment. They are with their beloved Grandma Barb, and her sidekick Papa Mike. It's a little like visiting Willy Wonka, I'm afraid, or Donald Trump, although my dad's hair isn't nearly as thick, dyed, swirled, or plastic. My dad and I intend, however, to investigate the latest in hair technology. We'll keep you posted.