Grandpa Phil

My grandmothers name was Evelyn Geerlings.
Remarried from the Schultz clan after her first husband died.
Or maybe they divorced, I cant remember.
They were a hard drinking German family. My ancestors.
Grandpa Frank Schultz had a peg leg and beat my grandmother
regularly with it. I never met Frank Schultz.

Grandpa Geerlings was Phil. A step grandfather technically,
but the only one I ever knew. The only male adult figure
who never hurt me. He was a tall man with broad shoulders
and big calloused hands. A hugger, a laugher, a gentle giant
of a man. He took his teeth out to eat and put them in a
jelly jar right there on the kitchen table. It wouldn’t have
mattered if the president was visiting, Grandpa would never
put on a show for him, his teeth would have still been in that
jar as he ate.

They lived in the tiny town of Pullman Michigan
(about half a hour away from my mothers home later in Holland).
Mom always said as we drove in “don’t blink or you will miss it”
She was right, it was that small. A one stop light kind of town.

Their home sat right next to the train tracks. At first those trains
were very loud and the way they caused the house to shake
was a worry to me. But after a short while, those trains were
a comfort. As they rumbled through, I mentally jumped aboard
and dreamed of escaping to some unknown place. I still love
the rumble of a train.

The tiny house was a tar papered facade cottage the first time
I remember seeing it. They were putting new siding on, so it didn’t
remain tar paper, but for that little girl, it was just sad to see what
little my own grandparents had. Even as a young child I knew these
people were poor. I learned then that what a home looks like is
less important than what they strive for.

There are those people who see the disrepair and leave it,
and others who work on it as the money allows. My grandparents
always cared very much and tried to do as much as they could.
Grandpa was a carpenter. He rode a motorcycle to work most days
and when we visited from Cali, I was the lucky kid that got to go
with him to see where he was working that day. I remember once
we went to a large home on Lake Michigan. We sat in a 2×4 framed room
in an upper floor eating lunch out of a metal lunch box that Gram had
packed for us. Our feet dangling over the edge of what would one day
be an impressive window. All of it frightening and exciting at the same
time. Grandpa Phil stared out at the water as if he was lost in it.

He seemed at peace there, in this home he was building that he would
never have been able to afford. It was his creation and you could see
his pride in it. I loved going to work with him, helping where I could.
Even if only to hand him things. It was where I would choose to be
every time rather than go along with siblings and cousins to play.

As the work day was finished Grandpa would drive back to Pullman
and stop at the only pub there. It was the first time I had been in a bar.
I crawled up the tall stool next to my great big grandfather and looked at
him with such pride. He turned and handed me a dime for the coke machine.
It was my first coke machine. (they call it pop) and I didn’t know how to
use it. The bartender asked Grandpa where he had picked me up;
inferring that I was a stray he had brought home.

Grandpa laughed and said, “This is my Carol Ann all the way from California
to see me. I’m teaching her to be my apprentice, she is my favorite.”
Then he turned to me and put his fingers to his lips and whispered
“don’t tell the others”. I never did.

I would imagine those special times with him are a part of how I came
to love working with wood. The smells, the ability to make anything with it.
My grandfather taught me well. Working wood shops still draw me in.
The piles of saw dust waiting to be touched. Stains and smells to
excite the senses. It all reminds me of him and those wonderful hot
days helping him there on that lake. One day I will own the kind of
house he so longed for on a lake somewhere. I must.

Spring is coming to my house, more pictures in flickr