My favorite memories of the benevolent
tell-it-like-it-is bullfrog- baritone yawp of my surrogate granpa are thricefold. There was the time when I was fourteen and
had just won this trip to England and one Sunday during Lent shortly before I
was to leave Grandpa Salm reeled me aside when everyone was egressing the pews
and exiting the sanctuary and handed me an envelope with twenty dollars. I
humbly accepted the envelope thinking he was handing me a financial gratuity to
go and knock myself out with in London. Instead he told me to take the money
and find this Podunk out of the way pharmacy somewhere south of SoHo that,
according to him, had the ‘best damn razors’ on
the planet, and to pick him up twenty dollars worth of razors for him
while I was in England to smuggle back home. (note: it remains the only time I
have ever heard anyone curse inside Christ Lutheran church). I never got a
chance to find the Pharmacy my entire four days in London and kept the envelope
in my pocket the duration of the trip, guilt ridden that I was not able to
placate his request. The next time I saw Granpa Salm was during Beth and
Shawna’s Confirmation. I went up to him after the service handed him back the
envelope and apologized profusely for not being able to locate the pharmacy and
purchase the razors on my thoroughly chartered
sojourn. I handed him back the envelope with the funds apologizing again and he just looked at me disappointed and
said, “Well, you tried.”
My next favorite memory of Grandpa Salm was about a
year later… I was stranded in line to purchase Madrigal tickets at Limestone
High school. I was next to my best
friend David Hale and somehow we ended
up in line for six hours straight seated
right next to Granpa. For those of you who were blessed to know Grandpa Salm
know that it didn’t matter who you were, he would come up next to you, give you
a left-handed side-chop in the waist and simply say, “Hey” in a deep soulful
tenor. He would then (lovingly) talk the lobe of your ear off from here until Kingdom come. My best friend David Hale is also somewhat of
a gregarious chatterer and for (six) hours they talked incessantly about the
politics, blathering on about the proverbial,
“what-is-wrong-with-the-world-these-days,” with mostly Grandpa Salm
pontificating and David Hale lovingly concurring, “Yes, I have often thought
that many times myself” for six hours straight like a choral round. Charlie
Best, who was working class and went to our church, was seated on a lawn chair
perusing the Sunday paper near the front of the line. During Grandpa Slam and Hale’s marathon
verbal discourse I shot Charlie a glance, a facial SOS and Charlie just looked
up rolled his eyes, ruffled the paper and pretended we didn’t exist.
There are other memories. Shortly after his wife
died Grandpa Salm began going to auctions and one day, from out of the Picasso
blue, he called me and told me that he
found an antique 1940’s era radio and asked me if I would like it. I conceded,
figuring I would see him at the next holiday and he would forget about it. The
next day grandpa Salm arrived at my house he had radio the size of an Egyptian
sarcophagus in the back of his truck. He handed me some ropes and together we
lugged the beast into my living room and, while thanking him for the
spontaneous gift he winked and told me, “Don’t be a stranger to an old
granpa.” I also remember (this would
have been circa 87) Aunt Linn and Uncle Larry had a retirement party for him at
their house off airport rd. When you are ten years old the front lawn is the
size of a football field (plus it had a slip-n-slide!!!) and I remember trying
to be an adult even though I was an ingénue-cheek ten year old with auburn
bangs and going up to him and congratulating him from all the years he worked
at Keystone Steel and Granpa Salm
swiveled his chin and turned to me and said, “You know what. You never stop
learning. You learn something new every day.”
The last time I saw Grandpa Salm was at Shawna’s
wedding two years ago. If you see pictures from the wedding he looked dapper
with his cane, a patriarch posing next to the ivory drape of the bride,
demure-eyed, yet proud. He would be too ill to attend Jayma’s wedding last
June, but his spirit was resilient and poetically pervasive and you could hear
the thunderous echo of our family bloodline in the toast Uncle Larry gave his
youngest daughter wishing her the wisdom and grace that is her Christian family
bloodline, deeply rooted in faith as it is planted in the soil of the lolling
rustic hills outside of Bartonville.
But my favorite memory of Grandpa Salm is
collectively culled from about 20 years ago when Uncle Larry was building their
house out in Limestone township. Uncle Larry hired apostles to help him erect
the abode of his dreams: There was his brother-in-law Alan and Andy Moore and
the endearing harlequin handymanship of my own father. Grandpa Slam was also
assisting. He was almost 70 and had cheek of Redman and was cursing and
spitting tobacco, and occasionally turning to Andy Moore and slapping him into
his waist and saying something inappropriate but the whole time he assisted in
constructing the house you could tell there was a joy on his lips. Like he was
doing something he loved and when I looked at him I thought he was the coolest
old man my eyes had ever seen.
