As Father’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about my grampa’s house. I went there virtually every Father’s Day, as our extended family would gather there and some serious snacking and sitting while my grandfather grilled hamburgers. But I also think about just going there period, how often I did, without any real thought given to the possibility that one day, I might not be able to.
If you went to my grandfather’s house on any given weekend, chances are he was watching golf, snacking from a large box of Cheez-Its while doing so. He was not really a sedentary person. He was outside more often than not, gardening or mowing his lawn or golfing himself. But when he did relax, this was his favorite way of doing so.
I grew up next door to him, and so I’d go visit often, although “visiting” is probably the wrong word for it. It was not so much a friendly visit as me taking full, brutal advantage of his home and hospitality. As I know I’ve mentioned many times, he had a VCR years before I did, and so I’d beg him to tape things I wanted saved for posterity–animated specials mostly, usually holiday related, with the occasional movie thrown in. He did this for me every time without fail, even though he wasn’t quite sure how to tape something on one channel and watch something else, which meant the poor guy was stuck watching Peanuts and Garfield specials all night whenever I placed an order.
If I felt like watching one of these tapes, I’d just show up announced, and he’d let me put on whatever old tape I wanted to, even if it was the middle of the summer and I felt like watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and even if he was in the middle of watching Arnold Palmer at the Masters.
To top it off, he’d let me eat as many of his Cheez-Its as I wanted, even if “as many as I wanted” usually equaled “all of them.” I would never be told I couldn’t have more. I would never be asked to leave. I could stay there all day, all week if I wanted to.
When I got older, Grampa had cable before I did, and he allowed me to program his VCR so I could tape and watch shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 and 120 Minutes. I was permitted to do this no questions asked, despite the fact that he didn’t quite get the former and knew nothing of the latter. I’d come over, make enough small talk so I wouldn’t feel bad, and retrieved a tape so I could go home and watch “Manos: The Hands of Fate” or Dave Kendall get berated by The Pixies. I might even grab a handful of Cheez-Its for the road.