Alix goes home, Grandpa tells a story

Alix left yesterday. At the airport she cried just before we parted at the security gate. She said, "I wasn't going to cry." I choked up afterwards, as I watched her pass through security, first taking off her bracelet and earrings then wrestling her full backpack and bag onto the conveyor. Ever since that time in Alaska, about ten years ago, when I broke down and sobbed before putting her on a plane, I've tried to be more composed at airports. "I thought I was going to die," she said afterwards.

Alix and I traveled well together, and I'm going to miss her company. Plus, she took the Harry Potter cds with her, the last book, after having hooked me in.

In the early afternoon before she left, she and Rosemary went off to Panda Express and brought back several styrofoam containers of food. Afterwards I got Grandpa's permission to break out the family photographs. For a man so meticulously organized in most parts of his life, it's surprising that the photos are uncataloged, mixed up in numerous cardboard boxes and two ancient suitcases. I couldn't find the sixties era, but the thirties and forties and fifties were well represented. Alix said, "why didn't we do this before? I could spend all day looking at these pictures."

In the evening, after calling Alix during her layover in Denver, I sat on the back patio with Grandpa and Mike, and Grandpa soon settled into a storytelling rhythm, moving from one Nebraska childhood story to another, many of them revolving around his father. One I hadn't heard before. It's not so much about his father, though he plays a small part. In the late 1920s and early 1930s his father for a time worked as a truck driver, driving loads between Omaha or Grand Island and small towns like Spalding and Greeley, hauling farm equipment, groceries, whatever people needed. He often took Grandpa, his oldest child, along with him, partly for company, partly because he couldn't read and Grandpa could help with the invoices and paperwork. I'll try to let Grandpa tell of one particular trip to Grand Island:

We got down there in the afternoon and headed to the warehouse part of town. I had a friend with me, this kid I'd been chumming around with that summer, and Dad let him come along. He was a few years older than me, fifteen, I think; I was twelve.

Well, after waiting around for awhile, I asked Dad if we could go off on our own. He said, "that'd be ok, I suppose. But don't be gone too long."

So off we went, poking around here and there, doing this and that, I don't know what, just what boys do, I suppose. Eventually I noticed that it was getting dark, and I said we should go back. I was a little worried that dad would have something to say to me, but when we got back he wasn't there. We looked all around, but we couldn't find him. Turns out he was out looking around town for us.

Anyway, we decided that we'd go off to this park we knew about, and maybe we'd spend the night there and then come back in the morning and find Dad. So off we go, and pretty soon we get to the park. It's a big park, lots of trees, some woods, but we find a bench out in the middle, in the open and set down. We figured we could take turns laying out and sleeping on the bench.

But after awhile here come this police car, shining a spotlight out into the park. We get down low so he won't see us. He comes by a couple times, then gets on his loud speaker. "Alright," he says, "all you fellas in there I want you to come out and line up here on the street. I don't want any trouble, I just want you to do it now."

Well, after just a minute here come all these men out of the trees, like bedbugs when the light comes on. We hadn't seen one of them, didn't know anyone else was in the park, but pretty soon there was fifty of us standing out in the street beside the police car. The officer said, "ok, all of you start walking down this way, and when you get to that corner take a right and keep going." So we started off, and the polce car drove behind us slow, its headlights on us.

When we come to the police station they had us line up and go through a sort of receiving procedure. When you got up to the desk another officer said, "empty your pockets," and he'd put all your things in a sack and write out your name on it. I guess they didn't want any knives in there or something like that.

Well, then they had us all go into this big room, not a thing in it, not a chair or a bench, with a bathroom at the far end. We, my friend and I was the only kids, the rest was all men, in their twenties and older. I don't know why they put us in there too, but they didn't say anything about us being kids.

I remember there was this one guy, pretty well dressed, which made him stand out in that crowd. He took his pants off and laid them out carefully on the floor and then walked up and down on them to get a good crease. The damnedest thing.

They'd left the door to the room open, a big iron gate, but around three in the morning someone came along and closed it, and then everything felt entirely different.

In the morning they brought us each a piece of bread and a bowl of oatmeal, but no milk or anything to go in it. Then they took us outside and the head police officer spoke and said, "alright, all of you go on down this street here, then go left on Dodge, then take the next right and keep on going out of town. I don't want to see any of you here again, and I mean it."

Well, we all set off together, a big ragged bunch, and pretty soon me and my friend we cut away on our own and headed for the warehouses. Dad was there, and I thought he was going to give us hell, but when he heard what had happened he was what you might call lenient....

Grandpa laughed, then teared up, as he often does when speaking of his father, a man dead for seventy years.