My Grandfather

[Lightning Rod]

I'm thinking of my grandfather. Well, he wasn't actually my blood grandfather, but he married my grandmother after my real grandfather, who I never met, had died. His name was Jerrell R. Powell. I never knew what the 'R.' stood for. He was born before the turn of the 20th century in Red Oak, Texas. He went to Texas A & M and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. Then he went to Washington D.C. and met my grandmother. She was managing a rooming house and a diner in the building owned by my great-grandmother at 3rd and Congress. My grandmother was a widow with two small kids and had been taken in and employed by my stern German great-grandmother.

Jerrell was working in Washington and lived in the rooming house run by my grandmother, whose name was Dorothy. Dorothy had lived in the Baltimore/ D.C. area all her life. Dorothy had three sisters. It was a family of girls.

Jerrell and Dorothy married and moved back to Dallas, or should I say Oak Cliff? They bought a modest house there during the Depression. Jerrell opened an electrical contracting business and for the next fifty years he and Dorothy ran it together. He had the technical skills and she had the business savvy. Over the years he painted all his service trucks maroon, he was a die-hard Aggie.

I remember several times while I was growing up, being present at family gatherings where my grandmother's sisters would come to visit from Baltimore. They would talk, talk, talk, as sisters do. Their accents were different than I was used to. My favorite great-aunt was Winnie, who worked for the CIA and was an aspiring novelist.

When I met doreen, we had been tapping away on the internet to each other for several weeks when we decided to talk on the phone. The minute I heard her voice, it flashed me back to those gatherings of my grandmother and her sisters. It was the Baltimore/DC accent.

Since I have come here, it's even gotten more deja vuish. Doreen is from a family of four sisters, a family of girls. Their mother is named Dorothy. They are all very bright and talkative, with Baltimore/DC accents, just like my grandmothers siblings. It's funny how things complete themselves.

Dorothy and Jerrell both died in that little house in Oak Cliff. It was my good fortune to be able to live there and care for them during the last couple of years of their lives. He was blind and they were both deaf. He had his environment so memorized that after he was completely blind, people would come to the house to visit and they would never realize that he was blind.

Toward the end it was pretty amazing to observe them. They were both hanging onto life for the benefit of the other. They would get in fabulous fights. They had dropped all pretense. She would jump on him for something he had said or done fifty years before. They were like a couple of kids. One day I caught Jerrell out by the side of the house, standing in a puddle of water, about to stick a screwdriver into the fuse box. I led him back into the house. The man was an electrical engineer, ferchrissake.

They died within six weeks of each other.

[Dave The Dov]

I was for the longest time lead to believe that the man I called"grandpa" turned out was never my real grandfather. This was on my dad's side. It wasn't until after my grandmother had passed away that I got to know the full story. My folks had come back from Arizona with a bunch of photos that my late grandmother had been keeping for so many years. One of them showed my real grandfather standing next to my great grandfather. His name was Milton. As it turned out my real grandfather was divorced from my grandmother long before I was ever born. Things were not so well between them. This is what my dad told me one time. So the change was made and life went on. When I saw that photo I could see a resemblance between me and my real grandfather. When I saw this I decided that I was going to find what ever happen to him after he and my grandmother divorced. I did hear from a cousin that he told me that my real grandfather moved down to Florida and some how stayed in contact with his father. But after that not much is known about him. So an enduring mystery pervades to this day on what had happen to my real grandfather since then. I'll keep on searching until I solve this family mystery.
_________________
Mercedes S Class

[stilltrucking]

I loved my grandfather. You bring back good memories. Thanks

[sooZen]

Great TeXas story. I love stories about family and history and you tell it well, of course.

Someday I will have to weave the yarn about my step-Great Grandaddy, the first to have a cattle drive from the Big Bend and the discoverer of the Marfa Lights. He kept a journal (all the boys on that side liked to write) on the cattledrives and his story about the death of the Cook(ie) is a great tell...

The is no such thing as co-wink-a-dink. The UniVerse has a plan and we are in it.

[jimboloco]

yeah, why did granpa Jerrell go to Washington DC in th first place?

I mean, he was an Aggie. Maybe he had an inkling someone was waiting.

I would love yo hear SooZen's trail riding stories from her g-g-granpa.

I heard my g-g-granpa was a sherriff in either west texas or New Mexico and got shot off his horse. But nothing resembling a journal or a story. I think that young folks who grow out from ancestral lineages are blessed.

Why I feel at home in Florita. People from all over are here, renegade Jankees and maverick strays and crackers and Afro-poppers and Caribbean beanheads and Latinos from down under, up over, timbaleros. Ah well, I was born out of a whirlwind, dead men tell no tales.

I love the family stories.

[stilltrucking]

Texas, California, Florida, seems like every one is from some place else. There are small towns in Virginia and West Virginia where most people have never been more than 50 miles from home. Iraq is changing that. So many senior trips there, these days. Where is SooZen?

[Artguy]

Ya...mine was an ol farmer ...lived to be 90...still carried his thick german from the ukraine accent...long story there...swung a hammer with the power of thor...carried a baby like an angel....played a mean fiddle...and could curse with the best of them....went to church every sunday...or gandma would of reached from the grave and killed him...kept a mickey under the kitchen sink...and cheated at cards...that was papa and I loved him